Wheat

Wheat is a grass that is cultivated worldwide. Globally, it is the most important human food grain and ranks second in total production as a cereal crop behind maize; the third being rice.

Wheat grain is a staple food used to make flour for leavened, flat and steamed breads; cookies, cakes, pasta, noodles and couscous; and for fermentation to make beer, alcohol, vodka or biofuel. Wheat is planted to a limited extent as a forage crop for livestock and the straw can be used as fodder for livestock or as a construction material for roofing thatch.
 
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The cultivation of wheat began to spread beyond the Fertile Crescent during the Neolithic period. By 5,000 years ago, wheat had reached Ethiopia, India, Ireland and Spain.

A millennium later, it reached China. Agricultural cultivation using horse collar leveraged plows (3000 years ago) increased cereal grain productivity yields, as did the use of seed drills which replaced broadcasting sowing of seed in the 18th century.

Yields of wheat continued to increase, as new land came under cultivation and with improved agricultural husbandry involving the use of fertilizers, threshing machines and reaping machines (the 'combine harvester'), tractor-draw cultivators and planters, and better varieties. With population growth rates falling, while yields continue to rise, the acreage devoted to wheat may now begin to decline for the first time in modern human history.


 
 

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