As the people of Zeniff began to settle in the land, they engaged in agricultural activities, planting a list of crops that included barley and wheat. At one time, both of these crops were assumed to have been entirely absent from the pre-Columbian New World. However, that assumption regarding barley has been found to be incorrect. There are actually three types of wild barley native to the Americas—something scientists have now been aware of for a long time. Archaeologists first uncovered a domesticated form of barley native to the Americas in a pre-Columbian (ca. AD 900) context in the state of Arizona in 1983—more than 150 years since the publication of the Book of Mormon. Since then, pre-Columbian barley has been found in several other places, including in the mid-west and eastern United States.
Evidence from what is called archaeobotany (the study of plant-remains at archaeological sites) now confirms that a species of barley was highly important to some cultures in the Americas during this pre-Columbian time period. This has important implications for the Book of Mormon. In the second and first centuries BC, barley played a significant role in Nephite society, not only as food, but as a measurement of exchange (Alma 11:1–19), just as it did in ancient Near Eastern economic systems.
John L. Sorenson commented, "That such an important crop could have gone undetected for so long by archaeologists justifies the thought that wheat might also be found in ancient [American] sites." No matter how few anachronisms are thought to exist in the Book of Mormon, patience and faith are rewarded every time another one is disposed of.
Book of Mormon Central, "How Can Barley in the Book of Mormon Feed Faith? (Mosiah 9:9)," KnoWhy 87 (April 27, 2016).
John L. Sorenson and Robert F. Smith, "Barley in Ancient America," in Reexploring the Book of Mormon: A Decade of New Research, ed. John W. Welch (Salt Lake City and Provo, UT: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1992), 130–132.