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THE WHEAT FIELDS OF SASKATCHEWAN


Wheat has, by most accounts, been an astonishing success for our species and a particular triumph for Canada. Half of the 35 million tonnes of wheat the country grows every year (it’s the earth’s fifth largest producer) is harvested in Saskatchewan, and most of that is grown in the bottom third of the province. If 1 tonne of wheat makes 1,700 loaves of white bread, a great many of the world’s slices of toast will have originated in these parts. Head out from Regina, the provincial capital, in late August or early September and the horizon will be dotted with rows of gigantic John Deere S690s and New Holland CR10s cutting their way through vast prairie-lands carpeted with the heavy blonde stalks of the most fecund grass the planet has ever known. We’ve only been doing this for a – relatively – short while. Homo sapiens goes back 200,000 years, but it was only around 9,500 BC in southeastern Turkey that we started wheat cultivation. The story is usually told as one of triumph: our pre-agricultural ancestors were both starving and stupid, and only thanks to the discovery of agriculture did we gain food security and the freedom to use our leisure to develop writing, mathematics and large cities with public baths. No longer did we need to get on our knees and forage under myrtle berry bushes; we could wait for a loaf to be brought to the table and read Thucydides in the original Greek instead. It’s an inspiring story, but not necessarily a wholly accurate one. From many perspectives, the agricultural revolution was a disaster from which we are still trying to recover. While our food supply grew in absolute terms, it also became less diverse and more vulnerable to disease; in bad years, there was a great deal more malnutrition and starvation than there had ever been. Homo sapiens grew less healthy (and shorter) the more fields we cultivated. With people now settled in villages, population numbers exploded, wiping out the original gains in productivity and creating a need to labour ever harder to feed new mouths. Work grew more boring and repetitive. Hunter-gatherer societies had exercised their minds on a wide variety of challenges, searching for honey one day, tracking an animal the next; now it was always the same backbreaking task. There was increased inequality too: a few managed to seize valuable lands, and edged out and enslaved the others. Having lived for most of our history in bands of no more than a hundred, with a spirit of equality and a powerful sense of community, we were now herded by people who declared themselves kings into groups of thousands and soon millions. There was an increase in free time for some – but humans are not necessarily very good at handling empty hours. It helps to have a sharply focused mission (to climb a pear tree or track down a wild turkey). We grew bored and anxious; our thoughts tormented us, and we wondered in vain what we might be for. To appease our alienation, we began eating too much. We’re prone to explain our psychological dissatisfactions in too narrow a way. We need to investigate broader swathes of history to explain some of our sorrows. It isn’t just our parents who have made us sad; some of the blame belongs squarely with those golden wheat fields of southern Canada.

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