Maize Quotes

Kindness Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.

For years now I've kind of operated under an informal shopping cycle. A bit like a farmer's crop rotation system. Except, instead of wheat, maize, barley, and fallow, mine pretty much goes clothes, makeup shoes, and clothes (I don't bother with fallow). Shopping is actually very similar to farming a field. You can't keep buying the same thing, you have to have a bit of variety. Otherwise you get bored and stop enjoying yourself.

...condemning Nyasha to whoredom, making her a victim of her femaleness, just as I had felt victimised at home in the days when Nhamo went to school and I grew my maize. The victimisation, I saw, was universal. It didn't depend on poverty, on lack of education or on tradition. It didn't depend on any of the things I had thought it depended on. Men took it everywhere with them. Even heroes like Babamukuru did it. And that was the problem. You had to admit Nyasha had no tact. You had to admit she was altogether too volatile and strong-willed. You couldn't ignore the fact that she had no respect for Babamukuru when she ought to have had lots of it. But what I didn't like was the way that all conflicts came back to the question of femaleness. Femaleness as opposed and inferior to maleness.

Silence and twilight fell over the garden. Far away the sea was lapping gently and monotonously on the bar. The wind of evening in the poplars sounded like some sad, weird old rune-some broken dream of old memories. A slender, shapely young aspen rose up before them against the fine maize and emerald and paling rose of the western sky, which brought out every leaf and twig in dark, tremulous, elfin loveliness.

I didn't have a drill, so I had to make my own. First I heated a long nail in the fire, then drove it through a half a maize cob, creating a handle. I placed the nail back on the coals until it became red hot, then used it to bore holes into both sets of plastic blades.

I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize flour which they said was "mamaliga", and egg-plant stuffed with forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call "impletata". (Mem.,get recipe for this also.)

Es tevi gribu Cik labi, ar tevi var neizlikties, Es tikai ar tevi gribu tikties, Es gribu, lai tikai tu manī skaties, - Kad tu manī skaties, es esmu patiess. Kad tu manī skaties, es esmu patiess, Mūsu dzīvē vēl simtiem vilcienu aties Un tūkstošiem jūdžu būs jāiet vēl kājām Un varbūt bez ūdens, bez sāls un bez mājām. Bez ceļa, bez ūdens, bez sāls un bez mājām Man liekas, mēs tūkstošiem jūdžu jau gājām. Tavs skatiens bij traks, un tavs skatiens bij prātīgs, Tavs augums kā rudzu maize bij sātīgs. Tavs augums kā rudzu maize ir sātīgs, Ta zeme, ko min tavas kājas, man patiks, Pat sviedriem un asinīm saindēta Tā zeme, ko min tavas kājas, būs svēta. Šī zeme, ko min tavas kājas būs svēta. Balti ķirši un sarkanas rozes zied sētā. Kā laiku un telpu, un bezgalību Es tevi gribu.

This discrepancy between evolutionary success and individual suffering is perhaps the most important lesson we can draw from the Agricultural Revolution. When we study the narrative of plants such as wheat and maize, maybe the purely evolutionary perspective makes sense. Yet in the case of animals such as cattle, sheep and Sapiens, each with a complex world of sensations and emotions, we have to consider how evolutionary success translates into individual experience.

I am light now, or on the side of light—: light-head, light-trophied. Light-wracked and light-gone. The sweet maize in fluorescence—: an eruption of light, or its feast, from the stalk of my lover’s throat. And I, light-eater, light-loving.

In prison there's no bad, everything's worse. Worse bellyache, worse misery, worse sadness--the worst of the worst. Jailers and judges seem like people without reason, deranged. Compliance with rules and regulations which have nothing to do with reality turns them into madmen, at least they seem such to those not under the strange influence of the law.

However life treats you, as time goes by you always get the feeling you've lost life in the very living of it.

Maize had an equivalent impact on much of the rest of the world after Columbus introduced it to Europe. Central Europeans became especially hooked on it; by the nineteenth century, maize was the daily bread of Serbia, Rumania, and Moldavia. So

Down in the valleys women scratch the soil that is left, and the maize hardly reaches the height if a man. They are valleys of old men and old women, of mothers and children. The men are away, the young men and the girls are away, the soil cannot keep them any more.

Suddenly, I get this giddy desire to shock these guys a little. I continue, “These baboons really are our relatives. In fact, this baboon is my cousin.” And with that I lean over and give Daniel a loud messy kiss on his big ol’ nose. I get more of a response than I bargained for. The Masai freak and suddenly, they are waving their spears real close to my face, like they mean it. One is yelling, “He is not your cousin, he is not your cousin! A baboon cannot even cook ugali!” (Ugali is the ubiquitous and repulsive maize meal that everyone eats here. I almost respond that I don’t really know how to cook the stuff either, but decide to show some prudence at last.) “He is not your cousin!

In a maize field choose to be a flower. In a garden of daises choose to be a rose.

We are stuck in the maize that we created. Most people keep complaining about being stuck rather than finding the way out, and they call themselves unlucky!

process. It’s as beneficial, on its own level, as the hybridization of different strains of maize or chickens.

New World escape crops made the economics of escape as tempting as its politics. Colonial officials tended to stigmatize cassava and maize as crops of lazy natives whose main aim was to shirk work. In the New World, too, those whose job it was to drive the population into wage labor or onto the plantation deplored crops that allowed a free peasantry to maintain its autonomy. Hacienda owners in Central America claimed that with cassava, all a peasant needed was a shotgun and a fishhook and he would cease to work regularly for wages.

From the railway station far away the sharp clang of a bell...In half an hour the train starts, and there is so much still to say that has been left unsaid...The mothers, fearful and fussy, look for their sons in among the crowd like hens in search of their chicks; their wizened faces are hard and wrinkled like winter apples, they carry huge baskets on their arms, over-filled with the last delicacies which their fond, toil-worn hands will prepare for the beloved son for the next three years:--a piece of smoked bacon, a loaf of rye bread, a cake of maize-flour. The gypsies have struck up a melancholy Magyar folksong: the crowd breaks up in isolated groups, mothers and father with their sons whisper in the dark corners of the bran. The father who did his service thirty years ago gives sundry good advice—no rebellion, quiet obedience, no use complaining or grumbling, the three years are quickly over. The mother begs her darling not to give way to drink, and not to get entangled with one of the hussies in the towns; women and wine, the two besetting temptations that assail the Magyar peasant—let the darling boy resist both for his sorrowing mother’s sake.

Maize is just another word for white corn, and by the end of this story, you won't believe how much you know about corn.

these sacrifices sustained the cosmic cycle: Maize became blood, and blood was then transformed back into maize. Sacrificial victims were referred to as “tortillas for the gods.

