Word: sorghum
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...acknowledges that the gritty modern Gaomi is very different from the midcentury, rural township of his fiction - a place where peasants ride stoic donkeys and heavily laden camels walk the dusty streets. Film buffs may know it from Zhang Yimou's 1988 adaptation of Mo Yan's Red Sorghum, set during the Japanese occupation. In fact, much of Mo Yan's fiction - from the 1996 epic he describes as his magnum opus, Big Breasts and Wide Hips, to Frog, published at the end of 2009 - is set in a world seemingly remote to the 350 million or so Chinese born...
...there any American traditions like this? Tons - whether you're at the Liver Mush Festival in Shelby, N.C., or in Appalachia talking to people who cook with sorghum and maple syrup because they never had sugar and flour. This is still out there...
With these frightening predictions in mind, we need to try to heat-proof our agriculture. That can be accomplished by using crops that have proved resistant to extreme heat - like sorghum or millet - to breed hybrid-crop varieties that are more capable of withstanding higher temperatures. We'll need to drop any squeamishness about consuming genetically modified crops. Unless we can tap the power of genetics, we'll never feed ourselves in a warmer world. But we'll need to act quickly. It can take years to breed more heat-resistant species, and investment in agricultural research has shriveled...
Even in the best of times, food is scarce in Mutiusinazita. And these are not the best of times in Zimbabwe. The farmers who eke out a living planting drought-resistant crops like sorghum in the harsh, sandy soil this year found that even when plentiful rains ended six straight years of drought, not even those hardiest of crops would grow - because the farmers had no fertilizer. Faced with starvation, villagers are now surviving off tree roots and a porridge made from the fruit of baobab trees. "The baobab trees are prevalent in this area and they are the main...
...this compounds the enduring logistical challenges that Africa presents for aid agencies: poor roads, unpredictable weather and political instability. After Kenya's disputed election in December, a U.S. shipment of 9,000 metric tons of sorghum was blocked for more than 100 days in Mombasa, with no safe way to get it out, Kidane says. Violence returned to Burundi after a ceasefire deal failed, so WFP must postpone plans to stop feeding Burundian refugees in Tanzania. WFP is sometimes a target of violence too. Darfur rations were cut by nearly half in May because too many trucks had been hijacked...