Curated category
Tropical agriculture
- RiceRice feeds over half of the world's population, more people than any other single food can claim. In 2023, the world produced 800 million tonnes of it…
- MaizeMaize relies on humans to survive. Its kernels stay locked to the cob, unlike its wild ancestor teosinte, whose seeds scatter to the ground on their own.
- PapayaPapaya is a plant that feeds millions, and yet most people in temperate countries barely know what it is. Picture a tree standing between 5 and 10 metres…
- CassavaCassava feeds more than 800 million people worldwide. It is the third-largest source of carbohydrates in the tropics, sitting behind only rice and maize.
- GrapefruitGrapefruit carries a name that has puzzled people for centuries. A fruit that looks nothing like a grape earned that label sometime in the early 19th…
- SorghumSorghum has fed people for more than 5,000 years, and its story begins in the region between two rivers in Eastern Sudan, near what is now Kassala.
- Orange (fruit)The orange began as something that did not exist in nature. It was coaxed into being through domestication in East Asia, a deliberate cross between two very…
- Subsistence agricultureSubsistence agriculture is the practice of growing food primarily to feed yourself and your family, with little left over to sell.
- SugarcaneSugarcane is a tall, perennial grass whose jointed stalks store sucrose, and in 2020 it became the world's largest crop by production quantity at 1.9 billion…
- Sweet potatoThe sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas, carries a name that is older than written history and a journey that crossed entire oceans before Europeans had any idea…
- Cooking bananaCooking bananas rank as the tenth most important staple food in the world, yet most people in North America or Europe have never peeled one.
- BananaBananas are the world's most exported fruit by volume and by value, yet almost every banana eaten in the Western world belongs to a single variety: the…
- CoconutCoconut, Cocos nucifera, may be the single plant most responsible for human civilizations reaching distant shores. The Austronesian peoples who crossed open…
- AvocadoThe avocado is an evergreen tree of the laurel family, and its fruit is botanically a large berry built around a single oversized seed.