Clear your food conscience with tiger nuts! *spoiler alert* THEY ARE SUSTAINABLE!
Ok so I’ve only just been told about these fandangle new nuts people are talking about that are not actually nuts … and there is a lot of hoo-haa about them being sustainable but what does sustainable mean? Tell us more we hear you say! [please]
Let’s start with water, which can be quite the taboo topic when it comes to nuts and plant milk (that’s right almonds, I’m looking at you!). It can be common for the feature ingredient in dairy alternative milks to need a shit ton of water to grow, and do we even need to mention the water cows require?
Thankfully the ‘water footprint’ of growing tiger nuts is… drum roll… bloody LOW! It takes approximately 387L of water to grow 1kg of tiger nuts. To put that into context to produce 1kg of almonds it takes over 16,000L of water, to produce 1kg of oats it takes over 2,500L of water. Here are some other comparisons:
Another element of sustainability that is super important is the mark we leave behind on the soil when we are done with a crop. This depends largely on the types of fertilizers and pesticides used and how frequently the crop is planted and replanted and replanted… you get my drift.
We source tigers nuts that are certified organic from a farming collective in Burkina Faso, West Africa (read more about Mousso Faso here). The farming collective we source from do not use harmful pesticides and fertilizers. The crops are planted once a year before the rain season. There are no known harmful effects of farming tiger nuts where conscious farming practices around pesticide and fertilizer choices are in place.
Last cab off the rank when we are talking sustainability is the old CO2 emissions. The most comprehensive source of carbon emission data we have come across is Carbon Cloud. We are using Carbon Cloud as a way to understand the climate footprint of all of our individual products so we can be clear what our impact on the environment is and which parts or our ingredients or process are contributing to this. So here is a bit of a breakdown of the CO2e per kg of some similar products to tiger nuts:
So there you have it, tiger nuts are a sustainable food choice so crunch away or bake away or gulp and slurp away at our Madame Tiger products knowing you are making a good choice my friend. Peace out!
~
Some light reading we did to inform this article:
https://www.watercalculator.org/water-footprint-of-food-guide/
https://www.befresh.ca/blog-how-much-water/