April 9, 2015 — Without any effort at all, Hawa Saidi Ibura crushes dried beans, one at a time, between her fingers outside her home in Endagaw, a village in northern Tanzania. She’s holding a basket of a type of red bean eaten all over East Africa, but these beans are skeletons of what they once were. She harvested them from her farm less than a year ago, but insects have since ravaged her storage room — eating the nutrition out of the beans and out of her corn, too. Although the insects likely don’t contaminate the beans, meaning there’s no health hazard in eating them, the remains are not the most desirable or nutritious food, and farmers like Ibura would much prefer to buy new beans — an option many can’t afford. So this is the crop she’s left with until the next harvest, months away. Read more