A Swedish minister having assembled the chiefs of the Susquehanna Indians, made a sermon to them, acquainting them with the principal historical facts on which our religion is founded — such as the fall of our first parents by eating an apple, the coming of Christ to repair the mischief, his miracles and suffering, etc. When he had finished an Indian orator stood up to thank him. ‘What you have told us,’ says he, ‘is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat apples. It is better to make them all into cider. We are much obliged by your kindness in coming so far to tell us those things which you have heard from your mothers. In return, I will tell you some of those we have heard from ours. ‘In the beginning, our fathers had only the flesh of animals to subsist on, and if their hunting was unsuccessful they were starving. Two of our young hunters, having killed a deer, made a fire in the woods to boil some parts of it. When they were about to satisfy their hunger, they beheld a beautiful young woman descend from the clouds and seat herself on that hill which you see yonder among the Blue Mountains. ‘They said to each other, “It is a spirit that perhaps has smelt our broiling venison and wishes to eat of it; let us offer some to her.” They presented her with the tongue; she was pleased with the taste of it and said: “Your kindness shall be rewarded; come to this place after thirteen moons, and you will find something that will be of great benefit in nourishing you and your children to the latest generations.” They did so, and to their surprise found plants they had never seen before, but which from that ancient time have been constantly cultivated among us to our great advantage. Where her right hand had touched the ground they found maize; where her left had touched it they found kidney-beans; and where her backside had sat on it they found tobacco.’ The good missionary, disgusted with this idle tale, said: ‘What I delivered to you were sacred truths; but what you tell me is mere fable, fiction, and falsehood.’ The Indian, offended, replied: ‘My brother, it seems your friends have not done you justice in your education; they have not well instructed you in the rules of common civility. You saw that we, who understand and practise those rules, believed all your stories; why do you refuse to believe ours?

The fictitious characters in the books run beside your horse on the farm, and walk about in the maize-fields. On their own, like intelligent soldiers, they find at once the quarters that suit them.

Mesoamerica would deserve its place in the human pantheon if its inhabitants had only created maize, in terms of harvest weight the world’s most important crop. But the inhabitants of Mexico and northern Central America also developed tomatoes, now basic to Italian cuisine; peppers, essential to Thai and Indian food; all the world’s squashes (except for a few domesticated in the United States); and many of the beans on dinner plates around the world. One writer has estimated that Indians developed three-fifths of the crops now in cultivation, most of them in Mesoamerica. Having secured their food supply, Mesoamerican societies turned to intellectual pursuits. In a millennium or less, a comparatively short time, they invented their own writing, astronomy, and mathematics, including the zero.

. . . what seems to be an isolated patch of blue mist floats lightly on the glare of the horizon. This is the peninsula of Azuera, a wild chaos of sharp rocks and stony levels cut about by vertical ravines. It lies far out to sea like a rough head of stone stretched from a green-clad coast at the end of a slender neck of sand covered with thickets of thorny scrub. Utterly waterless, for the rainfall runs off at once on all sides into the sea, it has not soil enough—it is said—to grow a single blade of grass, as if it were blighted by a curse. The poor, associating by an obscure instinct of consolation the ideas of evil and wealth, will tell you that it is deadly because of its forbidden treasures. The common folk of the neighbourhood, peons of the estancias, vaqueros of the seaboard plains, tame Indians coming miles to market with a bundle of sugar-cane or a basket of maize worth about threepence, are well aware that heaps of shining gold lie in the gloom of the deep precipices cleaving the stony levels of Azuera. Tradition has it that many adventurers of olden time had perished in the search.

Today is Thanksgiving, and an icicle breeze nips at your window and whips up the leaves. Ah, what a morning! The cold autumn haze brings visions of Pilgrims and Indians…and maize! So wrap in a blanket and don your warm socks and pretend you’re descending an old Plymouth rock.

With the money my mother earned from selling cakes, my father cut a deal with Mangochi and bought one pail of maize. My mother took it to the mill, saved half the flour for us, and used the rest for more cakes. We did this every day, taking enough to eat and selling the rest. It was enough to provide our one blob of nsima each night, along with some pumpkin leaves. It was practically nothing, yet knowing it would be there somehow made the hunger less painful. "As long as we can stay in business," my father said, "we'll make it through. Our profit is that we live.

La sopa de tortilla, aromatizada con yerbas frescas de la huerta, el frito de plátanos, carne desmenuzada y roscas de harina de maiz, el excelente chocolate de la tierra, el queso de piedra, el pan de leche, y el agua servida en antiguos y grandes jarros de plata, no dejaron que desear.

That’s life in a refugee camp: You’re not moving toward anything. You’re just in a horrible groove. You learn skills that you wish you did not know: how to make a fire, how to cook maize, how to do laundry in the river and burn the lice on the rocks. You wait, hoping the trucks will bring something other than corn and beans. But nothing gets better. There is no path for improvement—no effort you can make, nothing you can do, and nothing anybody else can do for you either, short of the killers in your country laying down their arms and stopping their war so that you can move home.

When we study the narrative of plants such as wheat and maize, maybe the purely evolutionary perspective makes sense. Yet in the case of animals such as cattle, sheep and Sapiens, each with a complex world of sensations and emotions, we have to consider how evolutionary success translates into individual experience.

Ir saule, debesis, Un maize abrā rūgst. Un bērni dzimst - Nekā jau nepietrūkst. Bet skaidri jūti, Pirmais sniegs kad snieg, Ka nepietrūkst, Bet arī nepietiek. Jo tas, kas dabūts, It nekur nav liekams, Un tas, kas liekams, Ir tik nepietiekams. Un tad, kad zvaigzne krīt, Tā it kā iekož: Viss nepaliekošs ir Un nepietiekošs.

Until Columbus, Indians were a keystone species in most of the hemisphere. Annually burning undergrowth, clearing and replanting forests, building canals and raising fields, hunting bison and netting salmon, growing maize, manioc, and the Eastern Agricultural Complex, Native Americans had been managing their environment for thousands of years.

Even today, with all our advanced technologies, more than 90 per cent of the calories that feed humanity come from the handful of plants that our ancestors domesticated between 9500 and 3500 BC – wheat, rice, maize (called ‘corn’ in the US), potatoes, millet and barley. No noteworthy plant or animal has been domesticated in the last 2,000 years.

Jim Beam is made with rye, barley and a while 75 per cent of maize which gives bourbon the sweet, round taste that marks it out from straight whisky. The water in Jim Beam comes from a source near the distillery in Clermont, Kentucky, where they also make the special yeast that some people maintain is taken from the same recipe Jacob Bean used in 1795.

Redzi, ja tu pieradināsi suni rīt kartupeļus un pēc tam noliksi tam priekšā gaļu, tas tik un tā grābs ciet gaļu, tāpēc ka tāda ir suņa daba. Un, ja tu dosi cilvēkam kaut drusciņ varas, ar viņu būs tāpat, viņš grābs to ciet. Tas ir dabiski, jo cilvēks ir un paliek divkājains lopiņš, un tas mazumiņš godprātības arī viņam klāj tikai virspusi – kā maizes šķēli klāj plāna tauku kārtiņa.

That day, he realized to his surprise, there was time. That day, the war, by taking his maize in a 100 percent tax, had taken away his planned work. However, it had left him time. It had left him with a rare day when his hands were empty, with no maize to protect, no goods to deliver. He would stop grumbling, then. That day, he would not waste any more time on the war or the reform. Or on the lost maize.

For obvious reasons its farmers did not relish the prospect of buffalo herds trampling through their fields. Nor did they want deer, moose, or passenger pigeons eating the maize. They hunted them until they were scarce around their homes. At the same time, they tried to encourage these species to grow in number farther away, where they would be useful. “The net result was to keep that kind of animal at arm’s length,

Walking along the streets, you could quickly ascertain the wealth and position of every family by the size and quality of their turf. There is no surer sign that something is wrong at the Joneses’ than a neglected lawn in the front yard. Grass is nowadays the most widespread crop in the USA after maize and wheat, and the lawn industry (plants, manure, mowers, sprinklers, gardeners) accounts for billions of dollars every year.

