When I see the letters "FAO," of course I think of F.A.O. Schwartz the toy company.
But when I write "FAO" here I mean the Food & Agriculture Organization, which is run by the United Nations. I came across a reference to the FAO in The Economist, citing a statistic which startled me:
By 2050, if we're going to feed the world, we'll need about 70 percent food than we needed in 2009. I could throw some numbers at you, but this graphic from the FAO tells the story.
The world population is creeping up toward eight billion human beings. And the one thing every one of these people has in common: we eat.
And in one of those inverse-ratio, teeter-totter situations,
the mass of humanity is bulking up and the amount of land where things grow is smaller and smaller. Adding to the problem. there's climate change. Dought, storms, rising coastlines, and temperature changes which are affecting the lives of people who grow what they eat.
And speaking of growing, because the acreage we devote to farmland is shrinking, crops have to be high-yield and that means farmers all over the world grow a lot of just a few bsic grain varieties. If microbes obliterate one of the most common types of wheat or corn, we'd be in trouble.
Bummer, huh?
But there's hope.
You and I, reader, are not the only ones who have noticed this issue. Lots of dedicated people are trying to find solutions for potential future food gaps.
There are people growing food on rooftops. People are "second harvesting" food that was about to be thrown away at grocery stores. Disease-prone crops are being genetically modified to keep them from dying off. There are more efficient ways to irrigate. The same climate changes which do damage in some areas also allow food to be flourish in other areas.
Buckwheat's one of the food crops which helps fill in the food gap. This has always been true. Since the 700s, when a Japanese imperial decree got farmers growing buckwheat to help alleviate a famine, to Eastern Europe, when people could eat kasha when there was nothing else to be had during whatever the current war was, buckwheat has been there for people.
Buckwheat can help solve the problem of feeding the world for four basic reasons:
1. It's easy to store and transport. The same dark hard hull which makes buckwheat hard to grind into flour is also the protection which keeps buckwheat seed from going bad. Heat and cold don't bother it. Disease and insects don't bother it. The kernels can just sit wherever they are, for a long time, and still be ready to plant.
This website has a chart which shows how long seeds can be stored and still sprout when planted.
2. Buckwheat will grow in terrible soil, and it will improve the soil it grows in. We're running out of good agricultural space, and what there is has been spoken for. We've got to grow some of our food in our back yards and in our vacant lots.
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| https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/ype5kj/how-refugees-are-growing-food-from-their-homelands-in-inner-city-philadelphia |
3. Unlike crops like sweet corn, which requires lots of nutrient material, buckwheat will grow even in crummy dirt. And it's easy to plant. It can be cast by hand, like this guy is doing.
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The ground doesn't even have to be tilled up. If you can see dirt, you can throw buckwheat seed down on that dirt. No need to dig!
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| https://twobirdsintherafters.com/page/2/ |
Of course, the plants will grow better if the soil is worked a bit to soften it, and if the weeds are pulled up. But anywhere something else is not already growing, a buckwheat kernel on the ground will start to grow when rain comes down to soften the soil and the sun comes out enough to warmt hings up a bit.
4. Buckwheat is super-easy to harvest. it's not easy to take the hulls off if you're a home gardener, though a regular commercial flour mill will do the job. But the hulls can be ground up with the inner groat, using a coffee grinder or something similar. And the process of separating seeds from the stalk is so much faster and easier than traditional threshing and winnowing of grains like wheat or rye.
Good information about harvesting buckwheat is found in the book Homegrown Whole Grains by Sara Pitzer, Storey, 2009 (reprint of 1981 book Whole Grains published by Garden Way, Inc.).
PIC OF HOMEGROWN
And here's a YouTube video on the subject.
Good information about harvesting buckwheat is found in the book Homegrown Whole Grains by Sara Pitzer, Storey, 2009 (reprint of 1981 book Whole Grains published by Garden Way, Inc.).
PIC OF HOMEGROWN
And here's a YouTube video on the subject.
5. Buckwheat grows fast. The seeds can mature as soon as ten weeks after they are plnated. Silverhull buckwheat has the shortest growing cycle, and common buckwheat takes just a week or two longer.
That's seed to seed in a little over three months. Really fast for a food plant! Buckwheat is used as a cover crop to keep the soil in place after another crop has been harvested, and it's usually just plowed under to feed the soil. But the groats could be harvested for food, in between the times the field is being used to grow other crops. And because the cycle is so short, a field dedicated to buckwheat can be harvested twice; the first crop can be pulled up to make room for a second crop in the same season.
6. Buckwheat is surprisingly nutritious. For example, it's a good source of protein. Other grains have protein too, but often these are not complete or not fully usable by the body. Buckwheat is superior in this area. The protein in buckwheat is high-quality with all the amino acids. Not only do the buckwheat seeds provide what the body needs, but the more protein we can get from plant foods, the fewer animal proteins (inefficient sources for expanding populations) we need. A bonus: buckwheat also has a lot of good minerals for health. Lack of trace minerals can cause all kinds of issues in basic health and quality of life, and an abundance of these minerals is a real boon.
MINERAL CHART
6. Buckwheat is surprisingly nutritious. For example, it's a good source of protein. Other grains have protein too, but often these are not complete or not fully usable by the body. Buckwheat is superior in this area. The protein in buckwheat is high-quality with all the amino acids. Not only do the buckwheat seeds provide what the body needs, but the more protein we can get from plant foods, the fewer animal proteins (inefficient sources for expanding populations) we need. A bonus: buckwheat also has a lot of good minerals for health. Lack of trace minerals can cause all kinds of issues in basic health and quality of life, and an abundance of these minerals is a real boon.
MINERAL CHART
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