Speaker 1: Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast, where I help
Speaker 1: you drift off one fact at a time. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Benjamin Boster, and today's episode is about cereal. A cereal
Speaker 1: is a grass cultivated for its edible grain. Cereals are
Speaker 1: the world's largest crops and are therefore staple foods. They
Speaker 1: include rice, wheat, rye oats, barley, millet, and maize. Edible
Speaker 1: grains from other plant families, such as amrands, buckwheat, and quinoa,
Speaker 1: are pseudo cereals. Most cereals are annuals, producing one crop
Speaker 1: from each planting, though rice is some times grown as
Speaker 1: a perennial. Winter varieties are hardy enough to be planted
Speaker 1: in the autumn, becoming dormant in the winter and harvested
Speaker 1: in spring or early summer. Spring varieties are planted in
Speaker 1: spring and harvested in late summer. The term cereal is
Speaker 1: derived from the name of the Roman goddess of grain,
Speaker 1: crops and fertility series. Cereals were domesticated in the Neolithic
Speaker 1: around eight thousand years ago. Wheat and barley were domesticated
Speaker 1: in the Fertile Crescent. Rice and some millets were domesticated
Speaker 1: in East Asia while sorghum and other millets were domesticated
Speaker 1: in Sudan. Maize was domesticated by indigenous peoples of the
Speaker 1: Americas and Mexico about nine thousand years ago. In the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, cereal productivity was greatly increased by the Green Revolution.
Speaker 1: This increase in production is accompanied a growing international trade,
Speaker 1: with some countries producing large portions of the cereal supply
Speaker 1: for other countries. Wheat, barley, rye, and oats were gathered
Speaker 1: and eaten in the Fertile Crescent during the Early Neolithic.
Speaker 1: Cereal grains nineteen thousand years old have been found in
Speaker 1: the Ohallo two side in Israel, with charred remnants of
Speaker 1: wild wheat and barley. During the same period, farmers in
Speaker 1: China began to farm rice and millet using human made
Speaker 1: floods and fires. Of a part of their cultivation regimen.
Speaker 1: The use of soil conditioners, including manure fish composed in ashes,
Speaker 1: appears to have begun early and developed independently in areas
Speaker 1: of the world, including Mesopodamia, the Nile Valley, and Eastern Asia.
Speaker 1: Cereals that became modern barley and wheat were domesticated some
Speaker 1: eight thousand years ago. In the Fertile Crescent. Millets and
Speaker 1: rice were domesticated in East Asia, while sorghum was domesticated
Speaker 1: in Sedan. Maize arose from a single domestication in Mesoamerica
Speaker 1: about nine thousand years ago. In these agricultural regions, religion
Speaker 1: was often shaped by the divinity associated with segrain and harvests.
Speaker 1: In the Nasopotamian Creation myth, an era of civilization is
Speaker 1: inaugurated by the grain goddess Ashnan. The Roman goddess series
Speaker 1: presided over agriculture, grain crops, fertility, and motherhood. The term
Speaker 1: cereal is derived from Latin serialus of grain, originally meaning
Speaker 1: of the goddess series. Several gods of Antiquity combined agriculture
Speaker 1: and war, the Hittide Sun goddess of Arna, the canaanied Lamu,
Speaker 1: and the Roman Janus. Complex civilizations arose where serial agriculture
Speaker 1: created a surplus, allowing for part of the harvests to
Speaker 1: be appropriated from farmers, allowing power to be concentrated in cities.
Speaker 1: Between nineteen sixty four and twenty twenty three, cereal production
Speaker 1: increased by two hundred thirteen percent, mostly through higher yield
Speaker 1: harvested area rose only by ten percent. Yields of weed
Speaker 1: and rice rose in the Green Revolution, a technological change
Speaker 1: funded by development organizations. The strategies included mechanized tilling, monoculture,
Speaker 1: nitrogen fertilizers, and breeding of new strains of seeds. These
Speaker 1: innovations fended off starvation and increased yield per plant, but
Speaker 1: paid less attention to nutritional quality. The high yield cereal
Speaker 1: crops tend to have low quality proteins with essential amino
Speaker 1: acid deficiency, are high in carbohydrates, and lack balanced to
Speaker 1: essential fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals. So called ancient grains
Speaker 1: and heirloom varieties grew in popularity with the organic movements
Speaker 1: of the early twenty first century, but there is a
Speaker 1: trade off and yield prip plant putting pressure on resource
Speaker 1: poor areas as food crops are replaced with cash crops.