Even today, with all our advanced technologies, more than 90 per cent of the calories that feed humanity come from the handful of plants that our ancestors domesticated between 9500 and 3500 BC – wheat, rice, maize (called ‘corn’ in the US), potatoes, millet and barley. No noteworthy plant or animal has been domesticated in the last 2,000 years. If our minds are those of hunter-gatherers, our cuisine is that of ancient farmers.

Because they did not burn the land with the same skill and frequency as its previous occupants, the forests grew thicker. Left untended, maize fields filled in with weeds, then bushes and trees. My ancestor Billington’s great-grandchildren may not have realized it, but the impenetrable sweep of dark forest admired by Thoreau was something that Billington never saw. Later, of course, Europeans stripped New England almost bare of trees.

This, no doubt, was the call 33 had heard. Bored with his balanced diet of maize and maple peas, tired of the pecking order of the loft and the predictability of each day — the bird had wanted out; wanted up and away. A day of high life; of food that had to be chased a little, and tasted all the better for that; of the companionship of wild things. All this went through Cal’s head, in a vague sort of way, while he watched the circling flocks.

Moreno, Morelos, Cantine, Gomez, Gutierrez, Villanousul, Ureta, Licon, Navarro, Iturbi; Jorge, Filomena, Nena, Manuel, Jose, Tomas, Ramona. This man walked and this man sang and this man had three wives; and this man died of this, and that of that, and the third from another thing, and the fourth was shot, and the fifth was stabbed and the sixth fell straight down dead; and the seventh drank deep and died dead, and the eighth died in love, and the ninth fell from him horse, and the tenth coughed blood, and the eleventh stopped his heart, and the twelfth used to laugh much, and the thirteenth was a dancing one, and the fourteenth was most beautiful of all, the fifteenth had ten children and the sixteenth is one of those children as is the seventeenth; and the eighteenth was Tomas and did well with his guitar; the next three cut maize in their fields, had three lovers each; the twenty-second was never loved; the twenty-third sold tortillas, patting and shaping them each at the curb before the Opera House with her little charcoal stove; and the twenty-fourth beat his wife and now she walks proudly in the town and is merry with new men and here he stands bewildered by this unfair thing, and the twenty-fifth drank several quarts of river with his lungs and was pulled forth in a net, and the twenty-sixth was a great thinker and his brain now sleeps like a burnt plum in his skull.

Populations eating a remarkably wide range of traditional diets generally don't suffer from these chronic diseases. These diets run the gamut from ones very high in fat (the Inuit in Greenland subsist largely on seal blubber) to ones high in carbohydrate (Central American Indians subsist largely on maize and beans) to ones very high in protein (Masai tribesmen in Africa subsist chiefly on cattle blood, meat and milk), to cite three rather extreme examples. But much the same holds true for more mixed traditional diets. What this suggests is that there is no single ideal human diet but that the human omnivore is exquisitely adapted to a wide range of different foods and a variety of different diets. Except, that is, for one: the relatively new (in evolutionary terms) Western diet that that most of us now are eating. What an extraordinary achievement for a civilization: to have developed the one diet that reliably makes its people sick!

Most dictionaries define tree as a large, perennial, single-trunked, woody plant. This is misleading, for a palm tree contains no wood. Botanists themselves do not bother to distinguish trees from nontrees. Instead, they divide plants into more precise categories, such as angiosperms (flowering plants) and gymnosperms (nonflowering). Angiosperms comprise two diagnostic types, monocots and dicots. Monocots, including palms, are less complex than dicots. They develop from a single embryonic leaf, have basic flowers and no secondary growth (wood). The rootstock is adventitious, meaning that the underground shoots develop independently; the tree has no radicle, or primary root. The simplicity of monocots enhances their agricultural tility. As crops, they supply us with essential carbohydrates—think bananas, yuccas, and edible grasses (rice, wheat, maize, cane). From a botanist’s point of view, a palm is not so different from a giant stalk of grass.

The first person whom she introduced him to, at that island of fauteuils and androids, now getting up from around a low table with a copper ashbowl for hub, was the promised belle-sœur, a short plumpish lady in governess gray, very oval-faced, with bobbed auburn hair, a sallowish complexion, smoke-blue unsmiling eyes, and a fleshy little excrescence, resembling a ripe maize kernel, at the side of one nostril, added to its hypercritical curve by an afterthought of nature as not seldom happens when a Russian’s face is mass-produced.

Mesoamerica would deserve its place in the human pantheon if its inhabitants had only created maize, in terms of harvest weight the world’s most important crop. But the inhabitants of Mexico and northern Central America also developed tomatoes, now basic to Italian cuisine; peppers, essential to Thai and Indian food; all the world’s squashes (except for a few domesticated in the United States); and many of the beans on dinner plates around the world. One writer has estimated that Indians developed three-fifths of the crops now in cultivation, most of them in Mesoamerica.

And they shall offer thanks to the earth where all people dwell — To the streams of water, the pools, the springs, and the lakes; to the maize and the fruits — To the medicinal herbs and the trees, to the forest trees for their usefulness, to the animals that serve as food and who offer their pelts as clothing — To the great winds and the lesser winds; to the Thunderers; and the Sun, the mighty warrior; to the moon — To the messengers of the Great Spirit who dwells in the skies above, who gives all things useful to men, who is the source and the ruler of health and life.

The numerical success of the calf’s species is little consolation for the suffering the individual endures. This discrepancy between evolutionary success and individual suffering is perhaps the most important lesson we can draw from the Agricultural Revolution. When we study the narrative of plants such as wheat and maize, maybe the purely evolutionary perspective makes sense. Yet in the case of animals such as cattle, sheep and Sapiens, each with a complex world of sensations and emotions, we have to consider how evolutionary success translates into individual experience.

How could a very thin woman do all the things that women needed to do: to carry children on their backs, to pound maize into flour out at the lands or the cattle post, to cart around the things of the household—the pots and pans and buckets of water? And how could a thin woman comfort a man? It would be very awkward for a man to share his bed with a person who was all angles and bone, whereas a traditionally built lady would be like an extra pillow on which a man coming home tired from his work might rest his weary head. To do all that you needed a bit of bulk, and thin people simply did not have that.

This discrepancy between evolutionary success and individual suffering is perhaps the most important lesson we can draw from the Agricultural Revolution. When we study the narrative of plants such as wheat and maize, maybe the purely evolutionary perspective makes sense. Yet in the case of animals such as cattle, sheep and Sapiens, each with a complex world of sensations and emotions, we have to consider how evolutionary success translates into individual experience. In the following chapters we will see time and again how a dramatic increase in the collective power and ostensible success of our species went hand in hand with much individual suffering.

deeply into pile carpeting that threatens to swallow us whole. A burnished steel FTW logo stretches across the wall with the tagline Feeding the World just below it. Black-and-white photos of basic foodstuffs dot the walls—bushels of maize and soybeans, fields of grain. Feeding the world, my ass, I think as we’re shuttled toward a meeting room. I’ve done some reading up on these folks. FTW is a commodity-trading firm that works to manipulate the futures market to drive up prices. There seems to be nothing that the world’s bankers believe they shouldn’t be free to exploit, including food staples. I imagine that in their perfect world, bankers would pocket a penny or two with every bite.

