Homegrown Grains: The Key to Food Security

By Gene Logsdon, Chelsea Green Publishing. Posted May 27, 2009.

But outside the gene-stacking laboratory, dramatic developments in grain quality and production are being achieved. Opaque-2, or high-lysine corn, with almost twice the normal amount of the proteins lysine and tryptophan in it, indicates the possibility of more improvements. Triticale, a cross between wheat and rye that does not always live up to its promises, sometimes outyields wheat, oats, rye, and barley and has more protein than ordinary corn. New varieties of oats, long known as the grain with the highest protein (excluding legume seeds like soybeans), range as high as 17 percent protein content. And the cholesterol-fighting benefits of oats are well established now. Studies of new buckwheat varieties have prompted the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service to announce that this traditional crop, which made something of a comeback in the 1990s, has an amino acid composition nutritionally superior to all cereals, including oats. There’s also renewed interest in traditional grains like spelt, which a few gluten-intolerant people may sometimes be able to handle in place of wheat. And, perhaps most exciting of all, Wes Jackson’s Land Institute in Kansas is developing perennial grain from wild wheatgrasses and crosses with wheatgrass and wheat. Think of what it would mean if we could plant a grain like we would any other grass, and harvest it every year without any planting or soil cultivation needed.

All sorts of projects seeking to develop traditional grains and keep them inviolate from GMO grains are ongoing. The Farmers Breeding Club of the Northern Plains Sustainable Agricultural Society is a project linked to a series of organic-variety trials with small grains being conducted through a partnership between organic growers and agronomists at North Dakota State University and the University of Minnesota (www.npsas.org/BreedingClub.html). In another example, Canadians are bringing old heritage varieties of wheat back into circulation, and using them in bread making (http://members.shaw.ca/oldwheat/).

This is probably as good a place as any to say something I will probably repeat until you get tired of reading it. I have discarded almost all of the general references to sources of grain information that were in the first edition. They were either outdated or too general to be helpful. The best way to stay abreast of new information on grains is to use the search engine of your choice on the Internet. Everything is on the Internet. But even better than that is to involve yourself in local activities in small-scale farming. There are all sorts of new organizations and efforts in place that amaze me, even though I thought I was more or less in the flow of this information. For example, I was looking for places where a small grain grower could get a small amount of seed cleaned (by and by I will talk about the need for seed cleaning). In earlier days, every farmer had a seed cleaner. Now, hardly anyone does. I was about to write that you would have to take your grain to an elevator or farm-supply service to get it cleaned when I happened to check the membership directory of the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association (OEFFA), of which I am a member. To my surprise, not only did one of our members offer seed-cleaning services at his garden farm, but he lived just a few miles from me in the same county.

Organizations like OEFFA flourish in nearly every state now, certainly in every geographical region. Home in on them. They all have newsletters about their projects, and these newsletters contain advertising from other garden farmers about the products and services they offer. This is up-to-the-minute information, which no book can promise. My latest favorite "find" is the Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society mentioned above.

Almost all grains can be sprouted to make delicious salads, and in some ways are more nutritious than the dried grain. Beans, clover (especially alfalfa), and wheat make excellent sprouts for human consumption. But oats and barley, in addition to wheat, can be sprouted and fed to chickens and livestock as farmers sometimes do. That kind of feed supplement can keep farm animals healthy and well-fed even in winter without today’s expensive all-vitamins-included commercial feed.

Corn sprouts win no prize for taste, but corn makes up for that lack with other advantages. Sweet corn and popcorn are two of our most popular foods, but corn can also be parched, pickled (corn salad), or made into hominy. Popcorn made the national news in 2008 because of the prices being charged for it at movie houses. I found that simply ridiculous. There is nothing easier to grow than popcorn, or easier to prepare for eating. Pioneers in the Corn Belt survived some winters almost entirely on a diet of corn. They cracked, ground, grated, boiled, parched, squeezed, flaked, and baked it into porridges, cakes, muffins, dodgers, and "pone."

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Gene Logsdon farms in Upper Sandusky, Ohio. He has published more than two dozen books; his Chelsea Green books include Small-Scale Grain Raising (Second Edition), Living at Nature's Pace, The Contrary Farmer's Invitation to Gardening, Good Spirits, and The Contrary Farmer. He writes a popular blog at OrganicToBe.org, is a regular contributor to Farming magazine and The Draft Horse Journal, and writes an award-winning weekly column in the Carey, Ohio Progressor Times.

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