‘Search for the holy grain’: lost Welsh crops offer hope for future varieties

One farmer's quest to find black oats has broadened into a project that could rediversify the country's cereals and meet future climate challenges. Pictures and words by Alexander Turner

Pods of oats fly into the air - shards of golden light caught on the sea breeze. Two septuagenarian farmers wobble precariously above the moving parts of an old reaper-binder as it chugs, not quite effortlessly, through an acre of heritage cereal crops.

For Gerald Miles, 74, it's the first time since he was a small boy that such an event has occurred on his clifftop farm on the coast of Pembrokeshire. For decades, Miles believed the once common black oats of Wales had been lost for ever. This belief, confirmed by an unanswered request for seed in Farmers Weekly magazine after he lost his own in a storm, set him on a mission of rediscovery that he calls the search for the holy grain".

An ear of black oats harvested on Miles's farm