‘If we lose this heritage, what else are we left with?’

Tbilisi, Georgia – Anzor Maisuradze is a anxious farmer.

As fears of a looming international meals disaster dominated headlines in August, he struggled to reap his wheat amid a scarcity mix harvesters in Georgia and costly gas costs, which spiked after Russia launched a conflict on Ukraine.

“Our frequent enemy is simply there,” he mentioned, pointing north from his fields within the village of Nabakhtevi.

The Russian-controlled borders of the breakaway area of South Ossetia, which Georgians name Samachablo, lie fewer than 10km (6 miles) away.

Maisuradze is not any typical farmer. His 48-hectare (119-acre) operation, one of many nation’s first natural wheat farms, has helped revive native types of Georgian wheat that just about disappeared in the course of the Soviet period when farms had been collectivised and intensive agriculture was prioritised below a centrally deliberate financial system.

“We misplaced a lot of our tradition and id throughout [the Soviet] interval, not simply our agricultural data and seeds,” he mentioned.

Right this moment, Maisuradze grows 4 sorts of endemic wheat.

They develop greater, which suggests the heads of the plant are likely to droop all the way down to the bottom when ripe, and so they have lengthy bristles on the seed ideas. All of those traits make them harder to reap and thresh.

“If it prices 200 gel ($70) to reap one hectare of regular wheat, I’ve to pay 300 gel ($110),” Maisuradze mentioned. “I don’t know the way a lot it’ll value me this 12 months.”

Till the center of the final century, 14 of 20 of the world’s historical wheat species – 5 of that are endemic to Georgia – and lots of of subspecies and domestically bred varieties had been broadly cultivated throughout Georgia.

Pushed to obscurity by Soviet agricultural insurance policies, these endangered historical wheat varieties are making a gradual comeback in a rustic that has been chronically depending on Russia for its wheat, regardless of having no diplomatic relationship with its highly effective northern neighbour, with whom it went to conflict in 2008.

“Our nation is partially occupied, and we’re depending on Russian wheat. It’s ridiculous,” mentioned Tamaz Dundua, programme supervisor at Elkana, a non-profit group that promotes natural agriculture and home types of crops and animal breeds amongst farmers.

Elkana’s free seed distribution programme, which started in 2009, helped convey tsiteli doli, an endemic grain, to Georgians.

Dundua believes the group’s efforts are as a lot about meals sovereignty and bringing again Georgia’s wealthy agro-biodiversity as they’re about providing homegrown, more healthy options to the economic wheat that’s principally imported from Russia.

“It’s not solely about meals safety. It’s about common safety for certain,” says Eka Gigauri from Transparency Worldwide’s Tbilisi workplace. “Russians aren’t our pals, and they’re going to do their greatest to make us depending on them and punish us if we do one thing they don’t like.”

In the intervening time, although, 98 p.c of Georgia’s wheat imports come from Russia, and Georgia’s authorities has refused to affix worldwide monetary sanctions on Russia, citing “nationwide pursuits.”

Gigauri fears that the heavy reliance on Russian wheat may weaken the nationwide financial system and trigger injury akin to the impression of Moscow’s 2006 embargo on Georgian wine.

With the worldwide grain squeeze, the value of bread, which on common constitutes greater than 60 p.c of the each day weight-reduction plan in Georgia, has risen by 36 p.c.

The most well-liked bread is known as tonis puri, a form of flatbread baked on the partitions of {a partially} buried mud tandoor oven.

“We’ve managed to nonetheless maintain our costs for a tonis puri at 1.30 lari ($0.05) however most bakeries downtown have already elevated their costs to 1.50 gel ($0.53),” mentioned Nika Makharadze, a tone puri baker in suburban Tbilisi.

He mentioned the lower cost has elevated site visitors to his bakery, the place he makes about 500 puris a day. In February simply earlier than the beginning of the Ukraine conflict, a tone puri right here value 1.10 gel ($0.39).

Stimulating home wheat manufacturing

The federal government is taking discover and has hinted at a large-scale programme to stimulate wheat manufacturing.

