As we’ve written, agricultural crops face increasing pressure from climate change, pathogens and other threats, and the wild varieties of these common foods may provide the answer to avoiding mass hunger.

Growing up in rural Iowa and moving as an adult to rural Kenya, corn or maize has been an integral part of my life and livelihood. I grew sweet corn and detasseled seed corn as a kid. My husband worked as a plant pathologist for Garst Seed Company and for the Michigan Department of Agriculture. We grow and sell corn for income on my family farm in Iowa and our farm in Kenya, so, thinking about the predicted extinction of traditional races of maize due to pressure from industrialized farming and commercial hybrids is very real to me. Curry covers the evolution in thinking about traditional Native American maize cultivars from early European attitudes that dismissed native varieties as primitive, to the Cold War mentality that traditional varieties represented “genetic capital” to be collected and kept in cold storage to the emergence of Native American voices claiming ownership of “farmers’ variety” and landrace seeds. From imperialism to modern political thought, maize has been a treasure, a sacred object, a commodity and a weapon. Curry traces these changes in detail. Fascinating.