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#1
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Indigestible Grass Seed - Amaranth
Conrad Hodson wrote: Richard VanHouten wrote: Well, amaranth is, indeed, not a grass, and like maize, was raised in Mexico for its edible seed. I'm not sure how important it was pre-Conquest, and since then has (entirely or nearly) gone out of cultivation. I'm also not sure how similar the weeds I encountered were to the variety that was cultivated. The weeds you pulled were probably the wild stock the Amerindian plant breeders upgraded. Even they have quite a good seed yield. Amaranth is unusual among crop plants in being equally useful as grain and cooking greens. I have heard that when sometimes there is a problem with growing seasons and availability that some farmers will grow a crop of maize, and harvest it while it is still green for animal fodder, and then put in another crop. Where can amaranth be grown? What type of yeilds does amaranth have in relation to corn, wheat, rye or oats, rice, or root crops? How rapidly does it grow before harvest? Is it slower than most maize or is it faster than maize and slower than wheat? It's still in cultivation quite widely around the world, especially in the tropics and subtropics. I've grown it myself, on a garden scale, and you can buy the seed in any decent health food store. It is relatively bad for the world when you consider that a great amount of the world's grain harvest ends up being used for animal fodder. This is a very evil by product of excessive meat consumption beyond the long term health effects. Meat is a more concentrated source of protien than most plant derived food is, but there is a certain level of protien consumption beyond which that protein is used up for energy rather than as essential components to build up body tissues, not to mention the effects of excessive fat consumption. Still, it would seem to me that there would be some incentive to grow it on a wide scale if it produced a greater yield per acre than wheat or maize corn, for use as either animal fodder or as food additives. The typical grain amaranth has white seeds--this is a recessive gene, and apparently was used as a marker by early plant breeders to guarantee that wild pollen hadn't contaminated their breeding stock. By culling any dark seed into the "food" basket you know you'll have a crop next year that has the benefits of all the breeding work. And that work has been going on for a long time--one sourcebook I have says that white-seeded amaranth has been found in Mexican archaelogical sites that are 7000 year old. If true, this puts amaranth among the earliest domestic plants in the New World. How is amaranth generally planted, cultivated, and harvested with farm machinery? Does the grain generally come off with a wheat combine? How about planting or threshing? Do the lower stalks generally come off like wheat straw on a combine or is other equipment needed? Are there any problems with mechanised planting, cultivating, or harvesting that are the basic problems with amaranth production? How about markets? Where could a farmer sell amaranth if he decided to produce it? Do food additive or animal feed companies generally not deal with amaranth? Are there amaranth futures on any stock exchanges? Or are there some basic factors like crop yields or specific requirements for types of soils, weather conditions, or growing seasons that are a great down side to trying to grow and use amaranth en masse? For a real treat, pop the seeds dry (no oil) in a big wok or deep kettle (they jump around a lot, and you must keep them moving with a brush so they don't burn.) Blend with two parts peanut butter to one part honey, adding popped amaranth until the mix is only slightly moist. Then mold the mix into balls or rolls, and roll them in grated coconut. Conrad Hodson Crossposted for further data collection. |
#2
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I cannot find the start of this thread. However, I will not in passing:-
John N Cole Armaranth from past for the future. Rodale Press 1979 -- donald j haarmann - colophon |
#3
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Strange Creature wrote: [snip] Still, it would seem to me that there would be some incentive to grow it on a wide scale if it produced a greater yield per acre than wheat or maize corn, for use as either animal fodder or as food additives. [snip] How is amaranth generally planted, cultivated, and harvested with farm machinery? Does the grain generally come off with a wheat combine? How about planting or threshing? Do the lower stalks generally come off like wheat straw on a combine or is other equipment needed? Are there any problems with mechanised planting, cultivating, or harvesting that are the basic problems with amaranth production? How about markets? Where could a farmer sell amaranth if he decided to produce it? Do food additive or animal feed companies generally not deal with amaranth? Are there amaranth futures on any stock exchanges? Or are there some basic factors like crop yields or specific requirements for types of soils, weather conditions, or growing seasons that are a great down side to trying to grow and use amaranth en masse? Amaranth is grown commercially in the US; it is a high-value crop, and there is an established market for it. It will grow just about anywhere sorghum will, and its culture is rather similar. A little extra work is required to handle it with farm equipment designed for cereal grains. There are good summaries at: http://www.jeffersoninstitute.org/pubs/amaranth.shtml http://www.extension.umn.edu/distrib...ms/DC3458.html http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/p...90/v1-127.html The Rodale Research Center and the Amaranth Institute are the main sources of information on commercial amaranth production; agricultural extensions in Midwest and Plains states will have information tailored to local conditions as well. -- Chris Green |
