Pandian D. stood barefoot at the base of a towering palmyra tree, its trunk rising like a pillar into the bright, sunny sky. He carefully tightened a rope loop around his ankles and began climbing the tree, moving upward in a quick, practised rhythm. Within moments, the 42-year-old had scaled to the top and balanced himself among its branches. As he emptied freshly tapped padhaneer (sweet palm sap) into a plastic pot tied to his waist, the light of the morning sun unfurled across the fields of Poorikudisai village in northern Tamil Nadu.
It almost seems unbelievable that until a few years ago, Pandian worked as a laboratory technician at a private hospital in Viluppuram, and had never climbed a palm tree in his life.
His parents had witnessed the physical toll it took on previous generations and wanted a different future for their son.
Across much of rural Tamil Nadu, traditional palm-based work, including climbing trees, tapping toddy, collecting sap, making palm jaggery and selling ice apples, came to be associated with poverty, physical hardship and social stigma. Although the palmyra was declared the state tree in 1988, the livelihoods associated with it have been steadily pushed to the margins, especially after toddy tapping was banned under the Tamil Nadu Prohibition Act, 1937. Harassment at the hands of the police, on mere suspicion, became common, and many climbers abandoned the occupation entirely, migrating to cities in search of work.
But in Poorikudisai, something unexpected has unfolded since 2021. Against the tide of migration, palm climbers have begun returning home to take up work that had long been abandoned by the youth. At the centre of this transformation is Pandian himself, whose journey from lab technician to palm climber mirrors the village’s renewed embrace of the palmyra.
Pandian was born into a family of palm climbers, yet he grew up deliberately shielded from the work his relatives and ancestors had undertaken. His parents had witnessed the physical toll it took on previous generations and wanted a different future for their son. Like many rural families, they believed that education offered the only route out of hardship.
Despite leaving his village behind for better career prospects, he remained deeply drawn to agriculture. As a child, he had watched his maternal grandfather cultivate paddy and oilseeds, and the memories of those fields stayed with him.
It almost seems unbelievable that until a few years ago, Pandian worked as a laboratory technician at a private hospital in Viluppuram, and had never climbed a palm tree in his life.
After marrying his wife Manimegalai in 2004, Pandian returned to Poorikudisai to begin farming full-time—against his parents’ wishes. Initially, he practised conventional chemical-based farming, following methods common across the state at the time. But his approach changed gradually after he encountered the writings of the late agricultural scientist G. Nammalvar, one of the pioneers of organic farming in Tamil Nadu.
Pandian later trained under both Nammalvar and natural farming expert Subhash Palekar, slowly transitioning towards organic methods, growing paddy, vegetables and oil seeds—just like his thatha.
Also read: This farmer builds his own tools—and upskills others, too
Farming sustained Pandian’s family for several years, until disaster struck: in 2016, severe floods were followed by a period of intense drought. Crops failed, wells dried up, and debts mounted rapidly. “We reached a point where we thought we may have to sell our land just to survive,” Pandian says.
That is when the palm trees on his land, standing tall and green, caught his eye in a renewed light. When everything had dried and withered, these palms symbolised hope for Pandian.
The palmyra palm (Borassus flabellifer) is uniquely suited to Tamil Nadu’s harsh climate. Deep-rooted and remarkably hardy, it can survive long dry spells with little human intervention. Between January and June, the peak harvesting season, climbers tap kallu (toddy), collect padhaneer, and harvest ice apples from the fruiting trees.
Despite having grown up around this knowledge and watching it in action, Pandian realised he knew nearly nothing about the practical skills required to earn a livelihood from palms.
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At first, he survived by fashioning small toys and whistles from palm leaves, which he sourced with the help of seasoned climbers. He sold these toys in Chennai’s organic markets, and the income was modest but enough to sustain the family through the drought.
He knew he could not continue indefinitely without learning to climb. By then, he was already 38. “I was embarrassed to ask someone to teach me to climb a tree at that age. So I just prayed to my ancestors and tried it,” he recalls. To his surprise, he did not need any help. “It felt as if my ancestors were guiding me every step of the way. Yet, it was also a physically exhausting process,” he says.
