History of Wheat Timeline

At Çatalhöyük, people used both wholegrain wheat and flour between approximately 7100 and 6000 BC to prepare bread, porridge, and gruel.

Image source: Çatalhöyük

DNA analysis identified hexaploid wheat in seeds from Çatalhöyük dated to approximately 6400–6200 BC, documenting the early presence of a genetically complex wheat type.

By about 4000 BC, ancient Egyptians had developed bread making, ovens, and baking as one of the earliest large-scale food production industries.

Image source: History of bread

In the British Isles, wheat straw was used as roofing thatch during the Bronze Age. Its use remained common until the late nineteenth century.

Image source: Thatching

As of 2023, the earliest known wheat with sufficient gluten for yeasted bread was found in a granary at Assiros in Macedonia, dated to approximately 1350 BC.

Image source: Wheat

During the eighteenth century, seed drills began replacing the broadcasting of seed. The more precise method increased productivity and improved crop establishment.

Image source: Seed drill

Wheat became a central agricultural endeavor across the worldwide British Empire during the nineteenth century and remained especially important in Australia, Canada, and India.

Image source: British Empire

During the nineteenth century, the American wheat frontier moved rapidly westward as settlement, transportation, machinery, and markets expanded.

White wheat bread had historically been a high-status food, but during the nineteenth century it became a mass-consumption item in Britain, displacing oats, barley, and rye in northern diets.

Image source: White bread

The first successful grain elevator was built in Buffalo in 1842, allowing grain to be stored and transferred more efficiently at a major transport hub.

Image source: Grain elevator

John Ridley perfected Ridley's Stripper in 1843. The reaper-harvester removed the heads of grain and became an important harvesting technology in Australia.

After 1860, expanding wheat production in the United States flooded the world market, lowering prices by about 40 percent and contributing to the nutritional welfare of poorer populations.

The cost of transporting a bushel of wheat from Chicago to Liverpool fell from 37 cents in 1869 to 10 cents in 1905, greatly strengthening international wheat trade.

Annual wheat production in the United States rose from roughly 250 million bushels in 1869–1871 to more than 750 million in 1919–1921, more than tripling over fifty years.

Following the invention of the steel roller mill in 1878, hard wheat varieties such as Turkey Red became more popular than soft varieties because the new mills could process them efficiently.

By 1879, Saskatchewan had become the center of Canadian wheat production, followed by Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario. Expanding railway lines enabled easy exports to Britain.

Nineteenth-century technology substantially increased productivity as drills replaced broadcasting, cradles replaced sickles, and reapers and binders replaced cradles.

Image source: Agricultural machinery

Systematic data on wheat production are available for the period from 1885 through 1930, providing a basis for measuring the rapid expansion of the crop.

By 1895, bonanza farms in the Dakotas could produce 20,000 bushels in a ten-hour day using six people and 36 horses pulling huge harvesters, illustrating the scale of mechanized agriculture.

Image source: Bonanza farms

By 1910, wheat accounted for 22 percent of Canada's exports, reflecting the country's transformation into a major wheat-producing and exporting nation.

Wheat exports from 1914 to 1922 amounted to more than 200 million bushels, demonstrating the crop's importance to international food supply and trade.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, new wheat varieties were developed to help homesteaders obtain abundant harvests during the short growing seasons of the North American prairies.

During the twentieth century, global wheat output expanded approximately fivefold. Until about 1955, most growth came from increased cultivated area, while later growth increasingly came from higher yields.

The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration was established in 1935 to provide federal financial assistance during the global economic crisis and support prairie agriculture.

The four years from 1945 through 1948 were especially productive in the United States, with average annual output reaching 1,228 million bushels, about double wartime production.

Better seed storage and improved germination ability became important twentieth-century innovations, reducing the amount of harvested wheat that needed to be retained for planting the following year.

After 1955, the annual rate of wheat-yield improvement increased tenfold. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, irrigation, scientific crop management, and wheat breeding became major drivers of global production growth.

Although wheat was historically not a major crop in the country described, domestic production reached a record 1.5 million tonnes in 1985, representing approximately 7 to 9 percent of total food-grain production.

By 1999, the global average amount of seed used for wheat was approximately 6 percent of total output, reflecting gains in seed quality and germination.

By 2000, India had become the world's second-largest producer of wheat, reflecting the long-term expansion and modernization of South Asian wheat agriculture.

In the twenty-first century, global warming has reduced wheat yields in some places, increasing concern about the resilience of future wheat production.

Image source: Effects of climate change on agriculture

Between 2007 and 2009, concerns arose that wheat production might peak in a way analogous to peak oil, potentially causing sustained increases in food prices.