i Parkia biglobosa - School of Forest Resources & Environmental ...

Chapter 7 Results and Discussion
In discussing the results, I must first acknowledge when I began the study I had a
bias against replacements, soybean or commercial, to traditional dawadawa. I believed
that a traditional method using local resources would be favorable and beneficial for the
local economy. For sustainability, a locally produced food product is preferable to a
commercial product. I found traditional processing used a great deal of wood to produce
dawadawa. In fact, the net loss of local resources may be greater maintaining the
traditional dawadawa processing over the adoption of the soybean substitute. The
following section will discuss the results from the market surveys and observations of
soybeans as a resource for dawadawa preparation.
Soybeans in Kandiga Market
During my research on P. biglobosa, I discovered a Ghanian manufacturer,
Royco, produced bouillon soup cubes flavored with dawadawa selling in the market. I
contemplated what effect the manufactured substitute would have on locally produced
dawadawa. My hypothesis was that traditional dawadawa would eventually be replaced
by the manufactured substitute.
Deforestation, degradation, and low productivity threaten the semi-arid region of
Africa (Awodola 1995, Bakang and Garforth 1998, Kranjac-Berisavljevic 1999). I
assumed if the population of P. biglobosa continues to decrease with no active
management, the non-timber forest products would soon become unavailable. As a
result, local women would lose income from their cottage industry of dawadawa
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