Grains are small, hard, dry seeds, with or without attached hulls or fruit layers, harvested for human or animal consumption. Agronomists also call the plants producing such seeds grain crops. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals such as wheat and rye and legumes such as beans and soybeans. After being harvested, dry grains have several advantages over other staple foods such as the starchy fruits (e.g., plantains, breadfruit) and roots/tubers (e.g., sweet potatoes, cassava, yams) in the ease of storage, handling, and transport. In particular, these qualities have allowed mechanical harvesting, transport by rail or ship, long-term storage in grain silos, large-scale milling or pressing, and industrial agriculture in general. Thus, major commodity exchanges deal in canola, maize, rice, soybeans, wheat, and other grains but not in tubers, vegetables, or other crops.
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