Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure
3.22.
USDA wheat types.
In most of the world, wheat mills are small, family-owned machines. These produce
mostly whole-wheat flour for home consumption. In subsistence farms, the farm wife
may use a hand grinder to form coarse flour for baking. The flour produced from
these processes has the benefit of retaining all the nutrients in the grain. A disadvantage
is that some fractions easily spoil and the flour has a short shelf life.
One family of four can live 25 years off the bread produced by one hectare of
wheat.
Barley processing for livestock feed only requires a coarse milling operation to
produce cracked barley. This enhances digestion by animals. Malting barley is first partially
germinated for 4 to 5 days. The germinated seeds are then killed by heat to form malt. The
dried malt is stored for later use in fermenting vats to produce alcoholic beverages. Barley is
useful for this process because the hulls remain on the grain and facilitate filtration.
3.4
RICE PRODUCTION
Latin Name: Oryza sativa
Other English Names: Asian rice, common rice, cultivated rice, lowland rice,
paddy rice, upland rice
3.4.1 Climatic Adaptation
Rice is cultivated in over 100 countries on all continents, except Antarctica. Over 91
percent of the rice in the world is grown and consumed in Eurasia.
17
Four basic ecosys-
tems describe cultivated rice. Irrigated rice is the stereotypical “rice paddy” crop grown in
standing water. This accounts for about 55 percent of the total area of rice grown in the