Palm climbing demands extraordinary endurance. The work places immense strain on the legs, back and hands. Isravel A., another climber from the village, explains the routine. To tap padhaneer or kallu, they will have to climb each tree thrice a day—during the morning, noon and evening. “I climb 60 trees daily. This work can be done only if we are mentally and physically fit. Without an afternoon nap, I cannot climb again in the evening.”
Palm climbing demands extraordinary endurance.
The risks are constant. Climbers frequently suffer cuts while slicing into the flower stalks to collect sap. More serious injuries, including severed nerves and falls from trees, can leave workers permanently disabled. Since most families depend on a single climber as the primary breadwinner, accidents often push entire households into crises.
Over time, Pandian began questioning why climbers received so little institutional support. Far from welfare schemes and insurance protections, there wasn’t even official recognition for their labour. He became increasingly aware of the politics surrounding toddy and palm products in Tamil Nadu. (In the past, the profession was associated with marginalised communities and backward castes.)
The distinction between kallu and padhaneer is deceptively simple. Freshly collected palm sap is innately sweet. If stored in plain clay pots, naturally occurring microbes ferment the liquid into kallu, a mildly alcoholic drink. When collected in pots lined with lime, fermentation is prevented, and the padhaneer remains unchanged.
Yet under the Tamil Nadu Prohibition Act of 1937, kallu was classified as liquor and banned. “In our village, the police would sometimes arrest people even for collecting padhaneer,” Pandian says. Fear and harassment drove many families away from the occupation altogether. Of the nearly 300 palm-climbing families once living in Poorikudisai, more than half eventually migrated elsewhere for work.
Rather than give up, Pandian decided to organise.
Also read: On Tamil Nadu’s coast, a living seed bank conserves 2000+ rice varieties
In an effort to understand the wider struggles faced by climbers across Tamil Nadu, he embarked on a 4,000-km cycle journey across the state in 2021, meeting palm workers from different regions and documenting their experiences. The trip ultimately led to the formation of the Tamil Nadu Panaiyerigal Padhukappu Iyakkam (The Tamil Nadu Palm Climbers Protection Movement).
Members meet every Saturday to discuss challenges, address legal cases and make collective decisions. The movement’s strict regulations prohibit adulteration of toddy or palm products. The collective also provides support when climbers face police intimidation or fabricated charges.
One of their biggest battles has been against middlemen. “For years, traders wanted entire villages to sell only through them. But we believed the people doing the hard labour should control the sale of their own products,” Manimegalai explains.
The collective also provides support when climbers face police intimidation or fabricated charges.
The collective began directly marketing padhaneer, palm jaggery and ice apples to consumers, bypassing exploitative intermediaries. They also launched events like the Panai Kanavu Thiruvizha (Palm Dream Festival) to rebuild connections between urban audiences and palm culture, educating them about the realities of the occupation.
Slowly, the stigma surrounding livelihoods built around the palmyra began to shift.
Palm-based occupations within Poorikudisai now operate collectively, with women shouldering an equally demanding share of the labour.
Unsold padhaneer is brought each evening to a common processing area called Panangadu, where Manimegalai boils it down into thick syrup before turning it into panangkarupatti (palm jaggery).
The process is painstaking. Fresh nectar cannot be stored for long without resulting in fermentation, so it must be boiled on the same day it was sourced. Once enough syrup accumulates, it is heated for hours until it thickens into a rich, caramel-like consistency. It is then poured into moulds carved into the floor and left to cool into solid blocks.
Even in selling their products, the women of the village make deliberate ethical choices. Rather than selling jaggery exclusively in bulk to those who can afford it, they package it in small quantities, making it accessible to everyone. “If someone buys huge amounts only to waste them, that disrespects our labour,” Manimegalai says. The profit is also shared among the members of the collective.
Also read: To Tamil Nadu’s fisherwomen, the Cauvery delivers catch and self-reliance
What started as a small collective in 2021 with 40 members has now grown into a state-wide movement with over 800 members. “In 2018, there were barely 30 climbers left in this village. Today, more than 150 families depend on palm-based livelihoods again,” says Pandian.
