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Parent Category: NATURALLY RAW!

Category: FOOD

 I know this guy from Malawi. His dad passed away recently, leaving Kelvin as the tribal chief. Kelvin has control over an entire municipal district, he’s a major landowner with cattle and goats and cultivated fields. He works as a gardener in Johannesburg. We spent many an hour working side by side in the sun, listening to each other’s’ life stories. What I always wanted to know from Kelvin was: So what on earth are you doing here? The answer was always the same: “We are hungry”. The answer did not satisfy me, but that was what I always got. One day, I changed my tactic; I asked the question African way: 

So, Kelvin, what do you guys eat in Malawi? 

Maize with relish. I knew by now that ‘relish’ can mean anything from boiled fillet to fried cabbage. I persist. So, you hunt? Hunting turns out to be a specialist thing. But they have cassava. And beans. But I thought Malawi to be a fertile land rich in water. You must remember, as a South African, I worship water with the respect it deserves in our dry land. I spent a lot of time preaching to Kelvin about conserving water and closing taps, and spilling buckets. I knew he was used to water lying about like it falls from the bloody sky. I believe I will make anything grow, just gimme water! They have water, but the soil has become infertile. That is why he works in Johannesburg; he earns money to send home so the family can afford fertiliser so they can feed themselves. I leave it at that, but things still niggle. 

One day we talk about Kelvin’s uncle, a prosperous farmer ‘up in the mountains’. Turns out his maize grows well, the soil is good. Very lucky for him, because up in the mountains it is very difficult to find fertiliser. I am starting to get suspicious about this fertility thing. I ask him which animals they keep, and why they do not use manure and compost, if fertiliser is so expensive. They know about goat poop, their last honest president had large scale educational programmes running on this sort of thing. It was stopped when the oligarchy took over, and now they buy fertiliser from the white guy who comes there. Huh? 

It turns out, the Multinationals are very busy in Africa, ‘educating” the poor and ignorant, and ‘saving them from hunger’ with the new seeds they brought. Alarm bells are going off in my head. I try suggesting that they have been misled and sold faulty seed. I am assured the man is always very well dressed, and he drives a big for-buy-for and he always comes with seed but they don’t have money after the fertiliser and if they have fertiliser they will have a good crop then they will have plenty seed. 

I spent time explaining to Kelvin about Hybrid seeds and Genetically Modified strains. I explained the need for new seed every season, and the cocktail of chemicals and pesticides needed to keep them going, I tried everything, and then it hit me, I had Kelvin’s solution: Next time Kelvin goes home to refresh his visa, he must go to his uncle in the mountains, and collect seed. That maize is not as nice as the ones they (used to) grow in his village, Kelvin sulks. I eventually convinced him that I would rather have less tasty grain than no grain at all, and asked him to bring me a handful of seeds. 

A year later, we planted the first tiny hard white kernels. He brought me about twenty mealie pips, and maybe fifteen came up, of which six carried cobs worth picking. I now had about two hundred seeds. I started some selective breeding, and now the plants stand as high as any Monsanto Frankenmaize, most carry two heads, sometimes equally large, resistant to heat, frost, drought, flood, everything except wind and horses. We plant one bed every two weeks. The first ones have to battle the last winter frosts, the last ones have to try survive the harsh winter dryness. These early and late ones carry badly, but even there we get enough for birdies and rabbits to nibble on. And a horse will never say no to maize leaves, even the stalks are eaten with relish. I love my wild Malawian Mealies, my very first Heritage Cultivar.  

So, what else you eat in Malawi? Cassava? What’s that? We have tried plantig some three times already. The turtle doves, tarentaals, tortoises, tzickens and every other relative of dynosaurusses eat them off faster than they can grow. So another friend goes home and brings back a few seeds. They are all sorts of shapes and sizes. I am assured they are beans, ground nuts and more beans. I actually recognise something that looks a bit like what I think a sugar bean looks like, and off we go to plant it. 

I can now happily report that the first nine beans turned into a hundred, has now turned into a thousand. I have in my life never seen so many shapes and sizes and colours of beans. I take photos of my bean harvests because there is always a new one, a prettier colour, a crazier pattern. I am in love with beans, and I am now a collector of Heritage Beans. 

We have turned a variety of herbs and vegies feral. We try to turn everything we plant feral. Sometimes it ends up in a three-year noxious weed eradication programme, crawling through the veld on your knees, ripping up Bitterbos because you thought the first ones were Wormwood. Wormwood now is a fairly common weed in my garden, and I like it so. That is our mission; growing real food and getting rid of the people who promise to save us from world hunger, by selling us seed that only grows once, or contains poisons that they say don’t affect us in any way we can prove. Monsanto, and their ‘Chief Evangelist’ Bill Gates are not in the business of saving us from hunger. They are intent on ending world hunger, and they insist on feeding the whole world.  

It sounds very noble, feeding the whole world and ending hunger the world over. If those two sentences were made into one, I might have been taken in, because then you could read it as ‘Ending world hunger by feeding everyone’. What it actually says is ‘end hunger and feed world’. This is easiest accomplished by killing all the hungry scum, and forcing the survivors to buy food from you only. Do you think me crude and alarmist? Here are some openly researchable facts the perpetrators actually parade as virtues: 

Bill Gates, the man that will help Monsanto save the world from hunger, believes there should be no more than 300 million people on earth. That is less than 5% of current population. Monsanto, on the other hand, already owns the largest part of all corporate agriculture, has virtual monopoly in GMO, insecticide, fertiliser…. The few large companies left, like Bayer, are either in cahoots, or busy conglomerating with Monsanto. Monsanto has the stated goal of becoming sole agricultural supplier in the world. This is the future of supermarket food, and they are now working on ways to eradicate all “wild crops” out there. It is worth noting that the BT gene has been found in weeds growing next to Monsanto fields. This means that somehow, mealies have fertilised marog. This is supposedly impossible, one of the reasons we allowed genetic experiments in open air. Monsanto pretends this is a benefit to the environment and wants payment for it, I’m sure. 

The way they sued a guy into poverty when he complained their GMO Canola is infesting his fields. He had to pay millions in court costs, and ended up paying a fine to Monsanto for growing their seed without paying for it. No, really, this happened. There are actually laws regarding contamination of neighbouring land, but for Monsanto, all land is their land. Remember, they are the good people who brought us Agent Orange. And many other eugenicist aids… Eugenicist Aids. EUGENICIST AIDS. Never said that aloud before, hah! MONSANTO DEVELOPS EUGENICIST AIDS. That’s not funny.

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