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‘It’s too fast, too big’: speed of climate crisis is devastating crops, say farmers | Drought and extreme heat are killing plants, driving up prices while also making some farms economically unviable (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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[–] 4 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Unfortunately raw grain can be surprisingly hard to make edible. For oats for example every single individual oat has a shell that's inedible. This is different from the bran that is edible. You would have to ground the oats up and sift away the bran. And then you are left with oat flour and not rolled oats. I would say rolled oats are impossible to make at home.

Most people want to buy pasta, bread, white rice, not raw grain. Unfortunately for the farmers the processing of grain is a more profitable business than actually growing the grain.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    Suprised you didn't choose another grain as an example, Barley_Man. :)

    Oats have been grown and eaten by families in Scotland for centuries and there's plenty of established ways to deal with it. John Gerard's Great Herball, or, Generall Historie of Plantes (1597) discusses the selection process for hulless oat varieties. For hulled oats, there are a variety of mechanical ways to deal with it and/or you can heat the groats up in the oven to crack the outer husk before winnowing.

    Rolled oats can be made at home using the traditional method of simply soaking then steaming and rolling them in a grain mill before drying. You can get a hand-cranked grain mill for AU$300 that can also make flakes and flours of most grains or legumes. Those prices are for fancy brand equipment for people who are into making their own flour and flakes as a hobby, but in a widespread, ongoing food security crisis, equipment to make a variety of food more edible would probably become more of a commodity item itself.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    You can do it but the effort is tremendous for very little food. First off finding a way to dehull would be mandatory as hulless varieties only exist for a few heritage varieties. Pretty much no farmer is growing that anymore. For the rolled oats you would have to soak in water, steam, hand crank to roll them and then dry them? And dry them where? Not many kgs of rolled oats would fit in a normal dehydrator.

    That's why the toasting in the oven process is by far one of the best traditional methods. We have, probably independently, invented that method here where it's called skrädmjöl and in Finland where it's called talkkuna. Not only do you get a kind of cooked flour that can be eaten raw with milk or yoghurt/fil, the toasting process itself dries out the grain and if you had grain that was too wet for storage this would make it fit for storage. However the result is a very peculiar product. It has a unique taste that could be an acquired taste for some people. Also how it traditionally is eaten results in a brown paste. I like it but I grew up eating it during yearly vacations to Finland. It's not suitable for baking as it's already cooked as a flour. It's like trying to bake bread with bread crumbs instead of flour.

    But of course in a survival situation all methods to survive are worth it. But here we talked about a farmer selling raw grain direct to consumers. And I would imagine very few are ready to get through all this to save a bit of money on their carb source, the cheapest part of most people's grocery shopping.

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