Yes sorry about that. Here is the link:
Interesting and informative posts so far. But none of them seem to have answered the questions put forth in the OP.
The following ones were touched on.
I have nothing to add as I am curious about many of the same questions.
Rice doesn’t need that much water. One sees it growing in flooded paddies only because the water helps keep the weeds down. Rice grows fine on irrigated dry land, but if you’ve got a lot of water available, you’ll get a much higher yield per acre simply because weeds have a tough time growing in water.
I’ve put them in order of tonnage:
Corn (Maize) 1,033 Mil Tonnes
Wheat 757
Rice 488
Tomatoes 177
Cassava 152
Barley 144
Sweet Potato 123
Watermelons 117
Bananas 113
Potato 93
Onions 93
Apples 89
Cucumber/Gherkins 80
Grapes 77
Oranges 73
Cabbage/Brassicas 71
Eggplants 51
Mangoes 46
Carrot/Turnips 42
Plantains 35
Chilli/Peppers 34
Tangerines 32
Pears 27
Lettuce/Chicory 26
Spinach 26
Garlic 26
Pumpkin/Squash 26
Cauliflower/Broccoli 25
Pineapples 25
Peaches/Nectarines 24
Oats 23
Yams 23
Lemons/Limes 17
Rye 12
Aroids 8
Here they are again, roughly sorted into geographical regions (although some could appear in more than one category, and combined vegetable counts have not been split up and placed in their respective regions). I used Wikipedia to find out the geographical origin of each plant and where it was thought to have been first cultivated:
NEAR EAST
Wheat 757 - Fertile Crescent of the Near East
Barley 144 - Wild barley ranges from North Africa and Crete in the west, to Tibet in the east, and was probably domesticated in Near East or Central Asia
Grapes 77 - first cultivated in the Near East
Oats 23 - Fertile Crescent of the Near East
Rye 12 - central and eastern Turkey
CENTRAL ASIA & PERSIA
Apples 89 - central Asia, but with center of diversity in eastern Turkey
Carrot/Turnips 42 - While the wild carrot is native to Europe and southwestern Asia, studies have shown single origin of domestic carrot in Central Asia, probably Persia; Turnips probably western Asia.
Garlic 26 - native to Central Asia and northeastern Iran
Spinach 26 - Persia
EAST ASIA
Rice 488 - thought to have been first domesticated in China
Oranges 73 - east Asia
Pears 27 - While the genus is thought to have originated in present-day Western China, it seems that there are also wild sub-species in central and eastern Europe and southwest Asia which have been cultivated.
Peaches/Nectarines 24 - Northwest China
Lemons/Limes 17 - thought to have first grown in Assam (a region in northeast India), northern Burma or China; Wild limes are believed to have first grown in Indonesia or Southeast Asia
SOUTH-EAST ASIA & OCEANIA
Bananas 113 - Southeast Asia and Papua New Guinea
Plantains 35 - Southeast Asia, Oceania and Northern Australia
SOUTH ASIA
Cucumber/Gherkins 80 - India
Eggplants 51 - probably two independent domestications: one in South Asia, and one in East Asia
Mangoes 46 - South Asia
AFRICA
Watermelons 117 - Africa
Lettuce/Chicory 26 - Lettuce in ancient Egypt; chicory in Europe
EUROPE
Cabbage/Brassicas 71 - Europe
Cauliflower/Broccoli 25 - both northern Mediterranean
NORTH AMERICA
Corn (Maize) 1,033 - Mesoamerica
Sweet Potato 123 - either Central or South America
Chilli/Peppers 34 - Chilli from northeastern Mexico; Peppers from South Asia and Southeast Asia.
Pumpkin/Squash 26 - Pumpkin in North America (northeastern Mexico and southern United States); Squash in Andes and Mesoamerica.
SOUTH AMERICA
Tomatoes 177 - western South America
Cassava 152 - South America, probably west-central Brazil
Potato 93 - southern Peru and extreme northwestern Bolivia
Pineapples 25 - South America, between southern Brazil and Paraguay
OTHER
Onions 93 - Unknown, probably Asia
Tangerines 32 - hybrid
Yams 23 - native to Africa, Asia, and the Americas
Aroids 8 - various
There are a few surprises to me, such as: oranges, lemons and limes from eastern Asia (I would have guessed Mediterranean or Near East); cucumbers from India; pineapples from southern Brazil/Paraguay (would probably have guessed Caribbean); lettuce from ancient Egypt. Here’s more from Wikipedia on the ancient Egyptians’ love of lettuce, which might of interest to the Lettuce Marketing Board:
I am also mildly unnerved to discover that there are so many cucumbers in the world - 13th most produced plant (along with gherkins). :eek:
Duckweed is the up and coming crop of the future.
