What will we do when the wheat is all gone??? The city mouse talks about bread.

Hope is the poor man's bread.

Somehow I started watching a video about "Poor Man's bread" that was bread made from various flours in the 1700's and early 1800's.  This popularity of this type of bread has waxed and waned in popularity at times when wheat production faltered for whatever reason.

The history of bread is an interesting one and their have been lots of substitutes for wheat bread throughout times of drought or diseases; or when other issues like poor soil and wheat diseases affected production.  Wheat has always been the preferred crop when it came to bread.

While wheat farming practices and yields have certainly increased since the late 1700's this most important of crops face new problems in a ever heating world.

I started to wonder....could some of these substitutes make sense in today's world?  Or better yet, what about the world of tomorrow?  What would replace wheat bread if the crops failed today?

Quick searches for things like bean bread and pea bread lead to a few interesting options, including bread that was boiled and not baked like breads are normally.  

While at the time of this writing, I'm not sure if I want to explore any of these recipes but I do find them interesting.  It just goes to show you the ingenuity of our ancestors who found a way.  If we are going to find a way out of this mess, then we have to be as creative as our ancestors were 200 years ago.

The question for me is how do you change a food culture?  Why did wheat bread, and wheat in general become such a staple crop for billions the world over?  

Is there some way to change that in today's world?  What, if anything is going to replace wheat?  Would we be willing to eat it?

Sadly lots of studies have been already done concerning global warming and wheat production.  They all tell the same story, production has been falling as temperatures rise. Depending on the study that production is between 1 - 10% of the yield for each degree of temperature.

Wheat is a staple crop for roughly 35% of the Worlds population or roughly 3 Billion people.  To think of it another way that is roughly the population of India and China combined.  Wheat is the staple crop for most of Africa and the Middle East, where nearly all of it is imported so any disaster to the wheat crop would create huge famines in a part of the world that is already racked by food security issues.

As such science has been working on gene modification and other techniques to grow heartier and more drought resistant wheat.   While I applaud these efforts, it still doesn't address the elephant in the room.  What happens if our wheat production fails?

Corn and Rice will most likely replace wheat production in the coming years but rice production actually produces roughly 10% of the world's agricultural emissions.  Rice production also results in methane gas production.  Rice is currently the fourth most grown crop in the world.

However, improved farming techniques could reduce methane production and actually aid in carbon sequestration.   American farmers using these techniques have shown methane production to have fallen by anywhere from 65 - 90% while using 38% less water.   At this time I'm not sure how that effects crop yield and research is ongoing but this work is promising.

Corn production has been under attack in the past for it's heavy use of pesticides and nitrogen based fertilizers which, to it's credit, the industry has addressed, but it is still a labor intensive crop.  However it generally does well in warming climates and can be drought resistant. 

An "ancient grain" like Amaranah has potential because they are very similar nutritionally to cereal grains like wheat and,despite its small grains, is capable of corn like production numbers.  It requires less water to grow and every part of the plant is edible.   While this plant is not generally considered a major production crop, its benefits outweigh it negatives and it's biggest hurdle to overcome is a general lack of knowledge on how to grow Amaranah and a limited availability of its seeds.    Plus a general lack of recipes where it is the star of the plate.

It's a well known fact that legumes and pulses - things like fava beans, lentils, cowpeas and chickpeas - are not only healthy and nutritious but require less fertilizer.  However here in America beans have often been seen as just a side dish, or a "poor mans" food.    

How do you change deep seated feelings about food?   How do you win hearts and minds?  

I've written about different food sources before, I've praised the lowly Dandelion and frankly a lot of climate friendly foods I've not discussed here like okra, mushrooms and sweet potatoes.  

I'm not a vegan nor am I a vegetarian but I am smart enough to know that changing my diet is one of the easiest things I can do to fight climate change.   It's also hard.  

Change is always hard but it's needed.  It is necessary. It is going to happen regardless of our feelings or politics or choices.  All we can do is try to understand it, prepare for it and do our best.  

**I'm including this link here because it's still being researched but it's an ancient technique that shows promise in grain production.  https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2023/01/ancient-farming-strategy-holds-promise-climate-resilience**