Crop of the week: Barley

-In 2007, Yuma County produced more than 4,200 tons of barley on 2,000 acres valued at just over half a million dollars.
 
-Barley is one of the oldest domesticated grain crops, having been cultivated for more than 8,000 years. There are differing views among researchers as to whether the original wild forms were indigenous to eastern Asia, particularly Tibet, or to the Near East or eastern Mediterranean, or both.
 
It was later cultivated and consumed by the Chinese as one of their first commercially grown commodities. Numerous references to barley and beer are found in the earliest Egyptian and Sumerian writings. In Athens, barley was the special food of the gladiators - the hordearii, or "barley-eaters."
 
-About half the barley grown in the United States is used for livestock feed. It is especially valuable as hog feed, giving desirable portions of firm fat and lean meat.
 
-Around 25 percent of the barley crop is used for malting in the United States. Of the malted barley, some 80 percent is used for beer, around 14 percent for distilled alcohol products and 6 percent for malt syrup, malted milk and breakfast foods.
 
For malting, the barley is steeped in aerated water in large tanks for 45 to 65 hours, then transferred to germinating tanks for five to seven days. During this treatment, root sprouts emerge but not the stems. This "green" malt is then dried in hot-air kilns.
 
-Barley for human food is made into pearl barley by using abrasive disks to grind the hulls and bran off the kernels. Pearl barley is used in soups and dressings. Barley flour can be used in baby foods and breakfast cereals, or mixed with wheat flour in baking.
 
-Researchers have been developing healthier barley varieties. The latest, BGLife Barley, serves as a natural way to help manage diabetes, heart disease and obesity because of its high content of beta-gluten, a water-soluble fiber. The strain was developed by an affiliate of Yuma-based Barkley Ag Enterprises, and some of the research and seed production has taken place in the Yuma area.
 
-In about 1305, Edward I of England decreed that 1 inch should be the measure of three barleycorns, and English shoe sizing began. Thus, a child's shoe that measured 13 barleycorns became a size 13.


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Source: Kurt Nolte is an agriculture agent and Yuma County Cooperative Extension director. He can be reached at knolte@ cals.arizona.edu or 726-3904.