Homegrown Grains: The Key to Food Security

Homegrown Grains: The Key to Food Security

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

OK, you've mastered tomatoes and peppers -- but how about learning how to grow grains in your own yard?

I remember the first year we grew grains in our garden. A good gardening buddy dropped by one day early in July just when our wheat was ripe and ready to harvest. He didn’t know that though. His reason for stopping was to show me two splendid, juicy tomatoes picked ripe from his garden. After a few ritual brags -- and knowing full well that my tomatoes were still green -- he asked me in a condescending sort of way what was new in my garden. I remembered the patch of ripe wheat.

"Yeah. Sure. Until you’ve tasted pancakes fresh from the garden, you haven’t lived."

"And where might I find these pancakes growing?" he queried sarcastically, to humor my madness.

"Right up there behind the chicken coop in that little patch of wheat. All you have to do is thresh out a cupful or two, grind the grain in the blender, mix up some batter and into the skillet. Not even Aunt Jemima in all her glory can make pancakes like those."

My friend didn’t believe me until I showed him, step by step. We cut off a couple of armloads of wheat stalks, flailed the grain from the heads onto a piece of clean cloth (with a plastic toy ball bat), winnowed the chaff from the grain, ground the grain to flour in the blender, made batter, and fried pancakes. Topped them with real maple syrup. Sweet ecstasy. My friend forgot all about his tomatoes. The next year, he invited me over for grain sorghum cookies, proudly informing me that grain sorghum flour made pastries equal to, if not better than, whole wheat flour. Moreover, grain sorghum was easier to thresh. I had not only made another convert to growing grains in the garden, but one who had quickly taught me something.

Grow Your Own Grains

The reason Americans find it a bit weird to grow small plots or rows of grain in gardens is that they are not used to thinking of grains as food directly derived from plants, the way they view fruits and vegetables. The North American, unlike most of the world’s peoples, especially Asians and Africans, thinks grain is something manufactured in a factory somewhere. Flour is to be purchased like automobiles and pianos. Probably this attitude came from the practice of hauling grains to the gristmill in past agrarian times. Without the convenience of small power grinders and blenders of today, overworked housewives of earlier times were only too glad to have hubby haul the grain to the gristmill. And that gave him an excuse to sit around all day at the mill talking to his neighbors.

But even with the advent of convenient kitchen aids to make grain cookery easier, the American resists. He will work hard at the complex task of making wine -- seldom with a whole lot of success -- but will not grind whole wheat or corn into nutritious meal, a comparatively easy task. I know, because I was that way myself. Until I saw with my own eyes that a good ten-speed blender or kitchen mill could turn grain into flour, I hesitated. Now it boggles my mind to remember that for most of my life I lived right next to acres and acres of amber waves of grain, where combines made the threshing simplicity itself, and yet our family always bought all our meal and flour.

The real tragedy of that ignorance was that the flour we purchased usually was the kind that had been de-germed and de-branned too. Most of the nutrition had been taken out of that flour to give the American home cook what she seemed to want: a pure white powder that would last indefinitely on the shelf and make pastries of fluffy, empty calories.

What has sparked a new, or renewed, interest in homegrown grains is the dramatic rise in grain prices, and rumors of shortages worldwide, that occurred in 2007. Whether these high prices and shortages are the result of ever-rising populations in so-called third world countries, the dramatic increase in the price of oil, or the greater use of corn and other food plants for making biofuels, we can’t say for sure. Nor can we predict whether these conditions will continue. But we have been warned. For a whole host of reasons, it is time to think about growing your own bread.

The nutritional picture for whole grains is getting better all the time, thanks to the progress being made by plant geneticists. There are, first of all, the problematical GMO advances (genetically modified grains), which make modern chemical and large-scale farming easier. It is too early to predict what this development will mean for the future. So far, these genetic wonder plants haven’t meant bigger yields or haven’t produced a farming method that third world (or perhaps even first world) countries can afford. But some of these developments, which can stack disease-attacking genes into grains (or into products like milk from cloned animals) may indeed have medicinal value and justification. It’s too soon to know.