The eyelashes droop a little in the dark, ageless, vulnerable faces. The drum is a heart beating with insistent thuds. And the spirits of the men go out on the ether, vibrating in waves from the hot, dark, intentional blood, seeking the creative presence that hovers for ever in the ether, seeking the identification, following on down the mysterious rhythms of the creative pulse, on and on into the germinating quick of the maize that lies under the ground, there, with the throbbing, pulsing, clapping rhythm that comes from the dark, creative blood in man, to stimulate the tremulous, pulsating protoplasm in the seed-germ, till it throws forth its rhythms of creative energy into rising blades of leaf and stem.

Decimated but stubborn, they were among those who chose a fugitive life rather than Oklahoma. The illness that swept them now was reminiscent of the one that had killed half their number two hundred years earlier. In between that calamity and this, they had visited George III in London, published a newspaper, made baskets, led Oglethorpe through forests, helped Andrew Jackson fight Creek, cooked maize, drawn up a constitution, petitioned the King of Spain, been experimented on by Dartmouth, established asylums, wrote their language, resisted settlers, shot bear and translated scripture. All to no avail. The forced move to the Arkansas River, insisted upon by the same president they fought for against the Creek, destroyed another quarter of their already shattered number.

Because the scientific understanding of manic-depressive illness is so ultimately beholden to the field of molecular biology, it is a world in which I have spent an increasing amount of time. It is an exotic world, one developed around an odd assortment of plants and animals—maize, fruit flies, yeast, worms, mice, humans, puffer fish—and it contains a somewhat strange, rapidly evolving, and occasionally quite poetic language system filled with marvelous terms like “orphan clones,” “plasmids,” and “high-density cosmids”; “triple helices,” “untethered DNA,” and “kamikaze reagents”; “chromosome walking,” “gene hunters,” and “gene mappers.” It is a field clearly in pursuit of the most fundamental of understandings, a search for the biological equivalent of quarks and leptons.

She was proud of her build, which was in accordance with the old Botswana ideas of beauty, and she would not pander to the modern idea of slenderness. That was an importation from elsewhere, and it was simply wrong. How could a very thin woman do all the things that women needed to do: to carry children on their backs, to pound maize into flour out at the lands or the cattle post, to cart around the things of the household—the pots and pans and buckets of water? And how could a thin woman comfort a man? It would be very awkward for a man to share his bed with a person who was all angles and bone, whereas a traditionally built lady would be like an extra pillow on which a man coming home tired from his work might rest his weary head. To do all that you needed a bit of bulk, and thin people simply did not have that.

The transition to agriculture began around 9500–8500 BC in the hill country of south-eastern Turkey, western Iran, and the Levant. It began slowly and in a restricted geographical area. Wheat and goats were domesticated by approximately 9000 BC; peas and lentils around 8000 BC; olive trees by 5000 BC; horses by 4000 BC; and grapevines in 3500 BC. Some animals and plants, such as camels and cashew nuts, were domesticated even later, but by 3500 BC the main wave of domestication was over. Even today, with all our advanced technologies, more than 90 per cent of the calories that feed humanity come from the handful of plants that our ancestors domesticated between 9500 and 3500 BC – wheat, rice, maize (called ‘corn’ in the US), potatoes, millet and barley. No noteworthy plant or animal has been domesticated in the last 2,000 years.

The transition to agriculture began around 9500–8500 BC in the hill country of south-eastern Turkey, western Iran and the Levant. It began slowly and in a restricted geographical area. Wheat and goats were domesticated by approximately 9000 BC; peas and lentils around 8000 BC; olive trees by 5000 BC; horses by 4000 BC; and grapevines in 3500 BC. Some animals and plants, such as camels and cashew nuts, were domesticated even later, but by 3500 BC the main wave of domestication was over. Even today, with all our advanced technologies, more than 90 per cent of the calories that feed humanity come from the handful of plants that our ancestors domesticated between 9500 and 3500 BC – wheat, rice, maize (called ‘corn’ in the US), potatoes, millet and barley. No noteworthy plant or animal has been domesticated in the last 2,000 years. If our minds are those of hunter-gatherers, our cuisine is that of ancient farmers. Scholars

Ah, Jerry. All my ideas are the same old scam: the bigger the fib, the bigger they bite. The first shamans around the fire were in on it – they knew growing maize along the Euphrates was for mugs. Tell people that reality is exactly what it appears to be, they’ll nail you to a lump of wood. But tell ’em they can go spirit-walking while they commute, tell ’em their best friend is a lump of crystal, tell ’em the government has been negotiating with little green men for the last fifty years, then every Joe Six-Pack from Brooklyn to Peoria sits up and listens. Disbelieving the reality under your feet gives you a licence to print your own. All it takes is an original twist – an artificial intelligence, created by the military to invade and take over the enemy’s computer and weapons systems, has broken loose and is controlling the whole planet with a chilling agenda of its own – and Joe Six-Pack hands you his credits cards, and says “Tell me more . . .

—You know, I’m no patriot, but I love my countrymen. A country, a fatherland, there’s something abstract about that. But a countryman is something concrete. I can’t possibly love every wheat and maize field, every pine forest, every swamp, every Polish lady and gentleman, but show me one field, one copse, one swamp, one individual, well, 'à la bonheur'! That’s something I can see and understand, that speaks to me in a language I am familiar with, that — because of its singularity — can be dear to me. And beyond that, there are persons I term my countrymen, even if they happen to have been born in China or Persia or Africa. Some are dear to me from the moment I first clap eyes on them. A true ‘countryman is immediately identifiable. And if he happens to be someone from my own patch as well, then, as I say, 'à la bonheur'! But there’s an element of chance there, the other is simple providence. He raised his glass, and called out: —Here’s to my countrymen, wherever they happen to hail from!

Most of the garden was devoted to the usual things- lettuces, onions, cabbage, and eggplant- ordinary ingredients for good, honest meals. But then there were the chef's other plants, the ones that made the cooks cross themselves and kiss their thumbnails whenever they were forced to handle them. Take love apples, to start with. Their poisonous reputation was as well known as that of hemlock, and the cooks protested loudly the day the chef put in his seedlings. What if their roots contaminated the onions? What if their fumes caused swoons or fits? What if the odd, tangy smell of their leaves attracted disgruntled ghosts from the nearby dungeons? It took repeated assurances, the installation of a wire enclosure, and the fact that nothing catastrophic followed their planting to keep the staff from uprooting the love apples behind the chef's back. Even so, one cook quit, and another developed a twitchy eye and started nipping at the cooking sherry. After the love apples, the chef put in beans- another rarity from the New World- and then potatoes. Once, he tried something he called maize, but the plants failed, so instead he bought sacks of dried maize from an unknown source. In a giant stone mortar, he ground the dried maize down to a coarse yellow meal from which he made one of his exotic specialties- polenta.

This Compost" Something startles me where I thought I was safest, I withdraw from the still woods I loved, I will not go now on the pastures to walk, I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea, I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me. O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken? How can you be alive you growths of spring? How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain? Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you? Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead? Where have you disposed of their carcasses? Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations? Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat? I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv'd, I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through the sod and turn it up underneath, I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat. 2 Behold this compost! behold it well! Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person—yet behold! The grass of spring covers the prairies, The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden, The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward, The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches, The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves, The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree, The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on their nests, The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs, The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare, Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves, Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in the dooryards, The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead. What chemistry! That the winds are really not infectious, That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which is so amorous after me, That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues, That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it, That all is clean forever and forever, That the cool drink from the well tastes so good, That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy, That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me, That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease, Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease. Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient, It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas'd corpses, It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.

