Over half of all Zambians lack sufficient food to sustain a healthy life. Because maize, their principle staple, cannot tolerate drought, and because rainfall is erratic, Zambians regularly face food shortages. In this uncertain agricultural environment, cassava, a hardier crop, could help reduce food insecurity for some Zambians.

On a hot day in March, Steve Haggblade, IFPRI senior research fellow, led fifteen journalists to a cassava field near Lusaka, handed them hoes, and asked them to dig. Why turn journalists into farmers? To demonstrate the amazing yields of new cassava varieties, even in a drought year.

“Cassava is an ideal food security crop,” says Haggblade. “It is high-yielding and drought tolerant and doesn’t require fertilizer or seeds because farmers propagate it from plant cuttings. Plus, it’s the only food staple that farmers can harvest early in the rainy season, when hunger is most acute.”

To promote cassava production, a variety of government and voluntary agencies have established cassava nurseries that supply small-scale farmers with cuttings from high-yielding varieties.

Cassava may not be a silver bullet to Zambia’s complex food insecurity problems, but if poor farmers plant even small plots, they need never go hungry. The journalists, who harvested over 40 tons of cassava per hectare—compared to the 1.5 tons per hectare that maize farmers achieve in an average year—are already spreading the word.