“We expect it is going to be doable to extend wheat self-sufficiency within the nation from 15 to 50 p.c in a number of years, and we are going to do it,” Otar Shamugia, the setting and agriculture minister, instructed parliament in April, including the federal government would work on support packages to assist farmers meet rising gas, fertiliser and pesticide costs.

However when contacted by Al Jazeera in September, the ministry mentioned the federal government had but to give you a complete plan.

Regardless of this, wheat manufacturing is on the rise in Georgia.

The worldwide improve in wheat costs has inspired younger farmers like Beka Aslanishvili, who lately left his fintech trade job to handle his father’s farm.

Though he’s fascinated by endemic wheat varieties, he has determined to domesticate an Austrian winter wheat on 40 hectares (100 acres) of his land.

“I’m purely pushed by economics,” he mentioned. “I need to concentrate on productive varieties to make sure my income for the primary few years, however on the identical time, I see the marketplace for different grains is rising.”

Irakli Rekhviashvili, 78, is a revered agronomist and seed choice specialist who helped protect indigenous seeds on his private farm after testing and analysis stations closed within the wake of the Soviet collapse.

Rekhviashvili cultivates greater than 90 types of wheat on his natural farm. He’s additionally the director of analysis at Lomtagora, one in all Georgia’s largest wheat seed suppliers.

Collectively along with his accomplice Kakha Laskhi, Rekhviashvili helped breed an intensive wheat selection known as Lomtagora 126, which has yielded 11 tonnes a hectare on the firm’s take a look at web site.

Given that almost all indigenous seed varieties yield not more than two to a few tonnes per hectare at greatest, he too believes trendy intensive wheat varieties that yield 4 to 6 tonnes on common needs to be prioritised to enhance Georgia’s self-sufficiency – regardless of the heavy agro-chemical inputs like fertilisers they require.

“Rising outdated varieties is a future enterprise for many who are keen to pay the value of bio-products and admire prime quality wheat,” he mentioned.

Advantages of outdated varieties

Dundua, from the non-profit Elkana, fears that any large-scale state programme will push for intensive wheat cultivation and overlook some great benefits of Georgia’s historical heritage grains, identified for his or her more healthy gluten and better protein content material.

“We’d like the small farmers to keep up range,” he mentioned.

Many of those historical varieties have additionally been confirmed to be extra proof against pests, fungus, drought and even frost.

“What we see is [climate change] getting increasingly more problematic, so chelta zanduri, makha, dika, … these [local] forms of wheat, they’re very sustainable,” Dundua mentioned. “They’ll by no means die even with none sort of irrigation. If you happen to don’t irrigate industrial wheats, they are going to die.”

Georgia’s marketplace for heritage grain bread is restricted to a handful of boutique bakeries catering to Tbilisi’s upmarket clientele.

However extra inexpensive bakeries utilizing native wheat are popping up.

Natela Khutsishvili opened her bakery two years in the past in a blue-collar Tbilisi neighbourhood greatest identified for development supplies and used automobile elements.

“Whoever tries this bread and likes it is going to by no means return to consuming white industrial bread,” Khutsishvili mentioned.

A lot of her common prospects sought her out due to weight-reduction plan restrictions because of diabetes or persistent pores and skin circumstances brought on by gluten sensitivity.

Though her heritage grain bread prices twice as a lot because the puri constituted of industrial wheat, Khutsishvili mentioned folks have to eat much less of it to really feel satiated due to its dense texture, wealthy style and better dietary content material.

She additionally mixes white flour into a few of her breads to make them extra inexpensive.

This additionally helps stretch her restricted provide of heritage grain wheat flour.

“Even in my village, I attempted to get farmers to develop native endemic varieties, however nobody needs to danger it but due to the low yields,” she mentioned.

Seed certification debate

Dundua estimates that about 500 farmers throughout the nation have began rising endemic wheat however most are small farmers with a mean of 1.5 hectares (3.7 acres) of land.

He believes an absence of state assist and a scarcity of kit put a distinct segment market out of attain.

The Georgian authorities has additionally lately began implementing a 2017 regulation that tightens restrictions across the sale, distribution and manufacturing of seeds. It requires all seeds to endure a fancy and costly certification course of that features genetic lab testing earlier than being bought.