The revival has transformed not only incomes, but also the perception of dignity and autonomy for climbers. Many of those who have returned to their village are educated graduates who consciously chose to leave salaried jobs behind.
Many of those who have returned to their village are educated graduates who consciously chose to leave salaried jobs behind.
On good days during palmyra season, climbers can earn Rs. 250 from one tree—enough, they say, to live comfortably while remaining rooted in Poorikudisai.
Isravel himself once worked in the finance sector after completing his graduation. The 32-year-old finds his life as a palm climber far more freeing than the office-going routine of his past. “Here, I answer to nobody. I decide my own rates for my labour. I have control over my time and life. That freedom matters,” he says.
This freedom is ultimately the most significant part of Poorikudisai’s story.
Across much of rural India, migration is treated as an inevitable, a one-way movement away from villages towards cities. Traditional occupations are often portrayed as relics of the past, incapable of sustaining modern aspirations. But in this small Tamil Nadu hamlet, palm climbers are reimagining development.
Each morning, as they scale another tree against the rising sun, the palmyra continues to stand as both witness and companion to that transformation.
Edited by Aathira Konikkara and Neerja Deodhar
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As you make your way to the sprawling village of Madhopur in Bihar’s Nalanda district, you’ll be greeted by rows of pigeon pea (arhar) plants that line the road leading you through thriving green fields. An hour’s ride away from the state capital Patna, the journey is a refreshing contrast to urbanity: ducks quack about in little pools of water, haystacks lie by the side, cows and goats graze, and the walls of houses are fortified with cow dung.
Yet at Sunita Kumari's small home, it is all about mushrooms, not arhar dal. Inhabited by a family of four, with no room to spare, Sunita has earmarked a small area on her verandah for their cultivation in a makeshift, plastic sack-covered space. Several perforated plastic bags containing substrate (straw from paddy or wheat) are stacked on top of each other. Overlapping clusters of oyster mushrooms, shell-shaped with white gills, sprout from these bags in the months between October and April. Delicate and perishable, they must be consumed within a day or two, and sure enough, they find a ready market since they are rich sources of protein and minerals, as well as being easy to cook. Sunita is thus assured that she can sell her produce directly from her home.
For rural women with limited means in Bihar, fungiculture represents opportunity and a broadening of horizons. Among the various fungi grown in the state, the oyster mushroom remains the most preferred: it requires low financial investment, simple techniques, no soil or land—making it a woman-friendly enterprise that can be run from familiar, small domestic spaces.
Among the various fungi grown in the state, the oyster mushroom remains the most preferred.
Sunita, now 40, recalls her early days of economic hardship, when her husband’s pharmacy could not help meet the family’s needs. “With young children, there are always expenses at home. Now I have earnings of my own to spend on their education, and on myself,” she says with satisfaction.
If you arrive at Madhopur in the evening, the village lanes are abuzz with children playing and women chatting in groups. Sunita and other mushroom cultivators instead spend this time tending to their mushrooms, earning Rs. 500–Rs. 1000 per day, depending on the harvest. The following day, some of them will walk to the village haat with freshly harvested produce, while others will wait for their customers—and even vendors—at their homes.
Aside from oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus)—which are known locally as ‘dhingri’ and which dominate rural kitchens—the button (Agaricus bisporus) and milky white (Calocybe indica) varieties are also grown in Nalanda. Each calls for distinct methods of cultivation and preparation for meals.
Also read: The secret lives of fungi: The forest’s invisible architects of survival
For a long time, mushrooms were not consumed in Bihar. They are not part of the traditional cuisine, and have been perceived as “unclean” from a cultural and religious standpoint. But growing them has altered women’s perception of mushrooms as both an ingredient and source of nutrition. Routinely, families now turn oyster mushrooms into pakodas (fritters), or toss them in curd to make a refreshing raita. Their meaty texture, coupled with their unique, umami flavour, makes them perfect for a stir-fry with peas and onions, or even a simple curry. Bumper harvests are often pickled, too.
In the district’s Saril Chak village, women in nearly every household were knee-deep in oyster mushroom cultivation.
