Sharing your favorite food with the world isn鈥檛 easy. Ask Ethiopia.
| Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Just before midnight every night, a truck rumbles out of a dusty industrial suburb of Ethiopia鈥檚 capital, bound for the airport with a precious cargo on board.
Inside, dozens of cartons are loaded with injera, the spongy, sour, pancake-like bread that is the foundation of Ethiopian cuisine.
By morning, it will be spread around the world: to the U.K. and the U.S., to Norway, Kuwait, and Canada. Every week, the Mama Fresh factory exports more than 20,000 pieces of its pillowy injera. It is a testament not only to the wingspan of Ethiopia鈥檚 vast diaspora and equally vast culinary empire, but also to the preciousness of the bread鈥檚 foundational ingredient: teff.
Why We Wrote This
In a globalized world, we鈥檝e come to expect sushi in Argentina, K-pop in the U.K. But sharing bits of culture across borders can also raise tough questions about authenticity, fairness, and ownership.
A tiny crumb of a grain native only to Ethiopia and Eritrea, teff has begun a global rise in recent years, with proponents saying the high-protein, high-fiber, gluten-free grain could be the world鈥檚 next 鈥渟uperfood.鈥�
But teff鈥檚 ascent is also a lesson in the mixed blessing of being a prospective health food superstar. The Ethiopian government, for instance, has battled a Dutch agronomist over a European patent on flour made of the ancient grain. Meanwhile, in Ethiopia itself, demand for teff flour continues to be so voracious that the government has been hesitant about allowing much to be exported, for fear that locals could be priced out of their own staple.
鈥淭eff has been discovered by the world, and this isn鈥檛 a bad thing,鈥� says Zewdie Gebretsadik, a senior technical expert at the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency who studies teff. 鈥淟et the world love it like we love it, but they must also recognize where it came from.鈥澨�
Teff鈥檚 current woes began in 2004, when the Ethiopian government struck an agreement with a Dutch health food company to market teff to superfood-hungry consumers across Europe. As part of the deal, the company and its director, Jans Roosjen, took out a patent on teff flour. Critics called it ridiculous to patent a food 鈥渄eveloped over millennia by Ethiopian farmers and community plant breeders,鈥� as the Coalition Against Biopiracy wrote in 2004, .
The Ethiopian government was meant to get a major cut of the profit from those sales. Instead, Mr. Roosjen鈥檚 company went belly up. But he still had the teff patent, which he began using to sell its products under other brand names, cutting the Ethiopian government out entirely.
鈥淵ou can鈥檛 believe how strange it is to hear that the patent for your ancient grain is with a man in Europe,鈥� says Mirafesilase Hailu, the marketing manager for Mama Fresh, the injera factory.
In May 2018, the Ethiopian government announced it was bringing a case against Mr. Roosjen and his patent at the International Court of Arbitration in Paris. Meanwhile, Mr. Roosjen went to Dutch courts to sue another Dutch company, Bakels, for selling its own teff products.
The company had argued that its methods of storing and processing teff were distinct. But in February, the Dutch court found that Mr. Roosjen鈥檚 patent hadn鈥檛 been valid to begin with. The case in Paris, meanwhile, which covers Belgium, Germany, Britain, Austria, and Italy, has not yet been decided.听
Still, the victory in the Netherlands was mostly a symbolic win for the Ethiopians, since the country keeps a tight lid on teff exports. Until 2015, they were banned outright, and their status since has been murky.
Although Ethiopia produces the vast majority of the world鈥檚 teff, the country鈥檚 current production barely covers domestic needs, Dr. Gebretsadik says. And when a staple food becomes an international superfood, it can put a heavy strain on local supply, driving up prices. (This happened famously in Peru, the home of quinoa, in the early 2000s, though later studies showed , as initially feared.)
鈥淥ur first priority has to be our own people,鈥� he says. 鈥淚f you don鈥檛 have money in your pocket, how can you give anything to a beggar who comes asking?鈥�
Teff, indeed, provides consumed by Ethiopians, and . Just to continue meeting local demand, Dr. Gebretsadik says, the country鈥檚 supply needs to increase by 10% annually. To have enough to export, it needs to grow by at least 16%.
That鈥檚 a challenge for many reasons, not the least of which is teff鈥檚 puny size. The smallest grain in the world, a teff seed is about 1/100th the size of a kernel of wheat. Most sowing is done by hand 鈥� in part because teff slides through machines used for other grains 鈥� and most threshing is done by oxen. Overall, methods are little different from ones 3,000 years ago.
鈥淭he way teff is produced now is very tedious, much less efficient than other grains,鈥� says Dr. Gebretsadik. 鈥淏ut you cannot stop Ethiopians from growing this food. When the Derg [the dictatorial regime in Ethiopia in the 1970s and 鈥�80s] tried, they met hard resistance. People cannot live without this thing.鈥�
The Mama Fresh factory in Addis is proof of that laboriousness. Inside, massive vats of fermenting liquid 鈥� made from teff flour, yeast, and water听鈥� roil and bubble for several days until the mixture is tart and elastic. It is ladled onto vast griddles and cooked until the edges crisp. Then it is cooled and packed, ready to make its transatlantic journey. (Processed teff products like injera aren鈥檛 subject to the same export restrictions as the flour.)
鈥淭his country needs exports,鈥� says Mr. Hailu, Mama Fresh鈥檚 marketing manager. 鈥淩ight now European companies making teff products are getting it from places other than here, which is a strange thing to see.鈥�
But for Mr. Hailu, like most Ethiopians, teff is far more than a prospective export.
鈥淪haring food with injera, it鈥檚 an intimate experience. It鈥檚 a central part of our culture,鈥� he says. He points to the traditional practice of gursha, literally 鈥渕outhful鈥� in Amharic, where family or friends literally feed each other morsels of food wrapped in injera.
For Dr. Gebretsadik, too, the reasons to improve teff farming, or to fight for it in court, have little to do with making the grain accessible to foreigners in search of a health fix. Instead, it鈥檚 about the people to whom it owes its long history, wherever they are today.听
鈥淲hen I went to Russia to study many years ago, injera was the thing I was most homesick for,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he years became long without it.鈥�
