“Only in the past century, as wheat squeezed through a genetic bottleneck of uniformity of flour blends intended for mass-produced breads, has the wealth of wheat biodiversity been forgotten.” (Rogosa, p. 24)
“Just as today the organic farmer understands we need to nourish the soil and the earthworms in order for the earth to to be fertile, the ancient Israelis not only enriched the soil with animal waste, compost, ash, dried blood, fallowing, and crop rotations but believed that it was necessary to feed the people in order for the earth to be fruitful. Ancient Israelites believed that soil fertility was based on food justice.” (Rogosa, p. 131).
It has been a long time since it was a secret that our food systems are monopolized by big names, that the supply chain is not sustainable, and that the methods of production focus on profitability rather than nutrition and environmental responsibility. However, Restoring Ancient Grains by Eli Rogosa goes far beyond what has made its way into the minds of the average consumer and explores just how deeply the wounds of mono-cropping and genetic modification have become over the last century.
As a student of plant fibers and textiles, when Rogosa states that “only in the past century, as wheat squeezed through a genetic bottleneck of uniformity of flour blends intended for mass-produced breads, has the wealth of wheat biodiversity been forgotten.” (Rogosa, p. 24) and continues to tell the tale of the complications that have arisen from a market that has become globalized and dependent on an array of fertilizers, pesticides, and fungicides, it sounds all too familiar to the countless studies done on modern day cotton crops. Similarly, the way the industry has adapted to the mechanization of bread production sounds eerily similar to the way the clothing industry has adapted to industrialized textile creation.
While reading Restoring Ancient Grains, I was made aware of just how vast the amount of wild (and domesticated) varieties of wheat are edible and suitable for baking with. But perhaps more importantly, I was made aware of how hardy the wild varieties can be and of how different species have evolved to fit certain climates thanks to traditional farmers and seed savers. This makes me wonder if the global use of G. Herbaceum cotton for textiles is something that should be re-examined and if there are not more “wild” alternatives to the sustainable fashion industry.
Interestingly enough, when Rogosa says to “follow the money” in order to see where our food systems have gone wrong, the rest of the book shows that when you look where the money is lacking, you find centuries of survivors who have adapted with their surroundings and have used the plants that were available to them instead of being able to afford imported goods. In the same way that you had rural farmers saving the seeds of landrace wheats to bake into traditional cuisine, Swedish peasants learned how to create fabric from nettle (known as “the peasant’s linen”) that grew abundantly nearby because they could not afford the heavily imported linen garments of the upper class.
Because landrace wheats were not bred to be mono-cropped or mass produced, it is much harder to manage them in an industrialized manner. You cannot rely on machines to knead them and you certainly cannot pack breads baked with this wheat into shipping containers and expect them to last the journey over to a different continent. This is yet another parallel to the issues we are seeing in today’s textiles. Instead of being made meticulously by hand to last for ages, they are made to fall apart in order to sustain the worldwide demand for new trends.
Rogosa takes our modern day issues with globalized crops to a very spiritual place. She states that “just as today the organic farmer understands we need to nourish the soil and the earthworms in order for the earth to to be fertile, the ancient Israelis not only enriched the soil with animal waste, compost, ash, dried blood, fallowing, and crop rotations but believed that it was necessary to feed the people in order for the earth to be fruitful. Ancient Isrealites believed that soil fertility was based on food justice.” (Rogosa, p. 131). Looking at the contrast between ancient ideas of agriculture and the modern day industry has led me to ponder on these aspects of the wheat industry. As with the rest of my research into the agriculture involved with textile production, it once again brings me back to weigh the pros and cons of globalization, and if there is any way to truly find a balance between mankind’s ingenuity and an understanding of the land and plants that we are working with and rely on so heavily.