#4
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Strange Creature wrote: How is amaranth generally planted, cultivated, and harvested with farm machinery? Does the grain generally come off with a wheat combine? How about planting or threshing? Do the lower stalks generally come off like wheat straw on a combine or is other equipment needed? Are there any problems with mechanised planting, cultivating, or harvesting that are the basic problems with amaranth production? AFAIK it's mostly grown here and there, mostly by nonmechanized means by subsistence farmers. A wheat combine would need major mods--the seeds are tiny, between poppy seeds and sesame seeds in size. You'd probably want something with a sort of threshing drum, a fine screen to let the seed fall away from the trash, and a fairly gentle cyclone separator to sort seed from fine chaff by relative density. A combine-type harvester may not be the way to go. The seed ripens unevenly, so many people find they can close to double the yield by threshing twice, a couple weeks apart. So cutting, threshing, letting the plants fall and then windrowing them like hay, perhaps? With a harvester that can either cut standing plants or pick up a windrow from the ground? Lower tech, cut them early and shock them, then haul the shocks to a barn with a tight floor and thresh twice. With two threshings, several people report yields of up to four tons per acre, though many of these were small enough test plots that edge effects might affect the yield. It's essentially a tropical plant that will put up with the temperate zone if the frost-free season is long enough--like maize. It doesn't like drought, and will need irrigation if the warm season is also a dry season, as it is where I live. Very roughly, it likes the same sorts of conditions maize does. Amaranth's advantages are nutritional and versatility. It has slightly more protein than good whole wheat flour, and almost twice as much as cornmeal. As for versatility, it is one of the very few plants that's equally useful as a grain crop and a potherb. In many tropical countries, it's primarily cultivated as a green leafy veg. It thrives in this role all the way to the Equator--places like New Guinea, Indonesia and India, where many northern greens won't grow. "Yield" of course means totally different standards for grain and potherbs, but it does give the farmer two marketing options per crop, with only one sort of seed to save or buy. It's also worth noting that several species of amaranth are cultivated, and the figures I've been giving are for A. hypochondriacus. A. cruentus, A. caudatus, and A. edulis are all basically grain types, or mixed-use. A. tricolor and A. gangeticus are generally just grown for greens. A. retroflexus is the well-known wild weed. How valid all these "species" are I'm not sure; they may just be the results of human specialized breeding, like poodles and Great Danes, or cabbage and broccoli. AFAIK all will crossbreed with A. retroflexus. How about markets? Where could a farmer sell amaranth if he decided to produce it? Do food additive or animal feed companies generally not deal with amaranth? Are there amaranth futures on any stock exchanges? AFAIK most of the markets are health food specialty niches. Prices are quite high at retail, though of course how much of this gets to the farmer is the question. In my experience, by the time any crop is listed on a futures exchange, the farmers who grow it are working eighty hours a week for the privilege of being deeply in debt, so it's probably best not to go there. The overwhelming majority of amaranth cultivation around the world never sees any kind of market; it's grown by subsistence and cash-cropping small farmers for family use. In this role it seems highly valued, but it's not the sort of situation that gives you world-averaged price statistics like wheat or soybeans. Or are there some basic factors like crop yields or specific requirements for types of soils, weather conditions, or growing seasons that are a great down side to trying to grow and use amaranth en masse? I wouldn't try to grow them on more than a garden-plot scale on the American West Coast, unless you were set up to flood-irrigate very cheaply and easily. Basically, they're tropical crops that do well in the warm/wet summers of places where the summers are tropical, and they can ride out the winters as seeds in a building somewhere. Think corn or soybeans. Using them as a grain on a very large scale would call for specialized harvest machinery, or at least new plates, screens and settings on existing ones. The uneven ripening would probably be an early target for plant geneticists in this case, as it would cut the handling roughly in half if the crop could be harvested in one pass. Of course, any such expansion of production would need a concurrent expansion of the demand. Otherwise you get your premium specialty grain crop being sold off for chicken feed (probably literally!) and all you've done is find a new way for farmers to go broke, which is hardly necessary. Conrad Hodson |
#5
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I always thought Amaranth was a broadleaf.
