What Does "Expensive" Mean When Discussing Grain? Interesting Op-Ed

[hatrack]

People have commented to me that wheat is getting a bit expensive, and I suppose that, in a way, it is. Yet it is amazing what you discover when you start poking about.

Looking back to Periclean Athens, if your estate could produce more than 200 medimnoi of wheat you were a full citizen and were expected to serve as a Hoplite with your own equipment. If your estate could produce over 300 medimnoi of wheat then you were gentry indeed and were expected to keep a horse and turn up on that to fight! Obviously we are talking big money here; after all 200 medimnoi of wheat was worth 600 drachma.

For a chance at that sort of land young Greek men with no land of their own sailed to Egypt to serve in the army of the Ptolemies (Cleopatra and her family) because they would be given on retirement enough land to put them into the 200 medimnoi category. The thing that makes this interesting is that 200 medimnoi is eight metric tonnes of wheat! Even at its most expensive recently, you’d still get change from £1,700.

EDIT

It probably took 150 years for our civilisation to swing from a man’s annual wage being the yield of one acre, to that same acre paying him for a week. I wonder how long it will take to swing back? Obviously we can try and push for increased yields, but to match the scale of increase we have seen since they huddled in gloomy bars and decided the Egyptians were liars if they said they got over 400kg an acre, we would have to hit 20 tons an acre. GM is not going to deliver that. So personally I don’t think that wheat is dear, I don’t think it is dear at all.

EDIT

http://www.farmersguardian.com/story.asp?sectioncode=44&storycode=16518

[Warpy]

1. No, but the commercial bakeries are going to be charging

us up the yingyang on their products because of the increased price of wheat.

I guess all those yuppies on HGTV who look at acres of granite countertops in trophy kitchens and sniff that they just NEVER COOK are going to have to learn how.