Complex Numbers

Against the Grain

This is just something I thought was interesting.

This Nearly Lost Ancient Grain Tradition Could Be the Future of Farming  
A past global staple you’ve never heard of, maslins are poised for a comeback.

And yes, I'd never heard of maslins.

And instead of sowing the seeds of a single grain in orderly rows, spread a mix of grains all over the field, “mimicking nature so crops have random distribution patterns, as in natural forests,” he says. Once harvested, these grain mixtures could be turned into many things: nutritious bread, a kind of roasted-grain trail mix called kolo, beer, and the potent clear spirit known as areki.

You had me at beer.

“We’ll plant the things that go together and are compatible with each other,” Zemede says. “Our farmers are good at mirroring nature.”

One might ask, if you're just going to mirror nature, why not just take what's already in nature? Well, there's just not enough of it for our teeming masses.

Ethiopia is one of the few places in the world where farmers still grow maslins, the general term for different varieties and species of grain that are sown in the same field, or intercropped. Maslins sustained humans for millennia, possibly predating the rise of agriculture more than 10,000 years ago.

Predating or predicting? Or was it a step in that direction?

These grain mixtures tend to be more resilient to pests and drought, and to lend more complex flavors to breads, beer, and booze.

And now I want to try some.

Worldwide, maslins fell out of favor long ago, replaced nearly everywhere by sprawling, single-grain monoculture—but a small and passionate group of scientists, including Zemede, is hoping to change that.

There are, of course, advantages to monocultures (the article goes into that a little bit), which is why people plant single crops in the first place.

The fact that maslins are grown today only in Ethiopia and pockets of Georgia, Eritrea, and a handful of other countries belies how widespread they once were.

One of those countries is not like the others...

One time, I was in Vegas and found out a dealer was from Eritrea. "Do you know where that is?" she asked, clearly expecting ignorance.

"East Africa, near Ethiopia," I said.

She was, indeed, surprised. Look, I don't know everything, but I'm pretty good at looking at maps.

Today, Ethiopian farmers are feeling the pressure to grow modern monoculture crops, thanks in part to a national push to become an agricultural powerhouse. “If you export grains, you want them to be uniform,” says McAlvay. “The global market wants a certain type of wheat for their Wonder Bread. A mixture of three varieties of wheat and four varieties of barley with some other things thrown in really doesn’t make the cut.”

The obvious problem there is that Wonder Bread is basically shit.

The grain mixes also appear to have natural resistance to pests, from insects to fungal diseases. While a pest adapted to attack one species of grain will have a field day, no pun intended, when set loose in a monoculture crop, it won’t be able to jump from plant to plant if the individual it attacks is surrounded by other kinds of grain, McAlvay explains.

No. Own it. Own that pun. Revel in it.

There's a lot more at the article, which, like I said, is just something I found interesting. I just hope I don't have to go all the way to Ethiopia to try the beer.