Most bread we eat today is made using modern wheat varieties bred for uniformity and yield at the expense of our health and our soil. Just as our bread has changed, so have our seeds.
In this week’s episode, Katie Revell takes us straight to the source and asks: in the face of a climate and health crisis, what seeds should we be sowing? Hear how people like Mark Lea of Greenacres Farm (pictured) are finding ways around oppressive laws and reviving heritage varieties in order to feed people with nutritious grains.
It might get a little technical in places, but stick with us — industrialised wheat covers an estimated 218 million hectares of the planet, more than any other food crop. If we are to feed to the planet in years to come, we need to work in sync with nature and embrace ecological farming systems that support DIVERSITY.
A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to Cereal – as well as the voices you hear in this episode, many more conversations have helped to shape this series. Thanks to contributors Kim Bell (the founder of Small Food Bakery and UK Grain Lab), John Letts (Heritage Harvest), Andrew Whitley (Bread Matters, currently based at Bowhouse Fife, chairman of Scotland the Bread), Mark Lea (Greenacres Farm), Rupert Dunn (Torth y Tir), and Josiah Meldrom (Hodmedods). Thank you also to the Oxford Real Farming Conference for their archive recording of the late Professor Martin Wolfe.
This series was made possible thanks to the generosity of the Roddick Foundation. Please listen, share, review & subscribe, and support the farmers instigating change. Episodes are released each Sunday on Soundcloud and all podcasting platforms. And if you’d like to support Farmerama, visit patreon.com/farmerama
Cereal is produced and edited by Katie Revell, with support from Abby Rose and Jo Barratt. Suzie MacCarthy and Hanna Söderlund also worked on the series. Our theme music is by Owen Barratt.