Maize and Grace: History, Corn, and Africa’s New Landscapes, 1500-1999
Author(s)
McCann, James
Abstract
Africa’s agrarian landscapes include two divergent responses to agrarian modernism, both of which reflect the impact of maize in the late twentieth century: one is a commercial maize landscape of uniform fields with an almost industrial order of crop rows, roads to markets, and the trappings of economic rationality. The other, by stark contrast, is a landscape of subsistence in which farmers cultivate small plots, distant from viable markets and dominated by maize. These economic and human landscapes of subsistence present to the eye Africa’s classic historical, irregular patchwork plots, but on closer examination now include high proportions of maize as a grain and a primary household food supply. Though they offer quick meals to fill the stomach, fields of maize are increasingly dependent on the vagaries of rainfall and local markets. The old Bemba man who lamented the lack of real food among Europeans probably could not foresee the irony of his children’s, grandchildren’s, and great-grandchildren’s diets. The varieties of food, labor, and crop diversity than he imagined or remembered were already in his lifetime changing into a landscape of uniformity, and a new industrial poverty. Africa may well be experiencing a maize revolution that will sustain its expanding cities and reward rural entrepreneurs. But in exchanging its gardens for industrial fields, it will also be trading diversity for monotony and resilience for vulnerability.