Indian farmers grow maize in what is called a milpa. The term means “maize field,” but refers to something considerably more complex. A milpa is a field, usually but not always recently cleared, in which farmers plant a dozen crops at once, including maize, avocados, multiple varieties of squash and bean, melon, tomatoes, chilis, sweet potato, jicama (a tuber), amaranth (a grain-like plant), and mucuna (a tropical legume). In nature, wild beans and squash often grow in the same field as teosinte, the beans using the tall teosinte as a ladder to climb toward the sun; below ground, the beans’ nitrogen-fixing roots provide nutrients needed by teosinte. The milpa is an elaboration of this natural situation, unlike ordinary farms, which involve single-crop expanses of a sort rarely observed in unplowed landscapes. Milpa crops are nutritionally and environmentally complementary. Maize lacks digestible niacin, the amino acids lysine and tryptophan, necessary to make proteins and diets with too much maize can lead to protein deficiency and pellagra, a disease caused by lack of niacin. Beans have both lysine and tryptophan, but not the amino acids cysteine and methionine, which are provided by maize. As a result, beans and maize make a nutritionally complete meal. Squashes, for their part, provide an array of vitamins; avocados, fats. The milpa, in the estimation of H. Garrison Wilkes, a maize researcher at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, “is one of the most successful human inventions ever created.

TOTALITARIANISM: People are interested in ants because they think they have managed to create a successful totalitarian system. Certainly, the impression we get from the outside is that everyone in the anthill works, everyone is obedient, everyone is ready to sacrifice themselves and everyone is the same. And for the time being, all human totalitarian systems have failed. That is why we thought of copying social insects (like Napoleon, whose emblem was the bee). The pheromones that flood the anthill with global information have an equivalent in the planetary television of today. There is a widespread belief that if the best is made available to all, one day we will end up with a perfect human race. That is not the way of things. Nature, with all due respect to Mr Darwin, does not evolve in the direction of the supremacy of the best (according to which criteria, anyway?). Nature draws its strength from diversity. It needs all kinds of people, good, bad, mad, desperate, sporty, bed-ridden, hunchbacked, hare-lipped, happy, sad, intelligent, stupid, selfish, generous, small, tall, black, yellow, red and white. It needs all religions, philosophies, fanaticisms and wisdom. The only danger is that any one species may be eliminated by another. In the past, fields of maize artificially designed by men and made up of clones of the best heads (the ones that need least water, are most frost-resistant or produce the best grains) have suddenly succumbed to trivial infections while fields of wild maize made up of several different strains, each with its own peculiar strengths and weaknesses, have always managed to survive epidemics. Nature hates uniformity and loves diversity. It is in this perhaps that its essential genius lies. Edmond Wells Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge

And, even more important for our purposes, these facts are sturdy enough that we can build a sensible diet upon them. Here they are: FACT 1. Populations that eat a so-called Western diet—generally defined as a diet consisting of lots of processed foods and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of refined grains, lots of everything except vegetables, fruits, and whole grains—invariably suffer from high rates of the so-called Western diseases: obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Virtually all of the obesity and type 2 diabetes, 80 percent of the cardiovascular disease, and more than a third of all cancers can be linked to this diet. Four of the top ten killers in America are chronic diseases linked to this diet. The arguments in nutritional science are not about this well-established link; rather, they are all about identifying the culprit nutrient in the Western diet that might be responsible for chronic diseases. Is it the saturated fat or the refined carbohydrates or the lack of fiber or the transfats or omega-6 fatty acids—or what? The point is that, as eaters (if not as scientists), we know all we need to know to act: This diet, for whatever reason, is the problem. FACT 2. Populations eating a remarkably wide range of traditional diets generally don’t suffer from these chronic diseases. These diets run the gamut from ones very high in fat (the Inuit in Greenland subsist largely on seal blubber) to ones high in carbohydrate (Central American Indians subsist largely on maize and beans) to ones very high in protein (Masai tribesmen in Africa subsist chiefly on cattle blood, meat, and milk), to cite three rather extreme examples. But much the same holds true for more mixed traditional diets. What this suggests is that there is no single ideal human diet but that the human omnivore is exquisitely adapted to a wide range of different foods and a variety of different diets. Except, that is, for one: the relatively new (in evolutionary terms) Western diet that most of us now are eating. What an extraordinary achievement for a civilization: to have developed the one diet that reliably makes its people sick! (While it is true that we generally live longer than people used to, or than people in some traditional cultures do, most of our added years owe to gains in infant mortality and child health, not diet.) There is actually a third, very hopeful fact that flows from these two: People who get off the Western diet see dramatic improvements in their health. We have good research to suggest that the effects of the Western diet can be rolled back, and relatively quickly.

Remarkably, we still have a ‘wild’ Indian’s account of his capture and incarceration. In 1878, when he was an old man, a Kamia called Janitin told an interviewer: I and two of my relatives went down ... to the beach ... we did no harm to anyone on the road, and ... we thought of nothing more than catching and drying clams in order to carry them to our village. While we were doing this, we saw two men on horseback coming rapidly towards us; my relatives were immediately afraid and they fled with all speed, hiding themselves in a very dense willow grove ... As soon as I saw myself alone, I also became afraid ... and ran to the forest ... but already it was too late, because in a moment they overtook me and lassoed and dragged me for a long distance, wounding me much with the branches over which they dragged me, pulling me lassoed as I was with their horses running; after this they roped me with my arms behind and carried me off to the Mission of San Miguel, making me travel almost at a run in order to keep up with their horses, and when I stopped a little to catch my wind, they lashed me with the lariats that they carried, making me understand by signs that I should hurry; after much travelling in this manner, they diminished the pace and lashed me in order that I would always travel at the pace of the horses. When we arrived at the mission, they locked me in a room for a week; the father [a Dominican priest] made me go to his habitation and he talked to me by means of an interpreter, telling me that he would make me a Christian, and he told me many things that I did not understand, and Cunnur, the interpreter, told me that I should do as the father told me, because now I was not going to be set free, and it would go very bad with me if I did not consent in it. They gave me atole de mayz[corn gruel] to eat which I did not like because I was not accustomed to that food; but there was nothing else to eat. One day they threw water on my head and gave me salt to eat, and with this the interpreter told me that I was now Christian and that I was called Jesús: I knew nothing of this, and I tolerated it all because in the end I was a poor Indian and did not have recourse but to conform myself and tolerate the things they did with me. The following day after my baptism, they took me to work with the other Indians, and they put me to cleaning a milpa [cornfield] of maize; since I did not know how to manage the hoe that they gave me, after hoeing a little, I cut my foot and could not continue working with it, but I was put to pulling out the weeds by hand, and in this manner I did not finish the task that they gave me. In the afternoon they lashed me for not finishing the job, and the following day the same thing happened as on the previous day. Every day they lashed me unjustly because I did not finish what I did not know how to do, and thus I existed for many days until I found a way to escape; but I was tracked and they caught me like a fox; there they seized me by lasso as on the first occasion, and they carried me off to the mission torturing me on the road. After we arrived, the father passed along the corridor of the house, and he ordered that they fasten me to the stake and castigate me; they lashed me until I lost consciousness, and I did not regain consciousness for many hours afterwards. For several days I could not raise myself from the floor where they had laid me, and I still have on my shoulders the marks of the lashes which they gave me then.

