Went to a presentation a couple weeks ago about heirloom grains. The guy doing the presentation was a farmer living in eastern washington. He has been cultivating several varieties of heirloom grains and pulses on his farm that only gets 8 inches of water a year! Since industrialization has wiped out most of our old world grain production, there is very little heirloom grain seed that is sold commercially. This farmer had to start with a gram of seeds (a small handful) that he received from a federal seed-bank. He grew that small number and started doing his own selection and cultivation. Thus, it took him several years to be able to grow enough quantity and quality to sell.Modern industrial agriculture grains are grown for qualities like lodge resistance, ease of transportation, hulling, dependablility on chemical fertizers and herbicides, endosperm size, etc. This kind of grain production is not only harming the soil, but is becoming less and less nutritious for us to eat. For example, modern wheat grown is selected to produce less bran and germ because most wheat is refined into white flour. We're constantly breeding out of our food the very stuff that we should actually be eating more of!
This same logic is followed in many elements of grain production. Another example is the height of the grain. The taller the grain the more subject it is to lodging (falling over due to wind). This doesn't harm the grain but makes it more difficult to harvest. Modern grains have now been bred to be much shorter, a seemlingly beneficial solution right? Well, because the plants are grown to be shorter, their roots now don't grow very deep leading to less nutrient uptake and more dependence on artificial fertilizer/hebicides and irrigation. Well thats just great! We're breeding grain to be less nutritious and more dependent on inputs and chemicals. Who is this benefiting??
There are many examples of why heirloom grains are superior to grow and to eat, I encourage people to do some research, its very fascinating! The reason that we don't know more about this is that heirloom grains don't fit well into our capitalistically driven society that is powered by 'cheap' oil and greed. Our shallow understanding of agricultural 'efficiency' has led us to do some extremely devastating things to our land and our bodies. Heirloom grains are just one example.
So go buy some spelt, emmer, and teff! Check them out http://www.lentzspelt.com/