Speaker 1: Grain based foods are fundamental dietary staples in many regions worldwide,
Speaker 1: serving as primary sources of energy and essential nutrients. Consequently,
Speaker 1: reductions in cereal production are the most significant contributors to
Speaker 1: losses and energy and essential micronutrients such as iron, zinc, magnesium, phosphorus, diamond,
Speaker 1: and riboflavin. Cereals are grasses in the poise family that
Speaker 1: produce edible grains. A cereal grain is botanically a caryopsis,
Speaker 1: a fruit where the seed coat is fused with the pericarp.
Speaker 1: Grasses have stems that are hollow excepted the nodes, and
Speaker 1: narrow alternate leaves borne in two ranks. The lower part
Speaker 1: of each leaf encloses the stem, forming a leaf sheath.
Speaker 1: The leaf grows from the base of the blade, an
Speaker 1: adaptation that protects the growing maristem from grazing animals. The
Speaker 1: flowers are usually hermaphroditic, with the exception of maize, and
Speaker 1: mainly anemophilus or wind pollinated, although in sects occasionally play
Speaker 1: a role. Among the best known cereals are maize, rice, wheat, barley, sorghum, millet, oat, rye,
Speaker 1: and triticoe. Some other grains are colloquially called cereals, even
Speaker 1: though they are not grasses. These pseudo cereals include buckwheat, quinoa,
Speaker 1: and amaranth. All cereal crops are cultivated in a similar way.
Speaker 1: Most are annual, so after sowing they are harvested just ones.
Speaker 1: An exception is rice, which although usually treated as an annual,
Speaker 1: can survive as a perennial, producing a rattoon crop. Cereals
Speaker 1: adapted to a temperate climate, such as barley, oats, rye, spelt, tritocoli,
Speaker 1: and wheat, are called cool season cereals. Those preferring a
Speaker 1: tropical climate, such as millet and sorghum, are called warm
Speaker 1: season cereals. Cool season cereals, especially rye followed by barley,
Speaker 1: are hardy. They grow best in fairly cool weather and
Speaker 1: stop growing depending on variety, when the temperature goes above
Speaker 1: around thirty degrees celsius. Warm season cereals, in contrast, require
Speaker 1: hot weather and cannot tolerate frost. Cool season cereals can
Speaker 1: be grown in highlands in the tropics, where they sometimes
Speaker 1: deliver cereal crops in a single year. In the Tropics,
Speaker 1: warm season cereals can be grown at any time of
Speaker 1: the year. In temperate zones, these cereals can only be
Speaker 1: grown when there is no frost. Most cereals are planted
Speaker 1: in tilled soils, which reduces weeds and breaks up the
Speaker 1: surface of a field. Most cereals need regular water in
Speaker 1: the early part of their life cycle. Rice is commonly
Speaker 1: grown in flooded fields, though some strains are grown on
Speaker 1: dry land. Other warm climate cereals, such as sorghum, are
Speaker 1: adapted to arit conditions. Cool season cereals are grown mainly
Speaker 1: in temperate zones. These cereals often have both winter varieties
Speaker 1: for autumn sowing, winter dormancy and early summer harvesting, and
Speaker 1: spring varieties planted in sea spraying and harvested in late summer.
Speaker 1: Winter varieties have the advantage of using water when it
Speaker 1: is plentiful and permitting a second crop after the early harvest.
