From a discussion elsewhere, the importance of grain in a crisis rang historical bells. There is a huge shortage of flour  at the moment- we are told it is because of packaging. The Indus Valley 'capital of 2500BC was built about a huge granary. This was served by a stone wharf - the Indus now now flows several miles away from that but ancient wheel ruts in the stone speak of great movement of grain long ago to sustain the wealth of the city.  India has a huge grain reserve to offset a panic situation  based - or so I assume on the awful famine. No mention of reserves is made for us but with lock down world wide there may be trouble ahead. In truth I am alarmed Res Hist remark on this would be interesting.

Priscilla, glad to see you again.

I have several examples of revolutions due to shortage of grain. The French, the Russian revolutions and more recent ones...
Let me some time to seek for my examples that I recall and to support my views...

Kind regards, Paul.

In times past grain/bread was really the staple for nearly the whole population and so its supply was vitally important - these days if bread flour alone becomes unavailable I doubt widespread starvation will result, there being plenty of other starchy alternatives, such as potatoes and rice. However there is still the effect on morale. In the 1970s when I had a Saturday job in Sainsburys I remember there was once an interuption to the national bread supply for a few weeks (from strikes I think) and people panic bought all the flour available - but not the yeast, so clearly many didn't actually know how to make bread - and no one of course actually suffered any real hardship from the bread shortage. But securing their daily bread supply, even if it was just in theory, was clearly very important to most people. If i remember correctly, the government soon put pressure on the businesses and strikers alike to rapidly resolve the situation, and so maintaining the daily bread supply is politically as important as it has always been.

In ancient Rome, during the so-called Year of the Four Emperors with Nero, Otho and Galba recently dead and several candidates vying for the Imperial crown, whilst others were actually in Rome it was Vespasian, still stuck in Egypt, who ultimately got the purple toga because there he was able to control the grain supply, and was effectively able to hold the entire empire hostage until they accepted him. Similarly bread shortages directly triggered the French Revolution, and bread rationing in the UK (1946-48, ie after the war's end) badly knocked the popularity of Attlee's Labour government.

And some have argued that it was a run of awful harvests during the 16th century that fuelled the Protestant Reformation in England. Religion wasn't the real issue at all - just economics and the price of bread!

Thank you MM for your pointing to  the "bread" delivery, as it even in a "western" society can led to unrest.

Sorry Priscilla, for not coming earlier with my example of the Russian Revolution. 

Get stuck in new research, as I was sure from my reading I think now some 20 years ago from the book of Marc Ferro (son of an Ukrainian-Jewish mother, who died during the Holocaust and although Marc was only a "halb-Jude", she had lucky brought him to the South of France, where he survived)
La Révolution de 1917
https://www.amazon.fr/R%C3%A9volution-1917-Marc-Ferro/dp/2226093214

There I read for the first time in my life about the "Five days of Petrograd"
Most people think when one speaks about the Russian Revolution that it means the October revolution, but nothing is less true. It was the February revolution (March in our calendar), who was the real one and triggered the destitution of the Czar...
I made several contributions to the fora of "what if Kerensky..."

I had a vague remembrance that it was started by women and that they barred the bridges and that the  woman traversed the Neva on the ice...and it were the women who started unvoluntary the revolution and indeed for among others the queues
for bread...

And now I learned today that it was on the "International women's day"
http://thejournal.cpsucsa.org/index.php/ontopic/210-history-of-international-women-s-day
From the article:
"In 1913 the date for International Women’s Day was changed to 8 March, which was curiously prophetic given that on 8 March 1917 female textile workers in Saint Petersburg (then named Petrograd) began to strike for “Bread and Peace” triggering the Russian Revolution and a shift in the labour landscape and rights for all, including women’s right to vote."

And further from the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/08/womens-protest-sparked-russian-revolution-international-womens-day
From Orlando Figues. I read the book and found it good, but there seems to be some controversy about the author.
From the article:
The crowds of demonstrators were varied. The city’s governor, AP Balk, said they consisted of “ladies from society, lots more peasant women, student girls and, compared with earlier demonstrations, not many workers”. The revolution was begun by women, not male workers.
In the afternoon the mood began to change as female textile workers from the Vyborg side of the city came out on strike in protest against shortages of bread. Joined by their menfolk, they swelled the crowds on the Nevsky, where there were calls of “Bread!” and “Down with the tsar!” By the end of the afternoon, 100,000 workers had come out on strike, and there were clashes with police as the workers tried to cross the Liteiny Bridge, connecting the Vyborg side with the city centre. Most were dispersed by the police but several thousand crossed the ice-packed river Neva (a risky thing to do at -5C) and some, angered by the fighting, began to loot the shops on their way to the Ne...






  

Kind regards, Paul.