An estimated four thousand women are presently engaged in mushroom cultivation, experts say. The foundation for the district’s capacity was laid in the late 2000s, when Dr. Jyoti Sinha, an expert with the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) in the area, began training hundreds of women and assisting them in setting up small businesses. By 2010, fungiculture had found acceptance across many villages, and by 2012, Nalanda was on the state’s mushroom map. In the district’s Saril Chak village, women in nearly every household were knee-deep in oyster mushroom cultivation. Alongside Jyoti, it is said that the then District Magistrate Sanjay Kumar Agarwal and Sudama Mahato, Programme Director of the Agriculture Technology Management Agency (ATMA), were also responsible for recognising the potential of Nalanda and its women farmers.
Women associated with ATMA, who underwent training at the KVK, formed a self-help group to encourage others to join them. “One of the reasons why mushroom cultivation by women grew in Nalanda (and Bihar, by extension) was the wise selection of progressive women for training. If you train and support those who command influence, the message spreads to more women,” Jyoti says.
Also read: The fragile future of Guchi mushrooms
For some women, like Anita Devi, mushroom farming has meant a complete turnaround of their fates, but not without some resistance.
One half of an enterprising couple, Anita and her husband Sanjay Kumar—54 and 56 respectively—were graduates from Anantpur village who struggled to find jobs. In 2010, they took a leap of faith and devoted themselves entirely to mushroom cultivation. Even as she availed of the training being provided to women at the time, Anita faced taunts from other women in the village, who chided her for growing ‘gobar chatta’—wild black mushrooms that grow on cow dung cakes, which are unsuitable for consumption. The stigma surrounding mushrooms was so deep-seated that locals associated even healthy, carefully grown produce with toxic fungus.
A decade and a half later, their farm is an illustrative success story of fungiculture in Bihar, with a newly constructed home, large halls exclusively meant for cultivation, a hall for storing straw, and an air-conditioned room where mushrooms can be grown all year round.
Anita established a company in 2016, with the involvement of women from neighbouring villages. She enabled self-help groups and trained hundreds through ATMA’s rural livelihood programme, proving how the benefits and dividends earned from fungiculture have cascaded from one cohort of women to the next.
The stigma surrounding mushrooms was so deep-seated that locals associated even healthy, carefully grown produce with toxic fungus.
Consider the case of Sarita Sinha from the Kharuara village, who was able to uplift her family and assume the role of its sole breadwinner because of the know-how she gained from Jyoti. Until mid-March this year, the profit she has earned has been up to Rs. 23,000—the result of being an avid, curious learner. “I prepare the substrate in September, so the first flush of oyster mushrooms appears in 21-24 days. I use 400 bags, 200 each in two rooms hung from bamboo poles,” says Sarita. Always glad to help, she shares her knowledge with others from her village via a self-help group.
Saril Chak’s Nirupa Devi, considered a pioneer of mushroom cultivation in the state since 2012, continues to inspire. “I travelled to Solan and Murthal for training. Back home, I used to go from door to door, educating women about mushroom cultivation,” says Nirupa. She has experimented with growing button mushrooms—usually produced by large commercial units rather than individual farmers—harvesting over 20 kg, and selling them at Rs. 200 per kg.
Reflecting on her decade-long journey, she worries that women abandon fungiculture in the absence of subsidies.
Though women in Nalanda have widely embraced fungiculture, the work it involves is not easy: mushrooms are fragile, highly perishable and sensitive to the slightest of changes in temperature. They demand care, temperature and humidity control, and constant monitoring. And while large-scale mushroom farms like Anita’s benefit from dark, humid and temperature-controlled rooms, most local women have no choice but to work in accordance with weather conditions.
Mushroom spawn, or fungal mycelium, acts as a seed or starter culture to inoculate the bulk substrate, which is typically made from materials such as sterilised grains and sawdust, as well as agricultural waste. Bulk substrate is the nutrient-rich growing medium that the spawn grows in, and fruits from. Once cultivated, the spawn colonises the substrate entirely, threading through the soft, dark material before finally fruiting. In Bihar’s case, it helps that wheat and rice straw are readily available for use as substrate. But gaining access to good-quality spawn can be challenging sometimes, and a short-lived period of cool weather limits the women’s earnings.
