Rebecca Sharpless, "People of the Wheat: Culture and Cultivation in North Texas" (U Texas Press, 2026)

About this episode

Dr. Rebecca Sharpless discusses her book 'People of the Wheat' and the history of wheat cultivation in North Texas.

If you’ve ever wondered where your wheat flour is coming from, who is milling it (and how), or how it came to be such an important staple, then this episode might be for you. Dr. Rebecca Sharpless speaks with host Scott Catey about People of the Wheat: Culture and Cultivation in North Texas (U Texas Press, 2026). This book examines the history of wheat in the six counties of the North Texas wheat belt, and how wheat growing, milling, and baking shaped the people and culture there. In the national imaginary, America’s amber fields of grain lie in the country’s center, but for more than a century, they also grew across one pocket of the South: North Texas. From the 1840s to the 1970s, the state's agriculture, dominated in lore by cotton in the east and livestock in the open range, was heavily invested in the cultivation, processing, sale, and consumption of wheat. Recalling a forgotten history, Rebecca Sharpless shows how the rhythms of the wheat harvest—and the evolution of the milling, distribution, and baking industries—governed daily life in what is now known as the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex. In the 1840s, Anglo settlers discovered that grain flourished in North Texas and…

People in this episode

Guest: Rebecca Sharpless

Topics covered

• wheat
• agriculture
• North Texas
• history
• culture

Keywords

• milling
• baking
• Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex
• economic history

Mentioned in this episode

Products: wheat flour

Books & works: People of the Wheat: Culture and Cultivation in North Texas, Grain and Fire: A History of Baking in the American South, Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens, Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices: Women on Texas Cotton Farms, The Sum of All Wisdom

Places: North Texas, America, South, Dallas, North Texas, Texas

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