View allAll Photos Tagged maize
Chapala, Mexico. Maize is a staple in the Mexican diet. It was first domesticated in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago.
A woman applies fertilizer on a maize crop in Kenya. Fertilizer is expensive in sub-Saharan Africa. Many smallholders farmers can only afford to apply a little fertilizer on their farms. The IMAS project is breeding maize varieties that respond better to the small amounts of fertilizer that farmers apply.
Photo credit: B. Das/CIMMYT
Holly dog was the winner, lead everyone most of the way round, not always the right way but hey, she didn't have the map !! A bit warm, but you could always have a rest under the maize and she had her water with her !! Likes to be one of the family ;)
Country gold, cow candy, maize, corn, call it what you will, but without this stuff covering almost half the arable land in North America our comfortable lifestyles would be radically different.
Niels' Maize.psd
Oaxaca has some really great street art. These 2 celebrate maize, the Staff of Life. It has been said that the cultivation of maize was one of the greatest agronomic achievements in human history.
Maize cobs drying in Ghana's Upper West Region, which has suffered failed rains and rising temperatures.
Credit: ©2010CIAT/NeilPalmer
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Came across this machine while on holiday in Brittany, France. It was amazing (excuse pun) to see the speed and ferocity of these machines at full pelt.They manage to clear a 20 acre field in no time. It was also something else to confront them on the small country lanes around La Gacilly as they travelled from farm to farm. I've added a few shots below to give an idea of how they work with them.
I came across this late harvested maize field today (cut for seed rather than feed) which was full of Woodpigeon. A beautiful sight when they all took to the air. The birds were extremely skittish so it wasn't possible to get as close as I would have liked, rather a grey day so not much colour in these images.
Maize ears from CIMMYT's collection, showing a wide variety of colors and shapes. CIMMYT’s germplasm bank contains about 28,000 unique samples of cultivated maize and its wild relatives, teosinte and Tripsacum. These include about 26,000 samples of farmer landraces—traditional, locally-adapted varieties that are rich in diversity. The bank both conserves this diversity and makes it available as a resource for breeding.
Photo credit: Xochiquetzal Fonseca/CIMMYT.
Spotted on the streets of Shenzhen, China at a hawker stall, maize is a cereal grain which originates from the American continents that spread to the rest of the world when the Europeans reached America in the 15th century. The word maize originates from the Spanish form of the Arawak Native American term for the plant. Today it is commonly referred to as corn with some varieties of maize can grown to more than 7 meters.
This variety of maize grows in China and is known as a bicolour maize named as ‘Sugar and Gold’ on account of its red tinge. This variety is of the highest quality, takes 67 days to harvest and each ear of corn grows to between 6.5” and 10” in length.
Not the usual colors when using the above words (sorry U of M), but that's all I could come up with for a title.
Winter has returned today for a couple of days...cold and snowy again.
Forage maize harvesting near Aghalee. A well ripened crop but not as high as normal due to poor summer weather. Ground in good shape all the same.
This is a cornfield I passed while out on an adventure. The sun was just coming up and so I stopped and shot this out of my car window.
A young girl gets a valuable dose of vitamin A by eating this nutritious orange maize. Vitamin A deficiency blinds up to half a million children annually and increases risk of death from disease. By consuming vitamin A maize, children could potentially get up to 50% of their daily vitamin A needs.
©IFPRI/Eliab Simpungwe (HarvestPlus)
Maize or corn crop growing locally...now above head height in a lot of places. I like the textures in the landscape though...
Feed the Future projects including USAID-FinGAP work to boost the livelihoods of rice, maize, and soy smallholder farmers in northern Ghana. USAID/Ghana
Mira como ponemos la milpa ahí en la orilla de la mesa. También ponemos flores, una vela y los santitos: la Virgencita de Guadalupe, San Miguel, San Juditas, Santo Niño, Reyes Magos, San Pedro, las Almas, Padre Jesús y la Virgen de Juquila, están aquí.
Antes de dar comida a la milpa, vamos al campo a poner flores todo alrededor de donde una siembra, ya ahí en medio centro de la milpa una se arrodilla, presenta su vela y de ahí ya empieza a buscar como dos o tres milpas para adornarlas y traerlas a la casa. Terminando de darle de comer a la milpa, la llevamos a la iglesia.
Mi abuelito decía que es importante hacer esta costumbre en la Fiesta de San Miguelito para que bendiga la milpa, para que ya se dé todo bien, y por eso adornamos la parcela, damos comida a la milpa y la llevamos a la iglesia para que ahí la bendigan.
Yo crecí con mis abuelos. Mi mamá se separó de mi papá y tuvo que ir a trabajar a México. Tenía yo nueve meses cuando ella se fue. De ahí estuve creciendo con mis abuelos y mis tíos, ya vivíamos juntos y cuando mis tíos salían a trabajar, me quedaba con mis abuelos. Ellos me cuidaban.
A los tres años mi abuelito me llevaba a la milpa. Yo desde chiquita me gustaba como cargaba su milpa. Le decía: “Córtame una chiquita porque también la quiero llevar”. Él me adornaba una milpa, así chiquita, y yo también la traía ese mismo día.
