Sustainable Development

http://www.dailyo.in/arts/netflix-cooked-micheal-pollan-food-health-middle-class-kitchen-india-culinary-culture-water-earth-fire-air-nestle/story/1/9660.html

In the second episode of Cooked, food writer and activist Michael Pollan’s docu-series, we meet Mumbai resident Lynett Dias. We see Dias prepare kori rotti chicken in her kitchen from scratch. As Dias makes fresh coconut milk, she explains that she learnt the process from her mother. Another scene is set in a Bohri community kitchen, where chicken nihari is being cooked as part of a subsidised meal, which will be distributed to houses in tiffins.

In sharp contrast, a family orders in from KFC after a long day at work; a regular three to four times a week affair for them. They are sheepishly conscious of the health problems the greasy burgers come with, but admit that it’s easier to order in when pressed for time. “Cultures that once held tight to their ways of eating are finding it difficult to spend time in the kitchen,” points out Pollan. “How did we get to this point, and what have we lost in the process?” “Water”, the second episode in the series sets out to answer this question.

While Netflix is yet to live up to its potential in India, one of the few documentary films that is available for viewing is Cooked, in which filmmaker Alex Gibney teams up with Pollan to bring his 2013 book to the screen. Like the book, the Netflix documentary series is divided into four parts, basically the elements of cooking – Fire, Water, Air, and Earth.

“Water” explores pot cooking in different communities in India and the gradual transition from traditional home food to processed, instant food. Cooked doesn’t always stick to the stereotypes, instead it offers a slice of middle class India. Shots of housing colonies, streetscapes, and interviews with different communities come together to map the changing landscape of home cooking.

Cooked, food writer and activist Michael Pollan’s docu-series on Netflix.

Meanwhile, Pollan is in his kitchen with the USA-based chef Samin Nosrat, cooking up pork braised with chiles for three and a half hours, while talking about the myriad flavours that come together in pot cooking.

Nosrat remininsces about the “grandma” style of cooking that puts together humble ingredients with skill and time. “Time,” said Pollan. “is the missing ingredient in our recipes and our lives. Most of us are moving too fast for slow cooking.”

In his book, Cooked, Pollan talks about, what he calls a curious paradox. “How is it that at the precise historical moment when Americans were abandoning the kitchen, handing over the preparation of most of our meals to the food industry, we began spending so much of our time thinking about food and watching other people cook it on television?” he asked.

The paradox is reflective of a section of urban India as well – we constantly Instagram our latest (or half-eaten) meals, review restaurants on apps, and gush about reality cooking shows, but spend lesser time in the kitchen. And it is hard to spend a lot of time by a stove after a long day at work.

Food industry market researcher Harry Balzer puts it succinctly that eating food and preparing it are not the same, because making food is work. He makes a pertinent point – when you eat food without spending time in getting it, you eat more of it. Example: French Fries or potato crisps. He suggests that you eat anything you want – pizza, apple pie, the works – but you make all of it. It makes sense that you would end up getting the best quality raw ingredients and eat better.

Cooked points to India’s rising fast food ecosystem, where food preparation is outsourced. An affluent middle class is eating out more and more because of rising and disposable incomes and the availability of fine dining options. Urban lifestyles, slick advertising, and social media chatter are influencing and moulding aspirations and choices about food, its economics, and its consumption.

At the same time, our relationship with food is more distant. We don’t know how our food is grown or cooked. Instead of eating locally and seasonally, the aesthetics of food plating and the quest for a wider palate has started to dominate our choices. Invariably, we end up incorporating unsustainable practices in our daily diets.

Yet, it’s not that hard to get fresh home-cooked food in India. Cooked refers to the dabbawallas as a “clever system for getting home cooked food at work”. In the documentary, a maushi fries up paneer, rolls out rotis and packs four dabbas for Yari Road. The ubiquitous dabbawalla picks up the tiffin carriers and cycles away. Of course, dabbawallas are unique to Mumbai and the system does not cover the entire country. Rather, urban centres are seeing a surge of apps that deliver restaurant food or pre-packaged meals and salads to your doorstep at the tap of a few buttons.

In many ways, “Water” is limited in its social and cultural depiction of India’s vast landscape. The narrative is mostly uni-dimensional, the complexities of food production, rituals, habits, and economics don’t always come through. Pollan talks about the history of food processing, feminism and cooking – a point he had been previously criticised about – but the episode doesn’t delve into the politics of food in the Indian context. It also doesn’t look into social dynamics, where a lot of the home cooking is done by a cook or a maharaj.

Instead, it concentrates on our gradual dependence on the food industry and its impact. Sunita Narain, the director general of the Centre for Science and Environment, explains on Cooked that urban India consumes some 10 per cent processed food in its daily diet, while rural India consumes five per cent. It’s not a small number given the size of the country. Most processed food is layered with salt, sugar, and fat, making it unhealthy and addictive.

The narrative moves to Nestlé India’s Research and Development Centre in Manesar, where chefs (some have worked at Michelin Star restaurants) and scientists are trying to crack the recipe for a Chicken Tikka Maggi noodles.

A study conducted by a German market researcher GfK revealed that people in India spend over 13 hours a week cooking, compared to the international average of less than six-and-a-half hours. But Nestlé is well aware that over the next two decades, Indians will have lesser time to cook food, and their lab work is preparing to be the food of the future.

With an increasingly fragmented audience and media that focuses on instant gratification, Cooked, despite its limitations, is a form of critical and reflective storytelling that questions our engagement, not only with food, but also media content. Pollan wraps up the episode by calling for a food renaissance and reminding viewers that the “industry doesn’t feed us. Nature feeds us. And that’s something that’s available to all of us.”