Speaker 1: They flower only in spring, as they require vernalization exposure
Speaker 1: to cold for a specific period fixed genetically. Spring crops
Speaker 1: grow when it is warmer but less rainy, so they
Speaker 1: may need irrigation. Cereal strains are bread for consistency and
Speaker 1: resilience to the local environmental conditions. Their greatest constraint on
Speaker 1: yield are plant diseases, especially rusts and powdery mildews. Fusarium
Speaker 1: head blide caused by Fusarium gramminierum is a significant limitation
Speaker 1: on a wide variety of cereals. Other pressures include pest
Speaker 1: insects and wildlife like rodents and deer. In conventional agriculture,
Speaker 1: some farmers apply fungicides or pesticides. Annual cereals die when
Speaker 1: they have come to seed and dry up. Harvestine begins
Speaker 1: once the plants and seeds are dry enough. Harvestine in
Speaker 1: mechanized agricultural systems is by combine harvester, a machine which
Speaker 1: drives across the field in a single pass in which
Speaker 1: it cuts the stalks and then threshes and windows a grain.
Speaker 1: In traditional agricultural systems, mostly in the Global South, harvestine
Speaker 1: may be by hand using tools such as scythes and
Speaker 1: grain gradls. Left Over parts of the plant can be
Speaker 1: allowed to decompose or collected as straw. This can be
Speaker 1: used for animal bedding, mulge, and a growing medium for mushrooms.
Speaker 1: It is used in crafts such as building with cob
Speaker 1: or straw bale constructions. If cereals are not completely dry
Speaker 1: when harvested, such as when the weather is rainy, the
Speaker 1: stored grain will be spoiled by mold fungi. This can
Speaker 1: be prevented by drying it artificially. It may then be
Speaker 1: stored in a grain elevator or silo to be sold later.
Speaker 1: Grain stores need to be constructed to protect the grain
Speaker 1: from damage by pests such as seed eating birds and rodents.
Speaker 1: When the cereal is ready to be distributed, it is
Speaker 1: sold to a manufacturing facility that first removes the outer
Speaker 1: layers of the grain for subsequent milling for flour or
Speaker 1: other processing steps to produce foods such as flour, oat meal,
Speaker 1: or pearl barley. In developing countries, processing may be traditional
Speaker 1: and artismal workshops, as with tortilla production in Central America.
Speaker 1: Most cereals can be processed in a variety of ways.
Speaker 1: Rice processing, for instance, can create whole grain or polished
Speaker 1: rice or rice flour. Removal of the germ increases the
Speaker 1: longevity of grain and storage. Some grains can be malted,
Speaker 1: a process of activating enzymes in the seed to cause
Speaker 1: sprouting that turns the complex starches into sugars before drying.
Speaker 1: These sugars can be extracted for industrial uses and further processing,
Speaker 1: such as for making industrial alcohol beer, whiskey, or rice wine,
Speaker 1: or sold directly as a sugar. In the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: industrial processes developed around chemically altering the grain to be
Speaker 1: used for other processes. In particular, maze can be altered
Speaker 1: to produce food additives such as corn starch and high
Speaker 1: fructose corn syrup. Some cereals, such as rice, require little
Speaker 1: preparation before human consumption. For example, to make plain cooked rice,
Speaker 1: raw milk rice ice is washed and boiled. Foods such
Speaker 1: as porridge and muslia may be made largely of whole cereals,
Speaker 1: especially oads, whereas commercial breakfast cereals such as granola may
Speaker 1: be highly processed and combined with sugars, oils, and other products.
Speaker 1: Cereals can be ground to make flour. Wheat flour is
Speaker 1: the main ingredient of bread and pasta. Maize flour has
Speaker 1: been important in Mesoamericas since ancient times, with foods such
Speaker 1: as Mexican tortillas and demales. Rye flour is a constituent
Speaker 1: of bread in Central and northern Europe, while rice flour
Speaker 1: is common in Asia. A cereal grain consists of starchy endosperm, germ,
Speaker 1: and bran. Whole meal flour contains all of these white
Speaker 1: flowers without some or all of the germ or bran.