Me casé a los catorce años, pero mi esposo no me llevaba a trabajar al campo. Tardamos seis meses viviendo con mi suegra. Después nos decidimos vivir aparte y él se fue a trabajar al otro lado, pues por la necesidad él se fue allá.
Al inicio pensaba irme yo porque él estaba enfermo y le dije: “Me voy a ir para los Estados Unidos, te voy a ayudar, te voy a mandar dinero para que te cures”. Pero él no quiso, como él es hombre, pues pensaba qué dirá la gente: “¿Que tú me mantienes? ¡No!”. Él dijo: “Yo me voy a ir, si me muero en el desierto nomás piensas que no aguantó”. Y a la noche se fué.
Una piensa muchas cosas, ¿no? Como qué le habrá pasado, cómo estará, si se quedó a medio camino. Pero él había pasado y tardó como dos años trabajando para la deuda antes de encontrar su tratamiento.
Ahora mi esposo está bien. Él lleva como once años trabajando allá en los Estados Unidos. Yo trabajo en la parcela: contrato yunta para sembrar, yo sola a veces cargo la bomba roseando, ahí fumigando para las malas hierbas, todo eso.
La verdad volver a trabajar la milpa fue muy duro y muy pesado, porque a la vez te dedicas a la casa y a la milpa. O sea, una como mujer está haciendo un trabajo de dos.
Tengo mi trabajo como ama de casa, atiendo a mis hijos, pero lo más pesado es trabajar en el campo. Cuando empiezo a piscar, pues tengo que levantar costales para cargarlos. Así todo el trabajo que hizo mi esposo en la milpa, ahora yo lo hago.
Todo el maíz se ocupa para la casa. A veces no alcanza cuando no se da bien, se acaba antes de que llegue el año y tenemos que comprar más para seguir. Pues por todo eso, ahora estoy pensando en irme otra vez.
Hace dos años intenté irme, así caminando en el desierto, sufriendo, cargando mochila, agua, todo para el camino, tres días y dos noches. De ahí la migra nos agarró, nos vino a dejar hasta Nogales. De Nogales otra vez lo intenté e igual nos agarró.
Tardé dos meses en la frontera y siete veces intenté pasar pero no pude. De ahí volví a trabajar en la milpa, pero sigo pensando en intentarlo otra vez, porque yo quiero estar con mi esposo.
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We give breakfast to the maize. Maybe a cup of hot chocolate or coffee, atole and bread. Then we burn copal incense and serve the main meal to the maize as our grandparents taught us. It could be fried chicken or turkey, whatever we have.
See how we put the maize here beside the table. We also put flowers, a candle and the saints: the Virgin of Guadalupe, St. Michael, St. Jude, the Holy Child, the Three Kings, St. Peter, the Souls, Father Jesus, and the Virgin of Juquila are all here.
Before giving food to the maize, we go to the field and place flowers all around the edge of the plot. We kneel in the middle of the field to offer a candle, then select two or three of the best maize stalks to decorate and take home. After we give food to the maize, we take it to church.
My grandfather said it’s important to keep up this tradition for the Festival of Saint Michael so he’ll bless the maize and it will give a good yield. This is why we decorate the maize field, offer food to the maize and take it to church to be blessed.
I grew up with my grandparents. My mother separated from my father and had to go to Mexico City to work. I was nine months old when she left. From then on I grew up with my grandparents and my aunts and uncles. We all lived together, and when my aunts and uncles went out to work, I stayed with my grandparents. They looked after me.
My grandfather took me to the maize field when I was three years old. Ever since I was small, I liked how he carried the maize. So I asked him, “Cut me a small stalk because I want to carry one too.” He’d always decorate a small maize stalk for me on this day.
I got married when I was 14, but my husband didn’t take me with him to work in the field. We lived with my mother-in-law for six months. Then we decided to live apart and he went to work over there, on the other side, out of necessity.
At first, I was thinking of going myself, because he was ill, so I said to him, “I’m going to the United States so I can send you money and you can get better.” But he didn’t want me to go, as he is the man and he was afraid what people would say.
“You’re not going to support me. I’m the one who’s going to go," he said. "If I die in the desert, just think that I didn’t make it.” And that night he went.
You think lots of things, don’t you? Like what might have happened to him, how he is, or if he only made it half way. But he did cross over and spent two years working to pay off his debt before he could afford medical treatment.
My husband is well now. He’s been working in the United States for about 11 years. I work in the maize field: I hire the oxen for sowing and sometimes I carry the spray pump, working alone, spraying the weeds and all that.
The truth is, going back to work in the maize was hard. It’s very tough work because you have to look after the house and the maize field too. One woman but has to do the work of two people.
I have to do my work as a housewife, looking after my children, but the hardest work is in the field. When I harvest, I have to lift sacks and carry them and do all the work my husband used to do.
We eat all the maize we grow. Sometimes the harvest is poor and if we run out before the end of the year we have to buy maize. That’s why I’m thinking of going again.
Two years ago I tried to get across, walking in the desert three days and two nights with my backpack, water, everything. Then the immigration police caught us and took us back to Nogales. From Nogales I tried again, but they caught us again.
I spent two months at the border and tried seven times to get across, but I couldn’t. So I went back to work in the maize, but I’m still thinking of trying again because I want to be with my husband.
Credit: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT