lijstje: History of wheat

Wheat is man’s staple food, although around the year 2000 maize and rice are passing wheat by. Its history is that of humanity. The history in 15 steps:

1. 12.000 years ago: Due to melting ice in North America that cools the oceans, the ice resumes for another 11 centuries. Western Asia becomes cooler and drier, people in what is now Syria start to depend much more on wild grass seeds in stead of acorns and gazelles.
2. 11.000 years ago: in the area which is now south-eastern Turkey, agriculture starts as people begin to cultivate rye, chickpeas and then einkorn and emmer, two ancestors of wheat. Later barley comes in. Tools and cooking (making more plants digestable) were known. But it is unclear why it happened: by accident, inspiration or desparation?
3. 10.000 years ago: agriculture made population grow inevitable and in a few generations wheat farmers where on the march. By 5.000 years ago they reached Ireland, Spain, Ethiopia, India and (4.000 years ago) China, where paddy rice was still thousands of years in the future.
4. 9.000 years ago: people domesticated cattle, to upgrade wheat into milk and meat, and to get manure as fertilizer.
5. 6.000 years ago: the plough was invented to break up the seed bed and bury weeds. Another step in intensification.
6. 3rd century BC, China: the horse collar is invented, so that horses can replace oxen and drag greater weights faster.
7. 1701 AD, Berkshire (England): Farmer Jethro Tull devises a simple seed drill based on organ pipes, which results in eight times as many grains harvested for each one sowed.
8. 1798: Thomas Maltus forcasts a population crash, based on the idea that each new baby can make more babies, each new field of grain leaves less new land to cultivate. In 1815 a gigantic vulcanic eruption at Tambora, Indonesia, leads to the famous ‘year without a summer’ driving wheat prices to an all time high; Maltus was at the height of his fame, but in the 19th century he was proved wrong (for the moment) as large new areas in the Americas (USA, Argentina) came under the plough.
9. 1830: break crops, like legumes, nor manure could overcome the problem of depletion of soils. Experts show that extra nitrogen, phosphorus and and potassium are needed. Old European battlefeeds where searched for bones. Then in 1830 guano was found: immens layers of bird droppings on coasts rich of sea birds in South America and South Africa. The island of Ichaboe (South Africa) was in 1843 the site for a real guano rush, with battles and mutiny. At the end of the 19th century nitrate mines in Chili replace guano.
10. 19th century: the tractor replaces the horse. The replacement of draft animals by machines released about 25% more land for growing food for human consumption.
11. July 2, 1909: Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch from BASF, a German chemical company, combine nitrogen (from the air) and hydrogen (from coal) to make ammonia. It helps the German war campaign, as they are cut off from Chiliean nitratates for nitrogen explosives. Artificial fertilizers are a more peaceful application.
12. 1949: In General Douglas McArthur’s team in Japan at the end of the second world war, a wheat expert called Cecil Salmon collects 16 varieties of wheat including ‘Norin 10’, that grows half of the usual length. He sends it to Orville Vogel in Oregon, who starts crossing it into other wheats to make new short-strawed varieties. This to overcome the nitrogen by-effect that crops grow taller and thicker than usual with a high risk of felling over to wind and rot.
13. 1952: the news of Vogel’s wheat comes to Norman Borlaug in a Mexican research station. Within a few years he produces wheat that yields three times as much as before. In 1963 95% of Mexico’s wheat was Borlaug’s variety.
14. 1961: Borlaug is invited to India that was on the brink of mass famine. It was at the time that environmentalist Paul Ehrlich wrote a Maltusian best-seller arguing that the world had too many people and India could and should not be saved: mass starvation is inevitable. Borlaug starts testing in 1963. By 1974 India wheat production had tripled and India was self-sufficient in food, In 1970 Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for firing the first shot in the ‘green revolution’.
15. 1983: genetic modification is introduced as a gentler, safer, more rational and more predictable alternative to mutation breeding, that started in the 1950s by using irridation, harsh carcinogenic chemicals like ethyl methane sulphonate, and other methods to damange DNA. Around 1998 green pressure groups put the GM issue on top of their agenda’s, although 200 million acres are grown with it, with good effects on yields, pesticide use, biodiversity and costs.
    
    Taken from: ‘Ears of plenty – the story of wheat’, The Economist, December 24, 2005.