all were based in the taming and cultivation of a wild grass (yes, rice, wheat, and corn, or maize, as most of the world knows it, are grasses), and all, including the tubers, rested on plants that stored dense, durable packages of carbohydrates: starches. This is civilization. Civilization is starch, and by extension, diseases of civilization are diseases of starch, either directly or indirectly, and most of it is indeed direct: starches are complex carbohydrates, and they quickly break down, often even in a person’s mouth, into simple carbohydrates, which are sugars. Further, much of that sugar is glucose or other forms that the liver converts into glucose. The human body is perfectly capable of metabolizing glucose, which has been with us through the ages, especially in fruits and tubers. We convert it into glycogen, and any athlete will tell you that glycogen is what moves us forward. (It turns out that this is not nearly as true as we think, but for the moment, let’s let this stand.) It is not that glucose is unprecedented or even that starch is new to us; hunter-gatherers have and had both. But not in abundance, not as a sole source, not in the tidal wave of

Fieldking rotavator is better as it saves fuel, Time, soil compaction & wear and tear of the tractor as it accomplishes better pulverization in no time. And with Robust Multi Speed now no need for multiple operations of the cultivator, disc harrow, and leveler. Fielding Rotary Tillers is economical series and it can be coupled with 30 to 60 HP tractors quite easily. It is mainly intended with a rigid structure, multi-speed Gearbox, Visual Oil Level Indicator, Features of Fielding Rotavator Innovation – neatly designed keeping in mind minimum diesel consumption & breakages Better Production – It helps in holding wet of the soil and will increase soil porousness and aeration which boosts germination and growth of crops. Hard truth – Rigid structure, Multi-speed shell, Mechanical oil seal, Advanced designed Front support and serious duty back guard (Trialing board) makes it appropriate and effectively on object yet as in wet and paddy condition. Technically advanced – It specially installs with Spiral shapes of the rotor assembly to cut back the load on tractors, scale back fuel consumption and avoids tire slippage. Smartly Placed – Visual oil level indicator, scale back the possibilities to breakage of gears thanks to inaccessibility of minimum oil level within gear transmission. King of Crop – It makes the simplest bed to victimization at before and once rain. it’s in the main appropriate for every type of crops like cotton, castor, vegetable, sugarcane, banana, wheat, maize, and paddy. Easy to use – It will simply take away residues components of the previous crop, cut into items and completely combine it them into the soil in kind of organic manure to extend productivity. Long life – Powder coated glorious resistance to corrosion, maintains the machine in just-bought condition for a extended amount.

Then I realised the very question I was asking was wrong. The whole point is that in the 1960s, there was no such thing as an average eater across most countries, just lots of specific and wildly divergent patterns of eating. Back then, there were maize eaters in Brazil and sorghum eaters in Sudan. There were steak and kidney pie enthusiasts in Britain and goulash devotees in Hungary. But it made little sense to ponder how a globally average person

The rolling hills we traveled through were lined with rows of crisscrossed crops- apple and pear trees, vines of grapes, and maize- creating bafflingly precise geometries. In the forested areas, the branches on the trees drooped lugubriously like the long sleeves of Druid priests. Jonathan pointed to the curved roads that cut through the hillsides and valleys. "Forged by Romans, Mina!" he said. "So many civilizations have come and gone on this land- Celts, Romans, Normans, Mongols, French. Who knows how many more?

PD. DE "LA OTRA CONSULTA". Revisé la parte de la correspondencia externa que va dirigida a mi pasamontañas. Hay de todo: caricaturas, albures, mentadas (de menta y de las otras), amenazas de muerte y retos a duelo. Estos son los resultados preliminares: -El 97.98% de los consultados piensa que soy muy mamón. El 2% dice que no soy mamón, sino bastante payaso. El 0.02% no contestó (está contando un chiste de pepito). -El 87.56% piensa que voy a terminar vendiéndome con el gobierno. El 12% pregunta que cuál es el precio. El 0.44% revisa la cartera en busca de cambio. -El 74.38% dice que yo no escribo las cartas y comunicados, que con esta cara (?) dudan que pueda hilvanar un par de ideas coherentes. El 25% señala que sí escribo yo, pero me dictan. El 0.62% mejor se puso a leer El Chahuistle. -El 69.69% dice lo que dice. El resto no lo dice, pero lo piensa. Varios no contestaron, pero entornaron los ojos y jadearon ostensiblemente. -El 53.45% dice que nunca he estado en la montaña, que despacho desde un escritorio público donde se mecanografían tesis y cartas como la que, el otro día, me dictó Rutilio y que dice: "Ufemia: Claro necesito que me digas si querétaro las manzanas para que poninas dijo popochas y, si naranjas podridas y ni maiz palomas, me boinas con los cuadernos". El 46% dice que sí estuve en la montaña pero en la de Vail, Colorado, iuesei. El 0.55% está haciendo fila en la taquilla de la montaña rusa. -El 49.99% dice que nunca he agarrado un arma y que soy "soldado de escritorio". El 50% dice que la única arma que he agarrado es la que diosito me dio y quién sabe, dicen. El 0.01% se mantuvo a prudente distancia (¡órale! ¡no salpiquen!). -El 33.71% dice que "perdí el piso" con la crítica al PRD y el veto a "importantes diarios" (?). El 66% dice que nunca he tenido piso alguno, que seguro me desalojaron. El 0.29% no trajo su copia de la boleta predial. -El 26.62% dice que mi pasamontañas ya está muy guango y que enseña TODO. El 73% dice que me suba el cierre del pantalón. El 0.38% fue por unos binoculares. -El 13.64% dice que soy egocentrista. El 86% dice que soy un presumido. El 0.36% cambió de periódico y ahora lee Nexos. -El 99.99999% dice que ya está hasta la madre de encuestas y consultas. El 0.00001% fue al baño, ahorita regresa (ojo: se llevó la hoja de la encuesta, no se vayan a manchar).

Italy’s climate is well suited to growing a variety of crops. However, in such a mountainous country, flat and fertile land is in short supply. Wheat is the main cereal crop and is grown in the lowlands of central and northern Italy. Sugar beet, potatoes, and maize also are cultivated, and some rice is grown in the Po valley. The majority of Italy’s farms are small, averaging only 17 acres in size. Each farm is usually run by one family. Tractors and other farm machinery have become more common in the past 20 years, and bullock carts are now rarely seen. Since the 1950s the government has paid for ways to improve farmland by irrigating dry areas and draining swampy ones. Despite these problems, Italy is the world’s leading producer of both olive oil and wine. More than half the farms in the country grow at least some grapes, and each region has its own special wine. Fishing ports are dotted all around Italy’s long coastline. There are still some small, family-owned fishing boats. But the fishing industry is becoming more mechanized, with fleets of large boats.

