# Twenty million Ethiopians eat this crop every day. Almost nobody outside Ethiopia grows it. > Enset is called the tree against hunger. Fifteen plants feed one person for a year, farmers plant more of it after droughts, and researchers think it could feed 100 million more people. It grows almost nowhere else. - **Publisher:** VOTVS (Fair coverage for everyone) — https://votvs.com - **Author:** VOTVS - **Published:** 2026-08-19 - **Language:** en - **Topic:** Foodways - **Canonical URL:** https://votvs.com/ar/articles/enset-ethiopia-false-banana - **Tags:** food, ethiopia, agriculture, climate - **Facts last verified:** 19 August 2026 --- There is a crop that feeds more than twenty million people, survives droughts that kill cereals, can be harvested in any month of the year, and is grown as food in exactly one country. It is called enset. Outside Ethiopia, almost no one has heard of it. ## What it is, and what you actually eat *Ensete ventricosum* looks like a banana plant and is related to one. It is often called the false banana, which is a slightly unfair name, because the fruit is the one part of it nobody eats. The food is underground and inside the trunk. The starchy pseudostem and the corm are scraped out, packed into a pit, and fermented — for weeks, sometimes months. What comes out is **kocho**, a dense flatbread, and **bulla**, a finer starch used for porridge. According to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, **as few as 15 plants can feed one person for a year**. **Figure (StatRow):** Enset in Ethiopia — Figures from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, November 2022, and the Environmental Research Letters study reported January 2022. ## Why it holds when other crops fail Most staple crops depend on one season: you plant, the rains come or they do not, and the harvest is whatever the weather allowed. Enset grows for several years and can be harvested at almost any point in that window. A household with a stand of enset has a store rather than a harvest date. That is where the nickname comes from. Enset is sometimes called **the tree against hunger**. A study published in *Plants People Planet* in November 2022, by researchers at Kew, the Natural Resources Institute at Greenwich, the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, and Hawassa University in Ethiopia, found that **Ethiopian smallholders plant more enset in the period directly after a severe drought**. ## The part that is strange Enset is present in parts of east and central Africa. It is cultivated as a food crop in Ethiopia and essentially nowhere else. A study published in *Environmental Research Letters* modelled where else it could grow. The potential range covered parts of **Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda** — and the authors estimated it could feed **more than 100 million additional people over the next four decades**. That is a modelled figure, not a harvest. Models of crop range are estimates built on climate and soil suitability, and a crop that suits a region agronomically can still fail to arrive there — because nobody grows it, nobody sells the seedlings, nobody knows the fermentation process, and nobody has eaten it before. The barrier is not agronomic. Most agricultural research money goes to a small number of crops, and enset has never been one of them. ## Questions people ask ### What is enset? Ensete ventricosum, often called the false banana. It looks like a banana plant but the fruit is not eaten. The food comes from the starchy pseudostem and underground corm, which are scraped, fermented for weeks or months, and made into a bread called kocho or a porridge called bulla. ### How many people depend on enset? More than 20 million people in Ethiopia, according to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. As few as 15 plants can feed one person for a year. ### Why is enset called the tree against hunger? It can be harvested at any point across several years rather than at one fixed season, and it stores well after fermentation. That makes it a buffer when annual cereal harvests fail — which is also why researchers found Ethiopian farmers plant more of it in the years right after a severe drought. ### Could enset be grown elsewhere? A study in Environmental Research Letters modelled a potential range covering parts of Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, and estimated the crop could feed more than 100 million additional people over the next four decades. It is currently cultivated as a food crop only in Ethiopia. ## Sources - Ethiopian crop enset identified as 'climate coping strategy' in drought-prone regions — Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 24 November 2022. https://www.kew.org/about-us/press-media/enset-climate-coping - Banana-like crop could feed more than 100 million people, study finds — CTV News, reporting the study in Environmental Research Letters, January 2022. https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-environment/banana-like-crop-could-feed-more-than-100-million-people-study-finds-1.5749588 - Modelling potential range expansion of an underutilised food security crop in Sub-Saharan Africa — Environmental Research Letters, 2022. https://research.bangor.ac.uk/en/publications/modelling-potential-range-expansion-of-an-underutilised-food-secu/ - False banana: the potential of Ethiopia's enset to address food insecurity in the face of climate change? — Emergency Nutrition Network (Field Exchange). https://www.ennonline.net/fex/67/en/false-banana-potential-ethiopias-enset-address-food-insecurity-face-climate-change --- Published by VOTVS. 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