Refugee farmers in the Lutheran Services of Iowa (LSI) Global Greens gardening program gather outside the Polk County Health Department in Des Moines each Saturday for their International Market. There, they offer visitors an array of produce grown from their own gardens and originating from their own countries.
Farmers can be seen with bags and bins full of multicultural goods as they set up their displays for visitors.
There’s one vegetable that shows up frequently in many of the farmers’ gardens, fridges and market displays, and in August, Iowans were invited to learn about it at one of the markets. It’s called lenga lenga, and it’s a leafy amaranth green vegetable that’s commonly grown in central and eastern Africa.
Global Greens farmer Veronica Ramazi, who immigrated from Africa, was at the special market, dubbed the Lenga Lenga Festival.
Ramazi said everyone eats lenga lenga in Africa, but everybody prepares it differently. She said her recipes are simple.
“I take onion, small onion, and tomato. I put it in there and then I put some more oil and that’s it. That’s how I cook my lenga lenga,” she said. “The other way I cook lenga lenga, if I want an easy way and I don’t want to put oil, I can just put water. I wash my lenga lenga and put it in there and I put some more onion and tomato and salt — that’s it.”
Other farmers at the market explained that Iowans should learn about lenga lenga because of its health benefits.
It has a nutty taste, and its leaves and texture are similar to kale or spinach, but it's packed with even more nutrients, according to LSI. Lenga lenga has 50% more protein than spinach, and it's high in calcium and potassium — minerals that promote bone and heart health.
Farmers said there’s a whole community of people from Africa in Iowa, and lenga lenga is a staple for them. But most people still aren’t familiar with it.
Ramazi said it’s her favorite vegetable to grow.
“That’s my favorite because it’s very easy, and also my family members, they like lenga lenga,” she said.
Global Greens Market Supervisor Natalie Estrem said even farmers who aren’t from Africa grow it in the program because it grows quickly and sells well at the International Market.
“It’s one of our biggest cash crops," she said. "It's one of our highest selling crops here for some of the international customers."
But Estrem said most people who purchase lenga lenga at the markets are from African communities, and Global Greens wanted to expand the leafy vegetable's popularity with other groups.
LSI received a specialty crop block grant from the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, which allowed the organization to highlight lenga lenga at the market. The Lenga Lenga Festival functioned as a typical international market, except visitors got to take home growing guides and sample homemade African recipes with lenga lenga, like sambusas and saka saka stew.
Estrem said lenga lenga can be found primarily at Global Greens’ International Market on Saturdays, which runs from May until the end of October.
The Global Greens program connects refugee farmers with land and teaches them how to successfully run a farming business and sell their produce in the U.S. The program’s International Market allows farmers to sell and introduce cultural produce, like lenga lenga, to people in Iowa.
When the program isn’t holding markets, farmers say they stock large freezers full of lenga lenga that last them all winter. Estrem said it's similar to how many Iowans stock up on a local favorite.
"If you moved to Africa and somebody told you there was perfect Iowa sweet corn, you’d be like, ‘That tastes like home, I miss that, I want to eat that,’” she explained. “Lenga lenga is very much the same to them, where it tastes like their home, it reminds them of their home countries, their home cultures.”
