Barley Crops in the Book of Mormon

Mosiah 7:22; “And all this he did, for the sole purpose of bringing this people into subjection or into bondage. And behold, we at this time do pay tribute to the king of the Lamanites, to the amount of one half of our corn, and our barley, and even all our grain of every kind, and one half of the increase of our flocks and our herds; and even one half of all we have or possess the king of the Lamanites doth exact of us, or our lives.”

For the next several days we’ll be taking a look at claims of what the Nephites had access to in the Book of Mormon. Today it’s barley. All information in these false prophecies is taken from an article on our site.

CFW (Cereal Foods of the World) has an incredibly detailed account of the history of food grains on their website. Yeah I know it might sound boring from that explanation, but it is interesting to find out who ate what and when.  The massive amount of work performed by these people serves as proof barley was not in the Americas until the arrival of Columbus’ second visit here in 1494, more than one thousand years after the end of the Book of Mormon story.

This particular site (http://www.aaccnet.org/cerealfoodsworld/samplepdfs/CFW-51-0004.pdf)    is provided by C.W. Newman and R.K. Newman from Newman Associates, Inc. Bozeman, MT.  Performing a basic search on the net in addition to his site you’ll learn that Mr. Newman is cited in several works regarding the history of barley and “received his Ph.D.  in animal science at Louisiana State University in 1965”.  He did “extensive work and research exploring the food and feed value of barley”.  Here is part of what he had to say regarding barley; 

“Columbus brought barley to the North American continent in 1494 on his second voyage (27).  The original introduction site was not conducive to barley culture, and there were no further reports of production in the area.  Later there were two additional pathways through which barley was introduced more successfully in North America.  Barley was brought to the East Coast colonies from England at the turn of the 17th century and into the Southwest during the Spanish mission movement (29).  There is little or no indication that barley was used for food during these early years; most of the crop was grown for malting, and the remainder was used as animal fee.  The same pattern continues today in the United States, with the majority of barley used for animal feed (65%) and malt and alcohol production (30%) and the remainder consumed as food (1.5%) or used for other purposes (15).”