The politics of grains

Part 8 of commodities vs. just food

The staff of life, they call bread. It is one of the oldest human-made foods, significantly since the dawn of agriculture. In bread-eating cultures like ours, some form of bread is often included in all three of the main meals of the day - toast at breakfast, sandwiches at lunch, and a roll with dinner. Yet given that most bread in Australia is made from wheat (with a much lower production of rye and other breads), what should you know about where and how it is produced, processed and sold? And what about the other grains, such as rice and maize (corn), which combined with wheat, comprise two thirds of all the food eaten in the world?

In what came to be called the ‘Green Revolution’ of the 1960s and 1970s, the wide application of dwarf genes, combined with the increased application of chemical fertilizer greatly promoted the increase of wheat yield - but at what cost? Compared with the wild type of wheat, the dwarf gene led not only to increased nitrogen fertilizer requirement, but also to lower grain protein content. Diminishing protein content in bread was further compounded by the development of the Chorleywood Bread Process (CBP) in 1961. Compared to traditional bread-making, CBP uses more yeast, added fats, chemicals, and high-speed mixing to allow the dough to be made with lower-protein wheat, and produces bread in a shorter time. Industrially-made bread also contains more FODMAP carbohydrates, which give many people gastrointestinal distress and for some, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). The research shows that the shorter fermentation time in industrial bread production is a bigger contributor even than industrial grains, which if fermented slowly, do not cause the same level of gut issues. However, the pesticide and chemical fertiliser use in industrial grain production are obviously still devastating for ecosystems and human health, and the majority of commodity grains are destined for ultra-processed food (UPF), animal feed, cosmetics and biofuels. The fact that they add niacin to bread does not redeem it as a UPF, it tells you it is UPF.

From the annihilation of microbial life in soils to the destruction of human microbiomes, UPF fails to nourish land or people at any stage, while constituting as much as 42 per cent of the average Australian diet.

But there is good news. The late John Reid, a revolutionary in disguise as a legendary baker, who I was privileged to call friend and comrade, coined the phrase ‘sliced white death’ to epitomise what he and the rest of the GrAiNZ community are working to make obsolete through biodynamic, organic and small-scale diversified and heritage-grain production, milling and sourdough baking. Rejecting monocultures of Green Revolution derivatives of wheat in favour of highly nutritious heritage wheats, ryes, spelt, emmer, einkorn, triticale and more, John and others in Australia have been leading a movement to de-commodify perhaps the most stubborn commodities of all. There is also a slow renaissance of native grains gaining attention here in what is now called Australia, though with far too many settlers seeking to benefit from their development without First Peoples’ consent. I am also privileged to call friend and comrade one of the leaders of the native grains movement, Gamilaraay man Jacob Birch, who envisions a future where First Nations people are engaging with all types of food production to increase food security, food diversity and as a way of strengthening culture through re-establishing First Nations foodways.

Hierarchy of decisions

GROW: Growing and baking with your own grains is of course, best for you, your family and the planet. And contrary to what many of us have been led to believe, it does not take as much space as you might think to grow your own wheat or other bread grains. We can produce 25kg of hard winter wheat from just four 12-metre garden beds, which is about a third of our bread-making need for the year. I supplement with freshly milled flour from local farms who are part of the GrAiNZ movement mentioned before. As for maize, one row produces enough polenta or masa (for tortillas) for the year. We can’t easily grow rice here as we have nowhere near enough water in what would be a very short growing season, so we buy it in bulk from places where it is appropriate to grow rice - Pakistani basmati and Thai jasmine are our standards.

BARTER: Unless you are good mates with one of the growing number of small-scale grain producers, you’re unlikely to be able to barter grain for something you produce, but we have had the pleasure of swapping some bacon for our heritage red wheat from Tuerong.

BUY: The reality is that most people are going to continue to buy flour for the foreseeable future, though a growing number of home enthusiasts have bought small stone mills to grind their own grain bought from local farms. That is definitely a delicious and nutritious step up from buying most flours, but those same farms that you can buy grain from also sell freshly milled flour. You can increasingly find these local flours sold through farm websites or at farmers’ markets. Shopping at an independent grocer might also provide access to locally grown or milled flours. If you are buying industrial flour through a retail outlet, try to buy organic, and failing that, read the ingredients - many flours are full of stabilisers or ‘enriched’ with vitamins and minerals. Try to buy the least processed flour available to you for best nutrition and digestibility.

Read like the Jonai

Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, by James C. Scott. 2017. Yale University Press.

The Agricultural Dilemma: How not to feed the world, by Glenn Davis Stone. 2022. Routledge.

Dark Emu, by Bruce Pascoe. 2014. Magabala Books.

[NB This is an excerpt from my cookbook Eat Like the Jonai: Ethical, ecologically sound, socially just, and uncommonly delicious - for sale on our website. The anarchist’s-handbook-disguised-as-a-cookbook is a fundraiser for our on-farm collective micro-abattoir.]