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Barley, Hordeum vulgare L., is a true grain that originated in the Fertile Crescent thus it often mentioned in the Bible.  Some notable passages include Exodus 9:31 where it was destroyed in one of the plagues of Egypt, Deuteronomy 8:8 where mentioned as one of 7 food sources in a description of the bounteousness of the Promised Land, and throughout the book of Ruth where she was gleaning the fields just to survive.  Bread made of barley was mentioned in Judges 7:13 in the story of Gideon, Ezekiel 4 where he made bread that also included wheat, beans, lentils, millet, and fitches, and John 6 where the 5000 were fed with 5 loaves and 2 small fishes.  The value of barley in mentioned in Leviticus 27:16 relative to what a measure of seed being planted would produce, II Kings 7 in a prophecy of an end to a siege caused famine that was fulfilled later in the chapter, Hosea 3:2 as part of the price for a woman, and in Revelation 6:6 during the tribulation where 3 measures cost a penny although that was the equivalent of a days wages.  The value of barley is less than that for wheat thus it was considered a food for peasants.

The measures mentioned in those passages include an ephah, which is a tenth of a homer, where a homer is equivalent to 220 liters thus an ephah is 22 dm³ thus comparable to a bushel at 35.2391 dm³.  For dry measure a bushel is 4 pecks or 8 gallons, where same volume of liquid is 9.30918 gallons.  The definition of a bushel was a cylinder 18.5 inches across and 8 inches tall, but this was rounded down to 2150.42 in³.  If a unit less measure is mentioned in the Bible it is typically an ephah while the equivalent volume of liquid is a bath.  A bushel of barley weighs 48 pounds.  An inch was once defined as 3-4 barleycorns, while a barleycorn was 4-5 poppy seeds.

The liquid measure would make more sense to many people since the way most barley in consumed by people is as beer.  While most of the rest if used for animal feed.  Some does make it into health food products, which is not surprising since it was eaten by gladiators.

Barley is an annual grass that is grown in the summer in cooler areas or during the winter in some frost free areas, thus two crops were possible.  Several events in the Bible are even dated with respect to the early barley harvest, which is about the same time as Passover, and later wheat harvest at Pentecost, and the grape harvest in summer.

Barley straw is put in water features to prevent algae growth, but scientific studies of its effectiveness are inconclusive.

There are other species of barley found mostly in the northern hemisphere, but just the cultivated barley has been discussed here.  There are even variants of cultivated barley that were given specific names until it was realized that the differences were just single gene mutations that whether the heads to stayed together, the presence of a hull, and the number of rows of grain to be 2, 4, or, 6 besides a few differences these mutations also caused in how the barley is utilized.  A distinct feature of barley is the long awns.