People, plants and politics
Troth Wells looks at the raw politics behind world hunger.

A world meal from six ingredients
A menu of dishes and drinks made from maize/corn, sugar, rice, soybeans, bananas and cocoa.

A song of the strong
Maize farmer Joyce Kayaya has her own views on who's to blame for Zambia's food shortages, as she explains to Mary Namakando.

Bitter, bitter sweet
Sugar-cane worker Manuel José Santana in Brazil tells Alex Shankland about a modern slavery.

The control of girls
'Men don't always appreciate the work women do,' says Bangladeshi Rahima Khatun, who talks to Shahidul Alam about her daily work with rice.

WORLD FOOD - THE FACTS

In summer, dog meat is too yang
Jane Parry meets Mr Lau, whose soya beansprouts might have made it to Western supermarkets if only Americans weren't so finicky.

Yellow perils
'The bananas are better cared for than the workers' - Ramon Isberto visits a plantation in the Philippines.

Simply - a history of food

A legacy for my (23) children
He's never tasted chocolate, but Kwabena Nten knows all about cocoa in Ghana, as he tells Ajoa Yeboah-Afari.

You probably know the feeling. You're at a meeting, and you have an idea. People like it, are enthusiastic even. And then, as they look towards you again, the penny drops and you realise that they are looking at you expectantly. 'Yes, it's not a bad idea - why don't you do it?'

That's roughly what happened with this magazine. At our annual magazine-planning meeting last year I suggested an issue on food. I didn't mean that I should edit it, but my colleagues were quick to point out that the NI Food Book had just been published, that I had been mainly responsible for producing it, that what I had learned about the subject must have given me a clear head start... There was no resisting all the arguments: the food mag was mine.

The subject of world food is both enormous and enormously complicated. So to try and keep it manageable I wanted to look closely at just six foods which are well known to us and which have an illuminating history and culture: maize/corn, sugar, rice, soybeans, bananas and cocoa. These foodstuffs can be dressed up in all kinds of different ways - and we have suggested how they might be used as part of a 'world meal'.

But our thought was to go further and talk to people in the Third World whose lives are intimately bound up with the six foods. Instead of compiling a series of articles looking at different aspects of world food production, we thought we'd make a point of seeking out the perspective of people who are usually invisible and unheard. You must have wondered every now and then who is at the other end of the chain that brings a banana to your kitchen. Who picked it? In what conditions? How do they feel about it? Does our buying bananas help them or contribute somehow to their exploitation?

As the interviews came in, something became glaringly apparent as we thought it might. Three of the life stories are quite positive, showing people relatively in control of their lives, while the other three have a quite different feel.

It certainly created a tension in the magazine (and in its editor - is it right to propose a 'meal' using some ingredients that are produced exploitatively?). But the blend is quite appropriate. We need to know that there are strong, happy, successful people in the Third World, that it is not the uniformly miserable place that some images of it still suggest. But we need equally to be aware of the injustices - especially if we play a part in the drama ourselves as consumers of the end product. And having read what people like Neco in Brazil or Yolanda in the Philippines tell us of their lives, maybe we will be spurred into new or renewed action that might help them.

Creative tension? That is the idea.

Letters
Letter from India
Updates
Reviews: plus Paul Robeson classic
Curiosities
Endpiece by Ramachandra Guha
Country profile: China

FRONT COVER PHOTOGRAPH: MARK MASON
ONLINE MAG MAINTAINED BY SIMON LOFFLER