It’s true that rice doesn’t need more water than other cereals and that growing in paddies keeps weeds down. But the major agronomic need for water is insulation. Rice stops growing around 13C (60F) and having 30-45cm of water keeps the temperature around the tiller up and the plant grows round the clock.
Naah, I’ve got historical recipes for quite classy turnip dishes.
But the people in the PNW weren’t growing anything, and didn’t need to.
The places maize got to at the endpoints, it merely replaced the Eastern Agricultural Complex with the Three Sisters crops, it didn’t involve an entire lifeway change (at least initially, obviously it then led to the population explosion that gives you Cahokia etc
The species/varieties most productive, most reliable yielding, the most tolerant of climate and pests will predominate over all others until food security esp. in terms of calories becomes assured.
The casebook example.
The Irish Potato famine and the Lumper variety.
The potato was introduced to Ireland around 1600 or a bit after from seed stock via Spain from the New World. Progressively became the staple foodstuff. Due to favourable climate and soil Irish potatoes were higher quality and higher yielding than from England up to the 1800s.
The Lumper variety came from Scotland because it had a higher yield and was more robust. In Ireland the Lumper was even more productive yielding 30% more, thriving on poorer soils and being a much more reliable crop. Most of the increased yield was due to higher water content rather than more starches/calories. Consequently it was considered an inferior type though a proportion of the lower quality reputation was how well it was stored and that the poor couldn’t afford to throw away second quality tubers.
The locals preferred consuming the lower yielding, higher starch varieties like Cup and Apple but population pressures and the need to utilise all available land made the yield and reliability of Lumper the go to variety. Southern Ireland counties became almost monocultures . All varieties of potato are vulnerable to infection by the blight but Lumper seemed more so and the preconditions for the famine in the 1840s were established.
This website, http://www.foodtimeline.org/, has links and comments on what the first foods were and where they came from. Here’s the start of the timeline:
water & ice----------------
salt----------------
oysters, scallops, mussels & mollusks----------------
squid, calamari & octopus----------------
insects----------------
fish & frogs----------------
mushrooms & greens----------------
bear, venison & horsemeat ----------------
eggs & marrow bones----------------
rice & millet----------------
emmer grain–17,000BC—
einkorn grain–16,000BC—
almonds–10,000BC—
cherries—10,000BC—
wheat —8,000BC—
American bison—8,000BC—
Crops don’t rely on subsidies, people who plant do.
And this cash support largess occurs in some countries, but not all.
Rice originates from the tropics, and most rice is sill grown there. The temperature in the tropics rarely, if ever, goes down so low. Optimal photosynthetic rate for rice occurs at 30-35 C.
These lists aren’t comprehensive. For instance, it doesn’t list either millet or sorghum, where 2016 production was more than the 2017 oats and rye figures given. So there might be other produce gaps too.
Indeed, also missing was soybeans, which, at 334 Mtonnes, should go in between rice and barley. It’s mostly grown for animal feed, I believe.
Not only that, but the figures above for tubers (potatoes, yams, etc.) were only for those from developing countries, not all countries. Worldwide production of potatoes was 376 M tonnes, which puts it above soybeans. And I’m seeing a different production quantity (277 M tonnes) for cassava, too. Not sure what the deal is there, since it’s pretty much only grown in developing countries.
It’s *the *main staple for 800 million people, and is *very *productive in a yield/hectare sense. Also, some is grown for export to China not just local consumption.
This is true, but coming from a family which grows quite a lot of rice in an area situated 35 deg South and producing the highest yielding rice crops in the world we are acutely aware of the effect of max and min summer temperatures.
My uncertainty was the discrepancy in the production numbers between two sources. True, they were for different years, but only by one year. I wouldn’t expect that big of change from one year to the next unless there was a drought in the major production area or something like that.
I had a post all ready to go, complete with cites from primary sources about how rice likes the hot weather, when I realized we were coming at it from opposite directions. I thought you said that rice growth shuts down when the temperatures exceed 13°C when what you were really saying was that rice growth stops when temperatures fall below 13°C. Carry on!
Ok, I get you now.