Before potatoes dominated everyone’s diet, there was a much broader selection of yams and tubers.

From air potato (Dioscorea bulbifera), the high-producing starchy tapioca, taro, which grows well in the shade, the delicious sweet potato, whose leaves can also be consumed, to the more recently introduced jicama that can even be eaten raw, all of these tubers and Yams have unique nutritional and medicinal values, they grow at different times of the year and can be cooked in different ways.

What’s more, all these plants occupy different layers within the food forest, be it a carpet crop or a creeper climbing into the trees.

Diversity is the very essence of mother nature, to preserve our nutritional heritage, we have one responsibility, and that is to eat these traditional foods.