Meles meles wrote:

In the 1970s when I had a Saturday job in Sainsburys I remember there was once an interuption to the national bread supply for a few weeks (from strikes I think) and people panic bought all the flour available - but not the yeast, so clearly many didn't actually know how to make bread - and no one of course actually suffered any real hardship from the bread shortage.

The baking of levened bread is an intense exercise. The kneading, raising, knocking-back and proving of dough is very time-consuming and can be literally inconvenient. Once all that is done, however, the actual baking of the dough into bread is surprisingly quick. But preparation is key which is why bakers are so highly prized in society and always have been. In the past a bakery would be a place where, if one had indeed done all the preparing of the dough oneself but needed a good, hot oven in which to bake the bread, then the baker would bake your bread for you for a nominal fee. Bakers’ ovens were also for hire for the cooking other dishes such as stews.

A shortage of a staple, whether that be grain or tubers, has always had serious implications. The potato famines of the 18th and 19th century in Ireland being obvious examples. The switch to an alternative is not necessarily easy particularly in cultures where there is a reliance on a single staple.

Rice, wheat and potatoes (in that order) are the most popularly consumed staples in Europe & Asia. I was surprised to discover recently, however, that in terms of global production, ahead of rice comes maize. The largest producer of maize is America although very little is actually eaten there. Specialities such as cornbread or grits (maize porridge) tend to be localised in the south while a large proportion of American maize production is either used for animal feed or else exported. Maize flour features widely in the cooking of Central and South America and also in Africa. Tacos (maize tortillas) and tamales, for instance, are Mexican fare popular throughout the Americas.

Africa also produces and consumes a large amount of cassava which is neither a grain nor a tuber but a root which along with maize arrived from the Americas as part of the Columbian Exchange in the 16th Century. Prior to that, yams and sorghum (a tuber and a grain) would have been the main staples in Africa and still play an important role today. Another gift of the Columbian Exchange is the sweet potato. Often confused with yams, because some sweet potato cultivars share the same white-coloured flesh, the most nutritious sweet potatoes have an orangey-coloured flesh. Since Africa also imports a large amount of wheat, mainly from Eastern Europe, the current war in Ukraine has seen supply curtailed resulting in shortages of wheatflour there. Consequently, bakeries in Africa have taken to mixing wheatflour with either dried sweet potato or even just adding sweet potato puree to the dough.  



By all accounts, the resulting ‘orange bread’ is surprisingly popular.

Vizzer wrote:

Rice, wheat and potatoes (in that order) are the most popularly consumed staples in Europe and Asia. I was surprised to discover recently, however, that in terms of global production, ahead of rice comes maize. The largest producer of maize is America although very little is actually eaten there.

The problem with maize is that it is low in some essential amino acids while the large amount of niacin (vitamin E3) that it does contain can only be absorbed into the body if the maize grains have first been chemically treated. For centuries maize was a staple in central America, where it was routinely processed through nixtamalization (soaking, pounding and heating in an alkaline solution of lye) which although hard work does transform the niacin into a form that the human body can metabolise. However when maize found its way to the Old World with the Columbian Exchange, the knowledge about the vital nixtamalization process generally got left behind in the Americas. Maize grows well in diverse climates and soon after being brought back from Mexico it was being successfully cultivated across much of southern Europe and North Africa, especially where traditional cereal crops often did poorly. But in ignorance of the method of alkali processing, problems of widespread malnutrition (appearing as the seriously debilitating and even potentially fatal condition known as pellagra) soon arose wherever maize had replaced traditional cereals as the staple food crop. As late as the early 20th century there were still widespread occurences of pellagra in poor areas of Europe and the US where the rural diet was not diverse enough to compensate for the lack of nutrients that results from relying on maize alone ... and it still occurs today in refugee camps where people are dependent on the cheapest donated food - with all the limited dietary diversity that this implies. These days in places where maize is a staple or major component of the diet (eg central America) it is generally alkali-processed in something like the traditional manner, or deliberate steps are taken to ensure sufficient niacin is present in the overall diet, such as by adding extra niacin to general bread flour.

Globally however most maize is not actually used for human consumption, with over half that grown going directly for animal feed (and with even more animal feed being produced from using the leaves of the maize plant and from the bi-products of processing maize grain into other products). Unlike humans, cattle and most other domesticated herbivores can readily obtain niacin from untreated maize (I think it's their gut bacteria that render the niacin into a form the animal can absorb: human guts lack these particular little helpers) although this in turn does ultimately make the niacin readily available to meat-eating humans. Most direct human consumption of maize is in the form of either whole grains or milled flour, but a lot is also processed to make corn starch and corn oil for use as food ingredients. Maize starch can also be hydrolyzed and enzymatically treated to produce high fructose corn syrup, a sweetener which is added to many ultra-processed foods, while more is fermented into ethanol to make alcoholic drinks. Corn starch can also be used as a feedstock for making biofuels and in the production of plastics, fabrics, solvents and adhesives.