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| Wheat, rye and triticale, montage of pictures from the USDA (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Plants give most of the world’s people their ‘staple’ food, the basic food they need for survival. They include fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices, and cereals. Fruits and vegetables provide us with most of the vitamins we need to keep us healthy. They also make some of the most delicious foods and drinks that we enjoy. Cereals are the world’s most important foods - including wheat, rice, maize, barley, oats and rye - and they are all grasses. We usually eat their seeds, or ‘grain’, leaving the stalks and leaves to rot to make silage to feed animals.
Wheat is the most important of cereals. It was first cultivated in the Middle East over 12,000 years ago from the wild grass emmer. Now it provides the basic food for more than a third of the world’s population. Wheat grain is usually ground into flour to make bread and pasta and many other things.
How many plants can be eaten?
There are over 12,000 species of edible plants, but only under 100 are usually grown as crops.
What are root crops?
Root crops are plants cultivated mainly for their big, solid roots, such as potatoes, yams, cassava and manioc. These roots are in rich in carbohydrates; the food we need for energy.
Green Revolution
Green Revolution refers to a series of research, development, and technology transfer initiatives, occurring between the 1940s and the late 1970s, that increased agriculture production around the world, beginning most markedly in the late 1960s. Farmers in Europe and North America began growing special ‘high-yield’ varieties of wheat, rice and maize. These grew so fast and big that they gave bumper harvests - sometimes more than twice a year. Soon, the idea was adopted in India and elsewhere.
Effects of Green Revolution
High-yield crops only give big harvests if the land is well watered and the farmer uses a lot of fertilizer, pesticides and machines - farmers now need to apply ten times as much nitrogen fertilizer to keep the soil fertile as they did years ago. This not only poses much greater strains on the environment, but also means small farmers may be put in debt to the suppliers of
fertilizers, pesticides and seeds.
Where does chocolate come from?
Chocolate is made with cocoa powder, ground up from the roasted and fermented beans of cacao pods. The pods are the fruit of the cacao tree, which came originally from the Andes mountains in South America, but is now grown mainly in West Africa and the Caribbean.
What is a Combined Harvester?
A machine which both cuts the wheat from the ground and separates the grain from the stalks.
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