I may have to join Twitter just to follow Chow Babe.

[Warpy]

3. "Green manure" crops like alfalfa have been used forever

the stubble enriching the soil after the heads have been harvested for cattle feed. The honey from hives used to pollinate it is pale and very sweet and the only type I use for baking.

The problem with the type of wheat that's used for bread is that it's planted in fall, overwinters, and then ripens the next fall, giving land used exclusively for wheat no time for a green manure cover crop. About the best a farmer could do is divide his field in half, and alternating the ones that grow wheat with soy, alfalfa, or other crops that fix nitrogen and can enrich the soil. Agribusiness can't do that, so they spread chemicals and plant wheat year after year, depleting the soil.

The Mediaeval three field system was about the best, legumes the first year, wheat or barley the second, and having it fallow the third, pasturing stock on it so they'd enrich it with manure.