As most people in Atlantic-era West Africa—as in contemporary Europe and the Americas—were farmers, fields and gardens were the primary terrain where they engaged the opportunities and challenges of nascent globalization. Agricultural changes and culinary cross-currents from the Gold Coast indicate that Africans engaged the Atlantic world not with passivity but as full partners with others on continents whose histories have enjoyed longer, and greater, scholarly attention. The most important ‘seeds of change’ are not to be found in the DNA of crops and critters carried across the seas but instead in the creativity and innovation of the people who engaged the challenges and opportunities of the Atlantic World.