Gaining access to good-quality spawn can be challenging sometimes, and a short-lived period of cool weather limits the women’s earnings.
As per Jyoti, a kilo of spawn inoculates 25 kg of straw, amounting to 8–10 bags, each of which yields roughly a kilo of mushrooms. Under government schemes, the KVK distributes mushroom kits comprising 1 kg of spawn, 10 food-grade polypropylene bags, 125 ml Formalin to sterilise straw, and 7.5 g of Bavastin fungicide.
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Sunita estimates she has purchased 25 kg of spawn this season. The oyster mushroom is highly productive, with a kilo of spawn yielding up to 10 kg of mushrooms in three batches over a typical cropping cycle, which takes up to two months. When they’re ready, she harvests 5–10 kg per day. If she spends Rs. 60–Rs. 70 per kg (on spawn, straw and plastic bags), she sells produce at Rs. 120-140 per kg.
Ideally, she should have harvested up to 250 kg of mushrooms from 25 kg of spawn, earning her a profit of Rs. 15,000–Rs. 17,500. But this season has brought lower profits than expected.
Also read: Katarni’s comeback: How an aromatic Bihari rice escaped obscurity
If the days were warmer this year, the nights were colder in January and February, resulting in a decline in mushroom production. The cold, dry westerly winds further dried up the pinhead—the earliest stage of the mushroom fruit. Germinated spores form small, pin-like structures before developing into edible mushrooms. Oyster mushroom cultivation specifically requires a temperature between 20-28° C, and humidity between 80-85%.
Cultivators rue the absence of moisture-laden easterly winds that could have benefited their little farms. In this part of India, fungiculture thrives if a balance of pachua (westerly) and purvaiya (easterly) winds blow during the winter, the women remark. “If the weather is cool, we will grow mushrooms every day,” quips Sunita, “But the weather is getting warmer, and we do not have the funds to invest in cool rooms with controlled temperatures.”
Fellow farmers echo the same concerns. Rekha Rani, for example, enjoyed a bumper harvest last year, but has suffered losses this season. Manjula Sinha, on the other hand, was able to cultivate only 3 kg of spawn—enough to fulfil her family's protein requirements.
Bihar now leads India in mushroom production, with Odisha and Maharashtra ranking second and third. This transformation has been powered by support from agricultural universities, the state government, and schemes like Jeevika (the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project), which have equipped thousands of rural women with the skills, subsidies and technology to create entire livelihoods out of a food that they knew so little about until a few years ago.
Bihar’s mushroom cultivators are also showcasing ways in which reduced pollution, recycling and adopting organic techniques can be mainstreamed.
Part of the reason fungiculture has taken off in the state is the recognition that mushrooms can address protein deficiency in children in a meaningful way. “Under a KVK scheme, we introduced mushrooms at Aganwadi Kendras in Nalanda, telling them to spread the message in the entire village,” says Jyoti.
Knowingly or otherwise, Bihar’s mushroom cultivators are also showcasing ways in which reduced pollution, recycling and adopting organic techniques can be mainstreamed. Eco-friendly cultivation entails the recycling of wheat straw, paddy straw and other agricultural wastes to create substrate. Spent substrate also contains nutrients, making it suitable for use as organic compost–a rich, earthy mix that improves soil’s texture, nutrient profile as well as its ability to hold water.
The story of the state’s success in fungiculture is now inseparable from the beneficiaries of its early investments.
Carousel Photos by Kavita Kanan Chandra and Sarita Sinha
Edited by Anushka Mukherjee and Neerja Deodhar
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Editor’s note: Urban farmer Simran Moorjani is the founder of Simbiosis, a regenerative farm on the outskirts of Mumbai, where she grows tomatoes and salad leaves while maintaining a symbiotic relationship with the land. In this column, she reflects on the realities of farming—sometimes with humour, sometimes with candour, always with curiosity.
