Paper short abstract:

Millets have become globally iconic of reparative and restorative approaches to food production and consumption. In Senegal, cooks and cultivators engage with millet to critique modern foodways, while acknowledging the complexities of "returning" to historical diets.

Paper long abstract:

Millets are increasingly imagined as a panacea for ecological, economic and public health challenges. Healing bodies, restoring landscapes, creating climate-safe agricultural solutions, and challenging the dominance of rice, wheat and maize: millets promise healthy and sustainable futures. This paper explores why millets have become globally iconic of efforts of reparative and restorative approaches to food production and consumption. Drawing on long term ethnographic research in Senegal, the paper traces the production, marketing, processing and preparation of millets across laboratories, households and marketplaces. I argue that daily encounters with millets stimulate critiques of modern foodways and consumption practices and enable encounters with an “traditional” past of healthy and appropriate eating. Reanimating the past, however, is not straightforward, and scientists, cooks and cultivators also experience ambivalence as they promote millets as the solution to interlocking economic, ecological and nutritional crises.