Changing food platter!

Changing Urban Food Platter & Ramifications

The average urban food plate is changing. There is more fruits in the platter than ever before. There is a shift from food crops to horticulture.

Lands providing key dryland crops - millets, oilseeds and pulses are reducing. Local fruits are being replaced by exotic fruits. There is a gradual land use change happening. The carbon incentives to horticulture is further enhancing the speed of change.

This is expected to bring big shifts in the food systems.

With the marginal lands being brought under horticulture crops, and such crops requiring lower tending time, poorer and marginal farmers are shifting to casual labour, usually to nearby towns and cities for additional incomes. Therefore, we see a major shift in the labour markets - which is increasing.

Are we observing this too? What could be the manifestation or ramifications?

The Violence of Markets - We are loosing control of the local food!

The photograph below says it all!

This is a small shop in a village in my Gujarat. We are subject to an assault of the market. We and maybe you (too!) are being made hostage of the choices being offered. We are loosing control of the food we eat!

As the proliferation of such companies increasingly occurs and marketing efforts are being amped up, a large number of companies opting to produce miniature versions of their products so as to ensure that their products are used by individuals spanning various segments of the society. Local foods are dying out - home snacks are dying out, small eateries in the villages reincarnating into shops like the above. Marketing is making children as the agent of change - household by household.

We are now importing wastes into our villages. With no waste collection and disposal mechanisms in the villages, we are polluting a large regenerative, biodegradable and circular waste management systems. The ramification of the violence is so rapid and so impactful that the societies are at a loss of how to respond.

Anything done against such trend would be termed protectionism. We have grossly underestimated the impact to be prepared for.

Is there a hope or we have lost it?

We produce, you eat! Don't cook! - is this the next INVASION....?

Subrata Singh

Local Food!

Subrata Singh

Trying to understand how much the food travels to reach us? Today, we get very few products (fruits & vegetables) that are plucked in the morning or the evening of the earlier day, except for the ones that we pluck from the small patches one may cultivate. The freshness is missing, we get several of them through the year - thanks to the cold storage networks.

An imagination of local circular economy in food systems

Markets have other plans for us. It wants us to eat food from all over the world. It wants to bring all food packaged in best possible way, at few xx the price it is purchased from the farmers. We will get fruits and vegetables that are graded, ripened, polished or coloured artificially - best looking ones but putting our lives at risk. Market cares for profit, it doesn't care for fresh, good and healthy (though packaged as fresh, good and healthy). We are lured into buying such products and keeping in our fridges for few more days!

How do we make our food more local? Is it possible for us to orchestrate the same? Can we demand from different levels of governments to enable and ensure this? We know local governments have power to do so! Can having food-miles in products help? We know farmers can definitely benefit if fresh products are sold in local markets @similar prices of that of its counterpart from other parts of the country/world.

We need to transform market designs to change this? We know there is power in the citizens to enable this? We need markets where products -that are harvested within 12 hour or less be available in the markets! We may need to define an area that we call local? We know we will not have all products that we get now, but we would have seasonal stuff - for us to look forward to, in the particular season.

It's my wish! If others agree, it can become a larger wish!

Income Distribution in Local Circular Economy

We are in search for a model - best possible balance. We are struggling for high returns to the producers. We are aspiring for high producer/consumer price ratio (ideally a prosumers). We want low water footprint (export) and energy (transportation) footprint.

We are a confused lot - about the need for homogeneity (everything available everywhere) and/or heterogeneity (local produce, local foods, local cuisine, etc). We continue to be confused - aspiring for premium markets and niche products vs production at scale and cheaper products.

Lets shape our future, lets discuss!

Role of FPOs in a Local Circular Economy

My imagination of a Farmer Organisation in a local circular economy context is to be doing the following -

1. Serving the prosumers; build and continuously enhance & deepen circularity

2. Promoting crop diversification and produce diversification 

3. Being in a collection of dung and cow urine, have a collective biogas plants, process for localised agri-inputs for sustainable agriculture (act as bio resource centres)

4. Have a cooperative stores in the village/panchayat collecting produce from farmers and selling it to people in the area (facilitate inter farmer crop exchange via coop) -equipped with coolers/freezers.

5. Collective price fixation (dynamic) based on cost of production and not based on market dynamics (insulated from the market price determination)

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Crop Diversification & Circularity

 While the direction in agriculture needs to be towards more diversification and circularity, we are moving towards market based production @scale models.

Increasing both water footprint and energy (transportation) footprint. Consolidation and corporatisation of agriculture through business enterprise models.

Do we need to redesign our models?

Impact of water on Local Circular Economies

I have been wondering some time now - while water is a basic need, water has been the most important input for improving livelihoods.

But, as I observe more closely, water is responsible for reducing agro-diversity, it is leading to gradual decrease in crop diversification as well as varietal diversification. We are moving from a natural circular economy (owing to diversified cropping pattern based on soil moisture availability) to few irrigated crops.

This is further exacerbated by the market models being promoted for exporting out water and soil nutrients.

From a more resilient system, we are caving into a dependent system.

I am perhaps archaic in my thinking, but within our own life time we are seeing reversals in our thinking and approaches! Will this reversal happen?

We seem to be contradicting ourselves, mor often than not!