January is, without a doubt, my most favourite month of the year. Not because of the fantastic-yet-fleeting weather in Mumbai, not because it’s my birthday month, not even because we finally get some respite from the indulgent festive months that come before it. It’s because tomatoes begin to ripen almost as soon as the new year is brought in. As the month slowly progresses, these lush red fruits are ripe for the taking, and I—having waited for nine months—can finally savour them again.
My favourite thing to make with this fresh produce is tomato toast, whose beauty lies in its simplicity. A good slice of sourdough, buttered end to end, toasted on a pan to a golden crisp, on top of which sits a thinly sliced and stacked tomato—a Marinda one, if I have it. A drizzle of chili oil, maybe some shaved cheese, some basil sometimes. One bite, and I am transported to a place far better than wherever I was before.
This hasn’t always been my favourite month, or my favourite breakfast. Tomatoes haven’t always been my favourite fruit. Life hasn’t always revolved around its seasonal rhythms. But now it does, and I’m so much happier because of it.
Much of this pleasure is derived from the fact that the tomatoes come from my own farm, a three-year-old, half-an-acre undertaking on the outskirts of the Lonavala hill station near Mumbai. It’s called ‘The Simbiosis Farm’ because it’s my attempt to have a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship with this parcel of land through the work I do, the food we grow here, and the life I hope to one day live. (The retrospectively embarrassing spelling is a result of naming the farm at 24.)
Our main crop, as you may have guessed by now, are tomatoes. The intent behind their cultivation is to produce them the way Nature intended them to be—sweet, juicy, tart and umami all at once. In the three years since we began, farmhand Baban and I have grown over 25 varieties, some similar to each other, some delightfully unique. They’ve been nurtured from seeds saved from tomatoes I tried in the past, brought back during my travels, purchased from other growers, or bullied friends into smuggling back from their holidays. Some are red and round, as tomatoes often are, but some are tiny, or long, or yellow, or pink, or even indigo! None taste like the fare available in most public markets.
The more I grow, the more I want to grow, and the deeper my love for these fruits grows as well.
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I first tried my hand at growing tomatoes in April 2020, but did not succeed owing to issues in germination. In January 2021, as I fell down the slippery slope that is a passion for growing one’s own food, I went to live and work at the two decade-old Vrindavan Farm in nearby Palghar. There I saw still-unripe tomatoes grow between rows of marigolds and other crops. I finally tasted them when I tested positive for COVID-19 in the summer of the same year, when I was holed up in my room.
The chances of you successfully harvesting some fruit with even a little attention paid to a plant are fairly high.
The tomatoes, a few different kinds, arrived packed inside a hollow bamboo stem. Grateful that I still had my sense of taste, I popped tomato after tomato in my mouth, my mind blown and reality shaken, scrambling to save the seeds because I knew that I just had to grow them myself. It started out small, like most things do: in the winter, with a couple of pots on the rooftop of my apartment building in Mumbai, seeds from a glass jar labelled ‘VF Tomatoes 2021’, and assistance from plenty of YouTube videos.
Tomatoes are not the toughest thing in the world to grow. The chances of you successfully harvesting some fruit with even a little attention paid to a plant are fairly high. I, for one, am an instant-gratification girl, and a successful first season followed by another made me think “Hey, how hard can it be?!”
I could probably tell you about my farming philosophy, what we add to our soil, how we are a regenerative farm, and how it’s all rainbows and sunshine (not)—but let’s save that for another column. What I do want to talk about is the tomato. I like to think of myself as its unpaid yet enthusiastic ambassador and want to try and fix its reputation. I also love when people refer to me as the ‘Tomato Girl’; I don’t think there’s a better compliment.
It’s a staple in all our homes, a universally loved and cherished fruit—though we tend to give it the treatment of a vegetable in most curries across the country. When was the last time you enjoyed it raw? Sure, it’s part of salad platters at home and at cafes, and we wouldn’t know most fast food burgers without a signature limp slice. The mainstream market tomato is adept at carrying the flavour of other ingredients and spices; on its own, is it really bringing anything to the table?
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What has stayed with me about organically, naturally grown tomatoes is their generosity of flavour. Had I been eating the wrong kind for all these years? Why were these variants not more popular? And why did these superior tomatoes have to be sourced from farms outside city limits?
