Maize and Grace

Sometime around 1500 AD, an African farmer planted a maize seed imported from the New World. That act set in motion the remarkable saga of one of the worlds most influential cropsone that would transform the future of Africa and of the Atlantic world. Africas experience with maize is distinctive but also instructive from a global perspective: experts predict that by 2020 maize will become the worlds most cultivated crop. James C. McCann moves easily from the village level to the continental scale, from the medieval to the modern, as he explains the science of maize production and explores how the crop has imprinted itself on Africas agrarian and urban landscapes. Today, maize accounts for more than half the calories people consume in many African countries. During the twentieth century, a tidal wave of maize engulfed the continent, and supplanted Africas own historical grain cropssorghum, millet, and rice. In the metamorphosis of maize from an exotic visitor into a quintessentially African crop, in its transformation from vegetable to grain, and from curiosity to staple, lies a revealing story of cultural adaptation. As it unfolds, we see how this sixteenth-century stranger has become indispensable to Africas fields, storehouses, and diets, and has embedded itself in Africas political, economic, and social relations. The recent spread of maize has been alarmingly fast, with implications largely overlooked by the media and policymakers. McCanns compelling history offers insight into the profound influence of a single crop on African culture, health, technological innovation, and the future of the worlds food supply.