Newspaper Article

Calling for food sovereignty for Africa ; Planting `lost crops' would reduce hunger, violence

Vallianatos, E G

2003

Overview

The cash-cropping road to development is behind most of the violence in Africa. It provides the theory and practice of plunder. It condemns Africa to impoverishment and hunger--even pushing Africa's extraordinary variety of indigenous food crops to the verge of extinction. Africans, who are eating less of their own food, now eat more imported wheat, rice and corn. Why Africans eat less of their own food goes to the very heart of their hunger and dependency on others. Europeans heaped scorn on many of Africa's cereals. And Western scientists classified many African grains as cattle feed. That is why many of Africa's more than 2,000 varieties of indigenous grains, roots and fruits and other food plants have been lost--at least from the daily diet of most Africans.

• Publisher: Tribune Publishing Company, LLC