"Conrad Hodson" wrote in message ... Strange Creature wrote: How is amaranth generally planted, cultivated, and harvested with farm machinery? Does the grain generally come off with a wheat combine? How about planting or threshing? Do the lower stalks generally come off like wheat straw on a combine or is other equipment needed? Are there any problems with mechanised planting, cultivating, or harvesting that are the basic problems with amaranth production? AFAIK it's mostly grown here and there, mostly by nonmechanized means by subsistence farmers. A wheat combine would need major mods--the seeds are tiny, between poppy seeds and sesame seeds in size. You'd probably want something with a sort of threshing drum, a fine screen to let the seed fall away from the trash, and a fairly gentle cyclone separator to sort seed from fine chaff by relative density. A combine-type harvester may not be the way to go. The seed ripens unevenly, so many people find they can close to double the yield by threshing twice, a couple weeks apart. So cutting, threshing, letting the plants fall and then windrowing them like hay, perhaps? With a harvester that can either cut standing plants or pick up a windrow from the ground? Lower tech, cut them early and shock them, then haul the shocks to a barn with a tight floor and thresh twice. With two threshings, several people report yields of up to four tons per acre, though many of these were small enough test plots that edge effects might affect the yield. It's essentially a tropical plant that will put up with the temperate zone if the frost-free season is long enough--like maize. It doesn't like drought, and will need irrigation if the warm season is also a dry season, as it is where I live. Very roughly, it likes the same sorts of conditions maize does. Amaranth's advantages are nutritional and versatility. It has slightly more protein than good whole wheat flour, and almost twice as much as cornmeal. As for versatility, it is one of the very few plants that's equally useful as a grain crop and a potherb. In many tropical countries, it's primarily cultivated as a green leafy veg. It thrives in this role all the way to the Equator--places like New Guinea, Indonesia and India, where many northern greens won't grow. "Yield" of course means totally different standards for grain and potherbs, but it does give the farmer two marketing options per crop, with only one sort of seed to save or buy. It's also worth noting that several species of amaranth are cultivated, and the figures I've been giving are for A. hypochondriacus. A. cruentus, A. caudatus, and A. edulis are all basically grain types, or mixed-use. A. tricolor and A. gangeticus are generally just grown for greens. A. retroflexus is the well-known wild weed. How valid all these "species" are I'm not sure; they may just be the results of human specialized breeding, like poodles and Great Danes, or cabbage and broccoli. AFAIK all will crossbreed with A. retroflexus. How about markets? Where could a farmer sell amaranth if he decided to produce it? Do food additive or animal feed companies generally not deal with amaranth? Are there amaranth futures on any stock exchanges? AFAIK most of the markets are health food specialty niches. Prices are quite high at retail, though of course how much of this gets to the farmer is the question. In my experience, by the time any crop is listed on a futures exchange, the farmers who grow it are working eighty hours a week for the privilege of being deeply in debt, so it's probably best not to go there. The overwhelming majority of amaranth cultivation around the world never sees any kind of market; it's grown by subsistence and cash-cropping small farmers for family use. In this role it seems highly valued, but it's not the sort of situation that gives you world-averaged price statistics like wheat or soybeans. Or are there some basic factors like crop yields or specific requirements for types of soils, weather conditions, or growing seasons that are a great down side to trying to grow and use amaranth en masse? I wouldn't try to grow them on more than a garden-plot scale on the American West Coast, unless you were set up to flood-irrigate very cheaply and easily. Basically, they're tropical crops that do well in the warm/wet summers of places where the summers are tropical, and they can ride out the winters as seeds in a building somewhere. Think corn or soybeans. Using them as a grain on a very large scale would call for specialized harvest machinery, or at least new plates, screens and settings on existing ones. The uneven ripening would probably be an early target for plant geneticists in this case, as it would cut the handling roughly in half if the crop could be harvested in one pass. Of course, any such expansion of production would need a concurrent expansion of the demand. Otherwise you get your premium specialty grain crop being sold off for chicken feed (probably literally!) and all you've done is find a new way for farmers to go broke, which is hardly necessary. Conrad Hodson |
#6
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Chuck wrote: I always thought Amaranth was a broadleaf. It is. It may be used as a grain, and the varieties grown specifically for seed are called "grain amaranth" but the plant is not a grass or even a monocot. Conrad Hodson |
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