Oh Finn, thought Maia, I know I should be glad you’re free and happy, and I am glad. Only I really don’t know what to do here anymore. But Finn wasn’t happy. Both he and the boat seemed somehow sluggish, and he couldn’t quite get rid of the knot in his stomach. He had moored by a huge dyewood tree. The water flowed quietly in a deep channel; nowhere better could be found. So why? He’d had his supper of beans and roasted maize; the deck was piled with chopped wood; the dog had gone ashore to find his own supper and came back with a smug expression and blood on his jaws. Everything was fine. A group of howler monkeys came swinging through the trees, making their evening racket, half screech, half laughter, and stopped when they saw the Arabella. Perhaps I should have gone to Westwood, thought Finn. “They’d have knocked all this rubbish out of me. Foreseeing disasters…” What did he think could happen to Maia in the Carters’ bungalow? The whole point about the Carters’ bungalow was that nothing happened in it. It was the most boring house in the world--and the Indians had promised to look after her. “No harm will come to your friend,” Furo had said. So why did the unease get worse all the time? He remembered saying good-bye to Maia. She had come out of the house in her dressing gown; she ran so lightly, but when he’d hugged her she felt wonderfully solid. No, Maia would be all right. “I’m not going back,” said Finn aloud. And in the trees, the monkeys threw back their heads and roared.

with more bombs being dropped on Malta in two months of 1942 than were dropped on London in a year. It was a time of fear and fatigue and disease, and jubilation when a convoy, bringing its precious cargo of food and ammunition and fuel, did get through. Now there was nothing here apart from the huts to serve as a reminder of those days. The aircraft pens had gone and the runway, which had been like the long handle of a warming pan, had become a road leading to the National Stadium. For me, searching into the past, there was nothing: this is not the Ta’ Qali that Peter Anderson would have seen. But not everything had changed so drastically. Mdina, the old capital of Malta, would be much as he had seen it, and the barracks where he and Tom had lived were still standing, so the young man at Ta’ Qali had said. There were some things I could see, some places I could visit. My spirits rose. I turned the car around and headed back, past the cemetery, to the roundabout; a signpost pointed to Mtarfa. The road was bumpy and full of potholes; it didn’t look as if it was much used nowadays. It wound up and up, between rubble walls which divided the road from the fields on either side. Over the tops of the walls and through gateways and gaps I could see maize growing, and prickly pears, and huge pumpkins drying on the flat

International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (IMWIC), located east of Mexico City at the foot of the Sierra Madre Oriental mountains. IMWIC began as an agricultural research program in 1943 through a collaboration of the Rockefeller Foundation and

Of the 6,000 plant species humans have eaten over time, the world now mostly eats just nine, of which just three – rice, wheat and maize – provide 50 per cent of all calories. Add potato, barley, palm oil, soy and sugar (beet and cane) and you have 75 per cent of all the calories that fuel our species.

Kindness - 1952- Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.

On the present course, global meat production is set to almost double in the next 30 years, and we’re going to need an area the size of Europe to produce the soy and maize to feed the animals on.

Maya were largely farmers, growing domesticated crops, such as maize, all kinds of exotic fruits, cacao, and root crops. But their diet (one of the healthiest diets you could have in the ancient world) still depended largely on hunting and fishing in the lush fields and waters that surrounded them.

Huitlacoche, served on tostadas, is described as “Mexican truffle” as a way to soften the blow to diners: known in English as corn smut, the ancient Aztecs considered this maize a delicacy.

Back in Zambia, that horrible long stretch between Sesheke and Livingstone without food did me a lot of good. Since then I've been pleased just to have some food on my plate, any food will do. Every meal set before me fills me with eager anticipation. It's no great disaster if my maize porridge arrives stone-cold, grey and dingy-looking, or if it's reheated and gets flopped in my bowl steaming like old underwear drying on a radiator.

FOOD Adobo (uh-doh-boh)--- Considered the Philippines's national dish, it's any food cooked with soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, and black peppercorns (though there are many regional and personal variations) Arroz caldo (ah-roz cahl-doh)--- A savory rice porridge made with chicken, ginger, and other aromatics Champorado (chahm-puh-rah-doh)--- Sweet chocolate rice porridge Escabeche (es-cah-beh-che)--- A dish that exists in many countries, but in the Philippines is specifically a sweet and sour fish dish consisting of fried fish covered or marinated in a sauce of vinegar, garlic, sugar, bell peppers, and other aromatics Ginataan (gih-nah-tah-ahn)--- Any dish cooked with coconut milk; can be sweet or savory Ginataang mais (gih-nah-tah-ahng mah-ees)--- A sweet porridge consisting of glutinous rice and corn cooked in sweetened coconut milk Keso (keh-so)--- Cheese (same pronunciation as the Spanish "queso") Lugaw (loo-gow)--- Savory rice porridge, similar to Chinese congee or Korean jook Lumpia (loom-pyah)--- Filipino spring rolls (many variations) Mais (mah-ees)--- Corn (same pronunciation as the Spanish "maiz") Mamon (mah-mohn)--- A Filipino chiffon cake, made in individual molds as opposed to a large, shared cake Matamis na bao (mah-tah-mees nah bah-oh)--- Coconut jam (also known as minatamis na bao) Pandan (pahn-dahn)--- Tropical plant whose fragrant leaves are commonly used as a flavoring in Southeast Asia; often described as a grassy vanilla flavor with a hint of coconut Patis (pah-tees)--- Fish sauce Salabat (sah-lah-baht)--- Filipino ginger tea Tokwa't baboy (toh-kwat bah-boy)--- Filipino side dish consisting of fried tofu and boiled pork cooked in soy sauce, vinegar, and chili, and usually topped with green onions Ube (oo-beh)--- Purple yam Yelo (yeh-loh)--- Ice (same pronunciation as the Spanish "hielo")

A recent UN survey found that agroecology projects in fifty-seven countries have increased crop yields an average of 80 percent, with some being pushed up to 116 percent. One of the most successful of those is the push-pull system, developed to help Kenyan maize farmers deal with pestilence, invasive parasitic weeds, and poor soil conditions. Without getting too technical, push-pull is an intercropping system in which farmers plant specific plants between rows of corn. Some plants release odors that insects find unpleasant. (They “push” insects away.) Others, like sticky molasses grass, “pull” the insects in, acting as a kind of natural flypaper. Using this simple process, farmers have increased crop yields by 100 to 400 percent.

These New World practices (enslavement and genocide) formed another secret link with the anti-human animus of mechanical industry after the sixteenth century, when the workers were no longer protected either by feudal custom or by the self-governing guild. The degradations undergone by child laborers or women during the early nineteenth century in England's 'satanic mills' and mines only reflected those that took place during the territorial expansion of Western man. In Tasmania, for example, British colonists organized 'hunting parties' for pleasure, to slaughter the surviving natives: a people more primitive, scholars believe, than the Australian natives, who should have been preserved, so to say, under glass, for the benefit of later anthropologists. So commonplace were these practices, so plainly were the aborigines regarded as predestined victims, that even the benign and morally sensitive Emerson could say resignedly in an early poem, 1827: "Alas red men are few, red men are feeble, They are few and feeble and must pass away." As a result Western man not merely blighted in some degree every culture that he touched, whether 'primitive' or advanced, but he also robbed his own descendants of countless gifts of art and craftsmanship, as well as precious knowledge passed on only by word of mouth that disappeared with the dying languages of dying peoples. With this extirpation of earlier cultures went a vast loss of botanical and medical lore, representing many thousands of years of watchful observation and empirical experiment whose extraordinary discoveries-such as the American Indian's use of snakeroot (reserpine) as a tranquilizer in mental illness-modern medicine has now, all too belatedly, begun to appreciate. For the better part of four centuries the cultural riches of the entire world lay at the feet of Western man; and to his shame, and likewise to his gross self-deprivation and impoverishment, his main concern was to appropriate only the gold and silver and diamonds, the lumber and pelts, and such new foods (maize and potatoes) as would enable him to feed larger populations.