Speaker 1: Cereals and their related byproducts such as hay, are routinely
Speaker 1: fed to farm animals. Common cereals as animal food include maize, barley, wheat,
Speaker 1: and oats. Most grains may be treated chemically or made
Speaker 1: into silage, mechanically, flattened or crimped, and kept in air
Speaker 1: tight storage until used, or stored dry with a moisture
Speaker 1: content of less than fourteen percent. Commercially, grains are often
Speaker 1: combined with other materials and formed into feed pellets. As
Speaker 1: whole grains, cereals provide carbohydrates, polyunsaturated fats, protein, vitamins, and minerals.
Speaker 1: When processed by the removal of the bran and germ,
Speaker 1: all that remains is the starchy endosperm. Nutrients sated to
Speaker 1: cereal during nutritional fortification include iron, calcium, zinc, and folate.
Speaker 1: In some developing countries, cereals constitute a majority of daily sustenance.
Speaker 1: In developed countries, cereal consumption is moderate and varied, but
Speaker 1: still substantial, primarily in the form of refined and processed grains.
Speaker 1: Some cereals are deficient in the essential amino acidlyzing, obliging
Speaker 1: vegetarian cultures to combine their diet of cereal grains with
Speaker 1: legumes to obtain a balanced diet. Many legumes, however, are
Speaker 1: deficient in the essential amino acid messionine, which grains contain. Thus,
Speaker 1: a combination of legumes with grains forms a well balanced
Speaker 1: diet for vegetarians. Some combinations include lentils with rice, beans
Speaker 1: with maize, tortillas, tofu with rice, and peanut butter with
Speaker 1: whole grain wheat bread as sandwiches. In several other cultures,
Speaker 1: including the Americas, for feeding animals, the amount of crude
Speaker 1: protein measured in grains is expressed as grain crude protein concentration.
Speaker 1: Cereals constitute the world's largest commodities by tonnage, whether measured
Speaker 1: by production or by internation trade. Several major producers of
Speaker 1: cereals dominate the market. Because of the scale of the trade,
Speaker 1: some countries have become reliant on imports. Thus cereals pricing
Speaker 1: or availability can have outsized impacts on countries with a
Speaker 1: food trade imbalance and thus food security. Cereals are the
Speaker 1: world's largest crops by tonnage of grain produced. Three cereals, maize, wheat,
Speaker 1: and rice together accounted for ninety one percent of all
Speaker 1: cereal production worldwide in twenty twenty four and forty percent
Speaker 1: of the global availability of food energy in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: while the production of oats and rye has drastically fallen
Speaker 1: from their nineteen sixties levels. Cereals not included in the
Speaker 1: Yewans Food and Agriculture Organization statistics include wild rice, which
Speaker 1: is grown in small amounts in North America, and tef,
Speaker 1: an ancient grain that is a staple in Ethiopia. Tef
Speaker 1: has grown in Sub Saharan Africa as a grass, primarily
Speaker 1: for feeding horses. It is high in fiber and protein.
Speaker 1: Its flour is often used to make injera. It can
Speaker 1: be eaten as a warm breakfast cereal like farina, with
Speaker 1: a chocolate or nutty flavor. Cereals are the most traded
Speaker 1: commodities by quantity in twenty twenty three, with wheat, maize,
Speaker 1: and rice the main cereals involved. The Americas in Europe
Speaker 1: are the largest exporters and Asia is the largest importer.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty three, Brazil was the largest exporter of maize,
Speaker 1: while India was the largest exporter of rice and China
Speaker 1: the largest importer of maize and of rice. Many other
Speaker 1: countries trade cereals both as exporters and as importers. Cereals
Speaker 1: are traded as futures on World commodity markets, helping to
Speaker 1: mitigate the risks of changes in price, for example, if
Speaker 1: harvests fail. A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit
Speaker 1: with or without an attached whole layer, harvested for human
Speaker 1: or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain producing plant.
Speaker 1: The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals
Speaker 1: and l legumes. After being harvested, dry grains are more
Speaker 1: durable than other staple foods, such as starchy fruits and tubers.