“We will’t squeeze farmers at this level,” Dundua mentioned. “The one option to save these endangered varieties is for farmers to start out rising them.”

He fears the additional prices and the extremely variable and repeatedly evolving properties of outdated types of wheat will make it laborious for them to fulfill trendy certification requirements. His organisation is campaigning for modifications to the regulation for heritage seeds.

Extra advocates for Georgia’s endemic seeds are becoming a member of the combat.

In 2019, improvement employee Asmat Lali Meskhi began a marketing campaign to register Georgian wheat with UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage in want of pressing safeguarding.

The UN company deferred the appliance and requested the nomination focus extra on “Georgian wheat tradition” moderately than “the preservation and restoration of endemic wheat as a crop”, however Meskhi is assured a resubmission subsequent 12 months will show profitable.

In that case, Meskhi hopes it may replicate the success of the 2013 nomination of Georgia’s methodology of constructing wine in clay pots. It helped spur pure winemaking and restore endemic grape varieties.

Nonetheless, Meskhi can be supportive of the certification of seeds that agricultural staff like Dundua worry will hamper famers’ want to develop indigenous wheat.

“Seed high quality may be very, essential if you end up rising cereals or wheat, and in the event you don’t have licensed seeds, how have you learnt that the seeds are of fine high quality?” requested Meskhi, who additionally helps a seed certification regulation she believes will safeguard endemic seeds and permit them to enter European markets.

Grassroots seed revival and sovereignty

However not everybody agrees.

In response to Dundua from Elkana, harder seeds legal guidelines will have an effect on their ongoing free seed distribution programme and likewise curtail the grassroots work of farmers like Manoni Akhvlediani, who’re serving to propagate nonetheless uncommon endemic grains.

Three years in the past, Akhvlediani turned a nook of her ancestral apple orchard right into a subject the place she grows two forms of wheat – chelta zanduri and gvatsa zanduri, that are associated to einkorn and emmer, two of the world’s first domesticated varieties.

From a handful of seeds she obtained from researchers in 2019, she hopes she will revive their cultivation in Lechkhumi, her dwelling area the place these seeds are believed to have originated.

“Restoration, popularisation and preservation of zanduri is my fundamental purpose, initially as a result of it’s an endemic breed of our area Lechkhumi and it is a a matter of status for us,” she mentioned.

Her dream is to bake bread from these native grains, as soon as she will afford a de-hulling thresher for the species.

Whereas the way forward for endemic grain revival is being debated, the Ukraine conflict and solidarity felt by many Georgians may win over extra prospects.

“That is additionally a form of political protest for me,” mentioned Levan Qoqiashvili, who along with his spouse, Lali Papashvily, lately launched a niche-dining enterprise specialising in Georgia’s well-known conventional bread and cheese dish known as khachapuri.

The couple is properly referred to as gastronomic consultants who’ve helped set up a number of of Tbilisi’s greatest identified fine-dining venues.

However their newest challenge, known as Gunda, is a private enterprise.

“An important a part of this expertise goes to be the flour – flour constituted of endemic Georgian wheat,” mentioned Lali.

The couple pre-ordered 10 tonnes of endemic wheat flour this 12 months from native farmers. They plan to increase, and talks are below means with a possible accomplice in New York. Making a buyer base will encourage extra farmers to develop endemic Georgian wheat, they mentioned.

They’ve labored with ethnographers and gastronomic researchers to hunt out greater than 50 conventional khachapuri recipes throughout the nation, lots of which they hope so as to add to their menu. However for this to work, Levan mentioned, geopolitical occasions matter.

“Russia is an occupier, and for our bread idea, peace is essential,” mentioned Lali.

Again in Nabakhtevi, Misauradze, who was in a position to harvest his fields in late August, mentioned he welcomes the rising assist for the endemic wheat motion he helped pioneer.

Though he believes native wheat might by no means feed all Georgians, he mentioned these historical grains are important to emphasize the nation’s sovereignty.

“If we lose this heritage, what else are we left with? However for this to proceed, we want correct [state] assist.”