Forgetting the secrets of ancient crops could threaten our health
What connects the cannabis plant and cereal wheat? The answer is that, while ancient farmers used both, they would be perplexed by their modern variants. Chinese farmers first started to grow hemp to use for ropes, clothing, paper and other materials. But analyses of this ancient marijuana find that it has relatively paltry levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive component it is now known for.
The exact date that ancient agricultural workers discovered and enhanced the mind-altering properties of the cannabis plant is unknown to us, but academic consensus is that it may have occurred in central Asia at least 2,500 years ago. Wheat has had a more straightforward evolution: its use as a source of sustenance is older than agriculture. Although we may never discover when the first hunter-gatherer baked bread, we do know that they were making bread at least 14,000 years ago. Since the first loaf, wheat has increased in importance but diminished in stature. The much taller fields depicted in ancient hieroglyphs and by early modern artists such as Pieter Bruegel the Elder are not artistic licence: they reflect the reality of the day (although hieroglyphs may exaggerate somewhat).
Both weed and wheat have been refined and developed over time by farmers, a process that has greatly accelerated for both since the second world war. During the third agricultural revolution, modern techniques and technological transfers allowed farmers to grow more reliable, more tasty, more resilient and more lucrative crops. In the world of wheat, the man who bears more credit than any other for this transformation is Norman Borlaug, the American agronomist. The shorter, more disease-resistant crop he helped develop and introduce in Mexico, India and Pakistan is credited with saving more than a billion people worldwide.
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Stephen Bush
