traditional bread

"in turkey we found that an important reason for selecting local wheat instead of modern, higher-yielding varieties was the quality of the local wheat for bread and the fact that no market was available to purchase wheat with the desired qualities( meng, taylor, and brush 1998). a similar situation exists in peru where local potatoes are preserved for home consumption and for gifts (brush 1992) "farmers' bounty: locating crop diversity in the modern world. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ so...monsanto's west bred brand of high-yielding, trans genetic spliced up wheat isn't a big seller in parts of the word because the bread it makes doesn't taste like grandma's...the locals prefer to preserve landraces specific to the area and eat bread made form the wheat their ancestors grew...not really surprising...people are fond of their habits and food culture is a deeply conservative thing...all bound up in ritual and status and tradition and in the types of plants best sustained by the local ecology...seems they prefer the old fashioned type of genetic engineering that comes from artificial selection for desirable traits...like the way the grain makes the bread taste...or the texture a specific potato takes on when it's freeze-dried at altitude or steamed...fine with me...i'm looking around this spring for some sump weed to grow as a seed crop next season ( 2013 i mean ) the domesticated strains have apparently died out...abandoned by the indigenous peoples of north america when the superior maize turned up...i still like the idea of growing native food crops and i will be experimenting with that when and where i can...speaking of where...i had a spare moment this morning and so i took a trip out to campus to check on things...the winter wheat there is doing okay...not the bumper crop out in my backyard, but it will serve he purpose i am growing it for which is mostly to be turned under in the spring to add nitrogen to the soil...although i will let some of it mature for seed for next autumn...all the mulching is intact and the wheat grass is still dormant and the gamma grass won't start greening up until sometime in april...mid-march will be here soon and the teosinte seeds will be going in along with some beets and turnips...just to keep things going until it's time to plant potatoes...it will all be here before you know it