permaculture

[Rick Valley <bamboogrove@cmug.com>]

> In Mollison's book of ferment & nutrition he notes that an alkaline
> substance needs to be used when cooking maize, e.g. a little wood ash, to
> render the proteins digestable. Pellagra is already a big problem in
> Africa due to maize-based diet.

Exactly. Maize was introduced to the rest of the world without the recipes,
for masa, for hominy. When I read that the urban ag emphasis was on maize,
and the economy was rapidly worsening, the red flags went up for me.
An urban population has much less access to bush meat. (The "shifting
cultivation" traditionally practiced in much of the Americas, with fields
("milpas") at some distance from the village, depends on active defense of
the crop by the farmers. The creatures that fall casualty to their craving
for maize generally end up in the farmer's pots- so corn does indeed add to
the protein intake in other ways too! No traditional vegetarian cultures by
choice in the Americas that I know of. Tortillas and beans you say? Offer
them a choice & see what they choose. You'll commonly see things like jutes
(small freshwater snails) chapilines (grasshoppers) and virtually anything
else with high protein content being offered for sale in the markets)
So, I immediately thought that the first thing to do would be to see if
recipe changes or micro-livestock are being encouraged in Zimbabwe.

BTW, the NW of the USA has an interesting cultural connection with Zimbabwe
due to one man, (Joseph) Dumisame Maraire, who taught ethnomusicology in the
Washington State University system. There are marimba bands (a style from
Mozambique) playing Shona folk songs about the arrival of the whites in
Zimbabwe, (even as the evening entertainment at the annual meeting of the
American Bamboo Society last year! Talk about mixing yr. metaphors!)  There
are classes in mbira, and people are traveling to Zimbabwe to learn how to
use mbira to connect with the ancestors. Next year's Zimfest will be at Reed
College in Portland, OR, my old stomping grounds. See you there! I'll give a
tour of mature tree crop species on the campus for anyone interested...
-Rick