Wheat
Farming techniques

Technological advances in soil preparation and seed placement at planting time, use of crop rotation and fertilizers to improve plant growth, and advances in harvesting methods have all combined to promote wheat as a viable crop. When the use of seed drills replaced broadcasting sowing of seed in the 18th century, another great increase in productivity occurred. Yields of pure wheat per unit area increased as methods of crop rotation were applied to land that had long been in cultivation, and the use of fertilizers became widespread.

Improved agricultural husbandry has more recently included pervasive automation, starting with the use of threshing machines, and progressing to large and costly machines like the combine harvester which greatly increased productivity. At the same time, better varieties such as Norin 10 wheat, developed in Japan in the 1930s, or the dwarf wheat developed by Norman Borlaug in the Green Revolution, greatly increased yields.

In addition to gaps in farming system technology and knowledge, some large wheat grain-producing countries have significant losses after harvest at the farm and because of poor roads, inadequate storage technologies, inefficient supply chains and farmers' inability to bring the produce into retail markets dominated by small shopkeepers. Some 10% of total wheat production is lost at farm level, another 10% is lost because of poor storage and road networks, and additional amounts are lost at the retail level.

In the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, as well as North China, irrigation has been a major contributor to increased grain output. More widely over the last 40 years, a massive increase in fertilizer use together with the increased availability of semi-dwarf varieties in developing countries, has greatly increased yields per hectare. In developing countries, use of (mainly nitrogenous) fertilizer increased 25-fold in this period. However, farming systems rely on much more than fertilizer and breeding to improve productivity. A good illustration of this is Australian wheat growing in the southern winter cropping zone, where, despite low rainfall (300 mm), wheat cropping is successful even with relatively little use of nitrogenous fertilizer. This is achieved by crop rotation with leguminous pastures. The inclusion of a canola crop in the rotations has boosted wheat yields by a further 25%. In these low rainfall areas, better use of available soil-water (and better control of soil erosion) is achieved by retaining the stubble after harvesting and by minimizing tillage.
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