One of the most poignant takeaways from the episode comes from Nosrat. As she peels garlic, she describes these seemingly mundane tasks as mindful. “As a culture, we have just gotten so far away from these little tasks, it seems like it’s getting in the way of life,” she said. “But, actually, this is life.”

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/feb/18/meet-indias-female-seed-guardians-pioneering-organic-farming
The ‘seed guardians’ of Odisha are pioneering new ways of sharing and storing seeds to reap a more sustainable future

Bring up the topic of seeds and Nabita Goud sits up a little straighter and begins to talk animatedly.

Nabita is a smallholder and a “seed guardian” at the Maa Lankeshwari seedbank of Bhimdanga village in Odisha, eastern India. The seedbank is a small room lined with rows of neatly-labelled earthen pots and stoppered glass bottles, all of them filled with varieties of millets, ladies finger (okra), pumpkin, and red gram seeds (lentil), along with cotton.

Nabita puts her hand into a pot and scoops out a fistful of paddy seeds which are a dull brown, the colour of the soil. “This is kalajira rice,” said Nabita, who is an organic and Fairtrade-certified farmer. “It’s a scented, local variety and gives us a high-yield. We are now conserving it.”

Seeds are at the heart of agriculture, but they are also a significant cost for farmers. Organic seeds are hard to come by in a market flooded with genetically modified and hybrid cotton seeds. More than 90% of cotton in India is genetically modified and input costs for Bt Cotton are high. Hybrid cotton seeds cannot be replanted post-harvest, which in turn forces farmers to add to their financial burden by buying new seeds from the market.

Nabita is one of 18 seed guardians who are part of Chetna Organic’s seed conservation project. Over the last two years, six seedbanks have been established in five villages in Odisha with 72 men and women conserving 50 varieties of fibre and food crops seeds. This is a much needed shot in the arm for these districts which are plagued with hunger, poverty and insecurity.

“The programme aims to promote women-managed and controlled seed enterprises,” said Arun Ambatipudi, one of the founders of Chetna Organic. Chetna was established 10 years ago to enhance sustainable livelihood options for smallholder families that are dependent on rain-fed agriculture. According to IndiaSpend, 56% of India is dependent on rain-fed agriculture, and farmers are often pushed into an endless cycle of debt because of unpredictable weather, high input costs, poor soil and pest management, and market fluctuations.

Traditionally, Odisha is not a cotton growing state but over the last two decades, small and marginal farmers have started growing the cash crop. Conserving organic cotton seeds that are suited to the soil and as a climate adaptation measure is a priority for smallholders. Over the last five years, Chetna has been conducting small-scale trials with farmers like Nabita to evaluate the suitability of indigenous cotton varieties such as Suraj and Anjali.

Kalajira rice makes for a sumptuous, aromatic rice pudding.

Driving through Odisha, it’s easy to spot the organic from the non-organic farms. The landscape is dotted with stretches of waist-length cotton. In sharp contrast are the organic farms that look like Ceres has run riot, planted with cotton, red gram, and food crops.

“We practice organic agriculture,” said Nabita, who farms on three acres of land. “There are challenges. The traditional variety of cotton has a lower yield than the hybrid one, but we know it’s good for the soil and the environment. And organic is better for health.” Bhimdanga’s residents take pride in being completely organic. Visitors to the village are greeted with a board that says, “Welcome to Bhimdanga, an Organic and Fairtrade-certified Village”. ”

In a volatile cotton market, the mixed cropping practice that Bhimdanga’s farmers follow ensures individual food security, even if their cotton crop fails. Farmers grow cotton alongside food crops such as pumpkin, ridge gourd, lentils, and millets. Some are for their own consumption, and the rest is sold in the market. Ramprasad Sana, an entomologist and the technical head at Chetna Organic, said that the seedbanks have given 600 families food security.

Chetna enables farmers to set up sustainable and multipliable open-source systems to share and store seeds, using traditional knowledge along with new concepts and technology. The enterprise operates like a bank, only with less bureaucracy. A farmer can “withdraw” a kilo of seed and has to repay the loan with one-and-a-half to two kilos of seed after harvest. With the establishment of seedbanks, organic farmers no longer need to buy seeds from the market. This year, 1,594 kilos of seeds were distributed to 603 farmers.

Empowering women farmers to manage their own seed enterprises enables them to become decision-makers in the community. This is significant, given that according to the 2011 census, 68.5% of women work in agriculture. Traditionally, women have been the custodians of seeds and Chetna hopes to revive the practice.

Last year, Nabita and her neighbours participated in a seed festival in the neighbouring village of Mading where they met other farmers and showcased their indigenous varieties of seeds. “Everyone loved our kalajira rice there,” said Nabita with a smile. The short-grained kalajira is one of the key scented rices of India (pdf) and gives a high yield in a short timespan. When cooked, the rice has a heady fragrance, earning it the market name of “white baby Basmati”.

Rice is a staple agriculture product but in most of India, farmers cultivate high-yield paddy for a homogenous market. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that at least 75% of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops had been lost by the beginning of this century.

Kalajira rice and indigenous cotton varieties are being conserved by seedbanks like Maa Lankeshwari at a time when indigenous species of food and fibre are rapidly disappearing from farms and plates. With women like Nabita taking back control of their seeds, soil and food security, the smallholders of Bhimdanga are becoming part of a thriving, sustainable community that is conserving India’s indigenous seed heritage and protecting its food sovereignty.

Middle class India gets a helping in Michael Pollan’s new food show Cooked

The Guardian: Meet India’s female ‘seed guardians’ pioneering organic farming