It's not really just a storm risk. The higher yeilding your wheat the higher risk of lodging, so growing tall wheat in poorer conditions is fine, but the higher the grain weight the higher the risk of lodging.

> but it is more or less worthless for farmers as anything other than a novelty

This is clearly not true, considering it has already been successful as a niche specialty product. So you're obviously wrong.

You could become right by weakening your claim. The wheat will remain a niche specialty product, and will not overtake other wheats in the mass market.

Specialty products made on a smaller scale can be plenty valuable and successful. They are not "novelty" products.

By "novelty" I mean a niche or specialty product. I think that's basically the definition of novelty in terms of a product being sold, correct me if I'm wrong.

There are numbers for this specific wheat. Emilia-Romagna's 2016 agricultural economic assessment compares grano del miracolo with conventional wheat [1]:

  Yield: 1.5 vs 5.8 tonnes/hectare.
  Variable costs: €527 vs €570/hectare.
  Selling price: €390 vs €203/tonne.
  Gross margin: €58 vs €607/hectare.

That's roughly 74% less grain, with only 8% lower variable costs per hectare. Even selling at nearly twice the price, its gross margin is about 90% lower. These are the government's planning estimates, with Miracolo's yield based on agricultural experts consulted for the assessment.

Preserving genetic diversity is valuable, and specialty buyers may pay enough to make growing it worthwhile. But that specialty market is precisely what I mean by "novelty." The economics of growing it as ordinary commodity wheat are poor.

[1] https://agricoltura.regione.emilia-romagna.it/psr-2014-2020/...

For me, "novelty product" has a connotation of "extraneous, just for fun, useless". If that's not what you meant, never mind!

Well I think this grain is just for fun and useless. There is no benefit to growing it apart from maintaining the genetic diversity it may contain.

What about flavor? Fuck all those people who think it tastes better I guess?

The article mentions other benefits, such as many Italian farmers lost their harvest in the drought of 2024, while many traditional grains fared better in the dry climate and could be harvested.

The article is effectively an advertisement.

The yield of this wheat is 1.5 (Miracle Wheat) vs 5.8 (Standard) tonnes/hectare. That's about 25%. Since wheat can easily be stored for many years, you would have to have droughts in 3/4 of years before you break even due to drought resistance. In the meantime farmers can barely break even financially growing this stuff.

*HOWEVER* Miracle Wheat is very very susceptible to lodging (falling over and dying in the rain). So in years where there isn't a drought you would sometimes lose almost 100% of the crop. So even if there were droughts 3/4 of the time, you would still never break even.