The Ancient Wisdom of Georgian Wheat
Edition:
Agriculture
Bread and wine are two products integral to every Georgian table, no matter rich or poor. Wheat and grapes have grown on Georgian soil for thousands of years and the knowledge and wisdom, passed down through generations, is at the core of Georgian culture. One could say that Georgian identity is rooted in wine and bread. But while Georgians wouldn’t dream of importing the majority of the grapes used for their wine, today Georgia imports 80 percent of its wheat and wheat flour from Russia, making it almost entirely dependent on Russia for a grain that is used to produce its staple food, bread.
“Old Georgia heritage wheat landrace has been cultivated and hand selected one harvest after another for more than 5000 years by our forefathers,” explains agronomist Irakli Rekhviashvili. “This is a gift to us from our ancestors and it is very important to preserve not only because it is part of our identity but also because it is healthy, sustainable and more economical to cultivate.”
Before the Soviet Union took over Georgia in 1921, Georgia had a long tradition of cultivating wheat and grapes. Wheat grew on the flat lands and wine on the slopes of the foothills of the Caucuses. The Soviets, however, were not interested in producing wheat in Georgia as they could mass produce it in Russia and Ukraine. Instead, Georgia was designated a wine and citrus producing country. The flat fertile wheat fields of eastern Georgia, Kakheti, were turned into vineyards that mass-produced wine for the Soviet Union. This decision marked the demise of Georgian wheat cultivation.
A century later, however, there is a slow but steady revival of wheat culture underway in Georgia. Four men—three Georgian and one French—are playing an instrumental role in this revival: baker Jean-Jacques Jacob, a French national who has been living in Georgia since 2005; Irakli Rekhviashvili, a 74-year- old agronomist who has dedicated the last 30 years of his life to collecting and cultivating Georgian heritage wheat; and two young farmers, Nika Sulakauri and Gotcha Aptsiauri, two 27-year-olds who are using ancient techniques and endemic Georgian wheat species to grow the crop and spread the culture in the country.
This project was created by my desire to understand how a society lost a five-thousand year tradition—and the people who are rebuilding it, one field at a time.
Georgia is the only country that is home to 15 out of the 20 known species of wheat in the world, according to the study Heritage Wheats of Georgia.
Jean-Jacques first discovered Georgian bread made from heritage landrace wheat as a tourist 18 years ago. After a sample at an organic farm, he knew he had found his calling. Today, he cultivates Georgian wheat at a seven hectare farm in Georgia’s eastern Kakheti region and runs a successful bakery, Au Blé d’or, in the capital Tbilisi.
“I am gluten intolerant and I have an allergic reaction every time I eat bread,” Jean-Jacques explains. “But when I first visited Georgia 18 years ago, I tasted bread at an organic farm that did not give me gluten allergy.
It was made with Georgian landrace wheat [domesticated, locally adapted, often traditional variety of a species]. This moment changed my life. I knew at that moment I had met my destiny and I had to follow the wisdom of life.”
“Without bread, there is no life.”
“Bread is a form of freedom, of independence. Bread is nourishment, of the body and the soul.”
“Factories can bake bread from hybrid wheat flour more easily due to increased elasticity. The negative effects of this are numerous, however, breads are less nutritious and give many people digestion problems. There is a question that has to be asked, is it worth it? For a small country like Georgia wouldn’t it be better to rediscover an old forgotten wisdom so it could be independent from Russian imports? It isn't wisdom that could come from the government, it would have to come from the ground up, from the farmers and bakers.”
“What I’m doing here is to show people that there is another way, that there is an old wisdom in the wheat that we can learn from today.”
Jean-Jacques turned to agronomist Irakli Rekhviashvili for help to launch his mission. Irakli, 74, has dedicated nearly half his life to bringing traditional wheat varieties back to Georgian farms.
He works in an unassuming field in Asureti, about an hour drive south of Tbilisi. It was fate that brought him to Georgian wheat, as well. “I was an agronomist by profession and in 1990 I got an offer to work for an organization here in Asureti to research and cultivate wheat,” he recalls. “One day the director of this organization said it was going to close and he shared his collection of 30 types of wheat with me. When I received this collection I discovered that of these 30 types of wheat 15 were Georgian and 5 were endemic to Georgia. That’s when my interest in Georgian wheat began and I started collecting them. Now I have 90 different types of Georgian wheat.”
“I am Georgian and this is Georgian wheat. My aim is to make sure that Georgian wheat grows freely across the land. It is my responsibility as a Georgian."
“I managed to cultivate 80 varieties this year but I have 90 in total. I am planning to collect all 150 of them and cultivate them all. I wish to share these with all of Georgia. So I think I have managed to do something important with my life.”