Es esmu redzējis, kā cilvēks cilvēku iekāro. Es esmu redzējis, kā cilvēks cilvēku iekaro. Kā cilvēks cilvēku ņem un bauda No katras dvēseles kustības. No katra miesas auda. Cilvēks var cilvēku grauzt Dēļ maizes, dēļ slavas, dēļ lupatām Līdz saules rietam no tās dienas kad saule aust, Pa zobam, pa stundai, pa drupatām. Cilvēks var norīt otru kā pitons Atbilstoši savas rīkles platumam Un tad ar baudu un ilgi gremot Pa molekulai, pa atomam. Un var kā kokteili cilvēku izsūkt. Punšs ledu kausē un irdina, Un tad, kad izsūc visu, Tad nāk pirmdiena. II Bet cilvēki avoti ir. Es savu galvu uz skujām lieku. Es padzeros un zinu: - Tos nevar iegūt. Tos nevar iztukšot. Tie ir tik dzidri un tīri... Tajos ir jūlija mākoņi Un izkusuši sniegavīri. Kaut kas no rudens krusas Un maija salnām. Es saku paldies eglēm. Es saku paldies kalnam. Es saku paldies zemei, Kas man tevi deva. Tu esi avots, Un tevi izdzert nevar. Es būšu stiprs, Kad mani soļi cauri laimei un postam ies. Un, ja tas viss ir sapnis, Tad labāk lai neatmostamies.

Even today, with all our advanced technologies, more than 90 per cent of the calories that feed humanity come from the handful of plants that our ancestors domesticated between 9500 and 3500 BC – wheat, rice, maize (called ‘corn’ in the US), potatoes, millet and barley.

Firewater Sometimes I think how alcohol’s a marvelous solvent, can remove red people from a continent, turn bronze to guilt. What was DuPont’s old motto—Better things for better living through chemistry? You take potatoes from Peru, barley from Palestine, maize from Mexico, sugar cane from

Cactus face over there doesn't look happy," Audrey whispered and we both giggled. "Maize calls that resting bitch face," I said and immediately felt bad for repeating it. "Let's not be mean. Maybe she's just constipated.

Zoltán looked at them through the window. He hated the man. Now he hated work. Work for these? Work with these? He saw before him the great puszta. Here the long, cracked stripe of a ditch once again stole the blue of the sky, transforming it into a deeper colour, renewing it, like an artist's palette: every pool on the meadows, every clump of flowers, was a jewel on the bosom of nature, a diadem, a string of pearls: oh, nature was lovely... That is, it would be if it could... But mankind... Among these? Struggle, fight, this greedy little piece of meat... Dark furrows on the wondrous surface, the many-branched, tufted promise of the maize, jewelled patches on God's regal robe: why was the world so lovely? to cover up the ugliness of man?

The removal of racialism did not instantly remove the dual economy, which has endured until now. This is reflected in the wage differentials today, with agricultural labourers being paid US$65 per month plus some maize meal, whilst the minimum for a domestic worker is US$150 a month. Teachers and civil servants are paid about US$300 per month, higher than that of equivalent Asian professionals.

the Indian slave was inefficient. The Spaniards discovered that one Negro was worth four Indians.22 A prominent official in Hispaniola insisted in 1518 that “permission be given to bring Negroes, a race robust for labor, instead of natives, so weak that they can only be employed in tasks requiring little endurance, such as taking care of maize fields or farms.”23 The future staples of the New World, sugar and cotton, required strength which the Indian lacked, and demanded the robust “cotton nigger” as sugar’s need of strong mules produced

Except for bread, which was rationed and available, everything else was scarce and if available, people stood in line for hours, sometimes days. The bread was baked from a mixture of grains and maize and the cobs ground in. A kilo bread (over two pounds) was a small loaf, heavy as a rock. You could not bite the bread, only gnaw. Nobody would eat that in normal times, but there was no alternative. Father suffered so, he could not digest it. We were hungry most of the time. If clothes or shoes were available, one had to stand in line for days. We didn't. We made do with whatever we still possessed. That summer, I wore a pair of hand made sandals. The top was crocheted of thin string and attached to a sole. The hand made front of the sandals was tied to the ankles with shoe laces.

Inside the maize mill, the owners no longer had any use for a broom. The hungry people kept the floors cleaner than a wet mop. At the beginning of the month, the mill was packed full of those waiting for fallen scraps. The crowd would part long enough to allow women to pass with their pails of grain. As the machine rumbled and spit a white cloud of flour into the pails, the multitude of old people, women, and children watched intently with eyes dancing like butterflies. Once the pail was pulled away, they themselves on hands and knees and scooped the floor clean. Afterward, old women would rattle their walking sticks up inside the grinder as if ringing a bell, collecting the loose flour that drifted to the floor.

The staple crop of the highlands was the potato, which unlike maize regularly grows at altitudes of 14,000 feet; the tubers, cultivated in hundreds of varieties, can be left in the ground for as long as a year (as long as the soil stays above 27°F), to be dug up and cooked when needed. Even frozen potatoes could be used. After letting freezing night temperatures break down the tubers’ cell walls, Andean farmers stomped out the water content to make dried chuño, a nigh-indestructible foodstuff that could be stored for years.

A milpa is a field, usually but not always recently cleared, in which farmers plant a dozen crops at once, including maize, avocados, multiple varieties of squash and bean, melon, tomatoes, chilis, sweet potato, jicama (a tuber), amaranth (a grain-like plant), and mucuna (a tropical legume).

like German shepherd dogs, startle to novel and surprising objects at five or six weeks—as the V litter and Maize’s pups did. The spaniels’ breeding actually slows their rate of development generally. This time of hypersensitivity

Beginning in about 1200 A.D., according to Woods, Cahokia’s maize fields repeatedly flooded, destroying the harvests.

In the past, they had shaped the landscape mainly with fire; the ax came out only for garden plots of marshelder and little barley. As maize swept in, Indians burned and cleared thousands of acres of land, mainly in river valleys. As in Cahokia, floods and mudslides rewarded them.

western Amazon was the development ground for peanuts, Brazilian broad beans (Canavalia plagiosperma), and two species of chili pepper (Capsicum baccatum and C. pubescens). But the list is much longer than that, according to Susanna Hecht, a UCLA geographer who has worked in the region for 30 years. “I would add rubber [made from the sap of Hevea brasiliensis] to the list,” she told me. Used for countless purposes by pre-Columbian populations, “it is at least a semi-domesticate, and it was clearly distributed by humans.” Still more important, in her view, was manioc (Manihot esculenta). The world’s sixth most important crop in terms of annual harvest, this large tuber has been fundamental to Amazonian diets for 7,000 years or more. For decades most researchers believed manioc, like maize, had no wild ancestor; the crop was thought to have arisen from a chance combination of several relatives.

Maize swept into Africa as introduced disease was leveling Indian societies. Faced with a labor shortage, the Europeans turned their eyes to Africa.

By examining these settlers’ decisions about agricultural, architectural, and cultural policy, Cronon demonstrates persuasively that one of their primary goals was in fact “to reproduce the mosaic of the Old World in the American environment.”10 Indigenous fauna and flora were to be replaced by European imports; cows, pigs, and horses to supplant beavers, bears, and buffalo; and wheat and rye to substitute for maize and acorns. Despite the fact that these decisions were detrimental to the health of these settlers (European architecture was ill-suited to the American climate, and native foods were far more productive than imported grain crops), they perversely insisted upon this doomed experiment of re-creating Europe in America. This fear of “Americanness” thus was paradoxically linked with the earliest phases of European expansion into the New World.