There is a moment in the agricultural year, in communities across West Africa, when the best seed is set aside before anything else happens.

Not the most abundant seed. Not the largest. The best — the ones that came from the strongest plants, that held through the dry season, that tasted the way the good ones always taste. These seeds do not go to market. They do not go to the cooking pot. They go to the woman of the household, who stores them in clay vessels, in dried gourds, in the rafters above the hearth where the smoke keeps the insects away.

This is how it has been done for thousands of years across the Sahel, the forest zones, and the coastal regions of West Africa. The seed is not a commodity. It is a responsibility. And for much of recorded history, that responsibility has been carried by women....