“Industrial hybrid wheat gives higher yield, but it has some serious drawbacks too, as well as considerable amounts of pesticides, there are 5 components that wheat needs to grow; warmth, light, water, air and nutrients. If one of these is lacking then the whole crop of hybrid wheat will fail. Georgian wheat landrace, however, can be grown naturally, does not need pesticides and has adapted to the climate here so it's a lot more robust and has a much higher chance of surviving if there is any variability in these five components," says Irakli Rekhviashvili
Irakli is not only cultivating wheat but he also has a field of corn that comprises three varieties, he hopes to be able to finally have one variety that will be perfectly adapted to the Georgian climate and won’t require a lot of water.
“With Georgian wheat you can plant your harvested wheat again next year but with a hybrid you need to buy new seeds every year.”
For Irakli, the question of which wheat varieties Georgian farmers grow—and the role of wheat in the country’s trade policy—goes beyond questions of sustainability, however.
"Food is the most human weapon,” he says. “What does a human need? Air, water and bread. You are independent if you have all three of these things. Bread is more than just nourishment because wheat also has healing qualities.”
The Soviet Union sought to bring many different nations, with unique cultures and identities, together under one unified communist Russian culture and identity. It did this by suppressing, dividing and eradicating the unique cultures and identities of the nations under its control. One of the tactics was to outlaw languages, forcing everyone to use only Russian, although it failed to stop Georgians, who revolted against the law in 1978. Identity is rooted in things other than language too, like religion, culture and agriculture. Georgian wheat culture is ancient and it is the foundation upon which many generations have nourished themselves.
The first piece of bread baked each day is traditionally kept until the end of the day for a guest. The Georgian word for bread, puri has come to signify generosity and hospitality in the Georgian language and you can find a Georgian bakery, toné, on almost every street corner. By making the Georgian people rely on a grain that they do not produce you are one step closer to creating a dependency and thereby removing an important branch of their identity and independence.
In the 70 years of Soviet occupation Georgian heritage wheat grains, which possess unique traits like immunity to diseases, were all but forgotten. Irakli has made it his mission to collect all of them and revive them by cultivating them in his small field.
Over the past 14 years, Jean-Jacques has seen Georgians welcome traditional wheat varieties back in their lives through his own farm and the bread he bakes with the grain he grows there.
“We delivered bread to the city once a week and then twice a week and I understood that people don’t need bread only twice a week, they need it every day. I understood that in the village the wheat would grow without me so eventually we found a property we could use as a bakery in the city,” he says. “Now the bakery can work without me for some days too so I have some time for myself for the first time in many years. Which means that I am able to attend a bread festival in Austria this year and I will also be able to present at the World Ethics Forum in Switzerland too.”
In the village Jean-Jacques has partnerships with local farmers, who take care of the wheat now that he is baking in the city.
Jean-Jacques delivers his bread to locals in the village, and buys their eggs to sell in his bakery.
Many of the villagers are old and homebound so Jean-Jacques also helps them with various odd jobs and brings them products from the shops.
“I never thought I would end up doing this. But, I had always felt that something was wrong with society, there is no peace in the world."
"I had always felt that society seems to revolve around profit rather than human’s wellbeing. But I thought, what’s stopping us from building a new society where the wellbeing of the human is the central objective.”
Two young farmers, 27-year-olds Nika Sulakauri and Gotcha Aptsiauri, are also seeing a growing demand for the Georgian wheat they cultivate on a 20 hectare field near the Georgian border with Armenia.
Nika studied in the US but came back with a plan to use his heritage and knowledge to develop sustainable farming at home.
Gotcha grew up on a farm and is a committed Hindu, experiences that have inspired him to do things differently.
Near the village of Marabda, their field glows pure gold in the bright July sun.
“I want to cultivate the land and improve the soil here. Eventually I would like to make an ecovillage here and grow a food forest,” explains Nika. “The pesticides used are killing the soil and make it increasingly harder to grow crops. With growing these Georgian wheat landraces we are beginning to repair the soil.”
Nika and Gotcha spent nine months caring for the wheat and watching it grow: its ultimate success hung on the luck of the weather.
The two men put hours into repairing their rundown barn, working from morning until late into the night.
2023 was a particularly wet summer and it meant that finding three consecutive days without rain was not so easy, the combine harvester had to be booked and canceled a couple of times before harvest day finally arrived.
Nika and Gotcha sell their yield online.
“There are people who will buy this…last year I just posted it on Facebook and it sold like hotcakes.”
Looking at the harvest I couldn’t help thinking that there is a quiet revolution happening here. From Irakli, who has made it his mission to preserve the age-old varieties of Georgian wheat to pass on to future generations, to Nika and Gotcha, two young men picking up the baton and planting it—not purely for ideological reasons but because they see the practical benefits in doing so. Then there is Jean-Jacques, whose ideology and passion is feeding people in the city and connecting them to an ancient wisdom of the earth through his bread.
Perhaps he is right, if you want to change something and gain your independence you can’t depend on a government to do it for you, it has to come from the ground up.
This photo story was prepared with support from the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) South Caucasus Regional Office. All opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of FES.
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