Speaker 1: This durability has made grains well suited to industrial agriculture,
Speaker 1: since they can be mechanically harvested, transported by rail or ship,
Speaker 1: stored for long periods in silos, and milled for flour
Speaker 1: or pressed for oil. The grain market is a major
Speaker 1: global agricultural market that includes crops such as maize, rice, soybeans, wheat,
Speaker 1: and other grains in the grass family. A grain narrowly
Speaker 1: defined as a caryopsis a fruit with its wall fused
Speaker 1: onto the single seed inside, belonging to a cereals such
Speaker 1: as wheat, maize, or rice. More broadly, in agronomy and commerce,
Speaker 1: seeds or fruits from other plant families are called grains
Speaker 1: if they resemble cereal caryopsis. For example, amrands is sold
Speaker 1: as grain, ameranths and amorand products may be described as
Speaker 1: whole grains. The pre Columbian civilizations of the Andes had
Speaker 1: grain based food systems, but at higher elevations, none of
Speaker 1: the grains belonged to the cereal family. All three grains
Speaker 1: native to the Andes or broad leaved plants, rather than grasses.
Speaker 1: Starchy grains from broad leaf plant families are cultivated as
Speaker 1: nutritious alternatives to cereals. The three main pseudo cereal grains
Speaker 1: or amerans, buckwheat, and quinoa. Pulses, the dried seeds of
Speaker 1: Legiumes members of the pea family, have a higher protein
Speaker 1: content than most other plant foods, that around twenty percent,
Speaker 1: while soybeans have as much as thirty five percent. As
Speaker 1: is the case with all other whole plant foods, pulses
Speaker 1: also contain carbohydrates and fat. Common pulses include chickpeas, common beans,
Speaker 1: common peas, pava beans, lentils, lima beans, lupins, mung beans, peanuts,
Speaker 1: pigeon peas, runner beans, soybeans. Oil Seed grains are grown
Speaker 1: primarily for the extraction of their edible oil. Vegetable oils
Speaker 1: provide dietary energy and some essential fatty acids. They are
Speaker 1: also used as fuel and lubricants. Because grains are small, hard,
Speaker 1: and dry, they can be stored, measured, and transported more
Speaker 1: readily than can other kinds of food crops such as
Speaker 1: fresh fruits, roots, and tubers. The development of grain agriculture
Speaker 1: allowed excess food to be produced and stored easily, which
Speaker 1: could have led to the creation of the first temporary
Speaker 1: settlements and the division of society into classes. This assumption
Speaker 1: that grain agriculture led to early settlements and social stratification
Speaker 1: has been challenged by James C. Scott in his book
Speaker 1: Against the Grain. He argues that the transition from hunter
Speaker 1: gatherer societies to settled agrarian communities was not a voluntary
Speaker 1: choice driven by the benefits of increased food production due
Speaker 1: to the long storage potential of grains, but rather that
Speaker 1: the shift towards settlements was a coerce transformation imposed by
Speaker 1: dominant members of a society seeking to expand control over
Speaker 1: labor and resources. The grain trade refers to the local
Speaker 1: and international trade in cereals such as wheat, barley, maize, rice,
Speaker 1: and other food grains. Grain is an important trade item
Speaker 1: because it is easily stored and transported with limited spoilage,
Speaker 1: unlike other agricultural products. Healthy grain supply and trade is
Speaker 1: important to many societies in a caloric base for most
Speaker 1: food systems, as well as an important role in animal
Speaker 1: feed For animal agriculture, The grain trade began as early
Speaker 1: as agricultural settlement identified in many of the early cultures
Speaker 1: that adopted sedentary farming. Major societal changes have been directly
Speaker 1: connected to the grain trade, such as the fall of
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire. From the early modern period onward, grain
Speaker 1: trade has been an important part of colonial expansion and
Speaker 1: foreign policy. The geopolitical dominances of countries like Australia, the
Speaker 1: United States, Canada, and the Soviet Union during the twentieth
Speaker 1: century was connected with their status as grain surplus countries.