The mainstream market tomato is adept at carrying the flavour of other ingredients and spices; on its own, is it really bringing anything to the table?
Today, the tomato is taken for granted because of its abundance; it’s tough to fathom a kitchen pantry without it. The world produces approximately 190 million tonnes of it, with India being the second largest producer. But its origins can be traced back to the Andes in South America—think modern-day Peru, Ecuador, and Chile, where it grew wild and tiny. From there it travelled to Mexico, where it was domesticated and grown in abundance. Spanish explorers conquered Mexico in the early 16th century and took it to Europe for the first time ever. From there, it spread through the continent and arrived on our shores with the Portuguese in the 17th century, finding greater acceptance in the 18th century.
This historical world tour led to the rise of many hyperlocal varieties, and in the centuries that followed, the tomato had reached almost everywhere. Every type of soil, climate, water and farmer birthed a different kind, which would go on to define—even become synonymous—with the region that embraced it. Think of the cold Gazpacho soup in Spain, or the Marinara and Pomodoro sauces of Italy. Variations emerged in sugar content, acidity, growing cycles and seasons.
Historically, heirloom tomatoes—non-hybrid, naturally pollinated varieties—have been rather delicate. (That’s just me being nice; they’re complete brats.) They let you know when they’re not happy with the weather, the water, or the soil. The ideal daytime temperature to grow them is 21–27° C, and ideal night-time temperature of 15–20° C, which means that at our farm, the best time is the Indian winter months, i.e. October to March.
Heirloom tomatoes almost inevitably develop superficial scars and unique undulations. Catfacing (irregular lobes, crevices, and brown cork-like scars) and zippering (long, vertical scars) are two such examples of these imperfections. While they are 100% safe to eat even with scars, they didn’t fit the definition of “perfect” expected of agricultural produce. To add to the list of "inconveniences," they also ripen unevenly, taking their own sweet time, and don’t last very long after harvest. If you were wondering, they don’t travel too well either—the audacity!
Big Ag turned to petri dishes, test tubes and genetic modification to rid tomatoes of all these "inconveniences," undoing centuries of evolution in the matter of a few decades. The result? The tomatoes we commonly find and purchase without question all look identical: perfectly round, the exact same shade of crimson. They deliver high yields to their growers, last much longer, and travel efficiently from farms to aggregators to bazaars to our homes (with a few more steps in between).
In the ticking of desirable traits in this checklist, the most important one was lost—flavour. The largest contributor to this grave loss is directly connected to the SlGLK2 gene in the fruit. Naturally grown tomatoes ripen unevenly, showing darker green patches when unripe, and slowly turning different shades of red when ripe. The gene in question is responsible for the accumulation and distribution of chloroplast (the agent responsible for photosynthesis) in developing fruit and the green colour in raw fruit. The glucose produced as a result of photosynthesis, as well as fructose, imbue tomatoes with their sweetness. The acidity, on the other hand, comes from citric acid and malic acid, along with other flavonoids (natural compounds which have antioxidant properties) in the fruit’s skin. Umami, the elusive fifth flavour, comes from the high quantities of glutamic acid that increase as the fruit ripens, offering a savoury and meaty aftertaste.
In the ticking of desirable traits in this checklist, the most important one was lost—flavour.
Somewhere along the way, in an attempt to cause even ripening, breeders removed or turned dormant the gene responsible for flavour. Decades of genetic engineering coupled with the use of chemicals have left us with a fruit that is low on sugar, acidity and umami.
As a farmer, I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror. Which is why I attribute this past season’s yields—less than optimal, to put it kindly—to the tomato’s very nature.
For context: The plants at Simbiosis were dying in the middle of their growth cycle, with no apparent reason. Some fruits were very, very small, and others grew a little warped. Plants were giving far lower yields than I’ve seen them give last year. We did our best with what we had, and took the loss on the chin.
The plant itself is a heavy feeder. It mines the soil for nitrogen, calcium and potassium.
Tomatoes cannot be planted in the same plot for consecutive years. They’re highly susceptible to fungi and bacteria that live in the soil. If your previous crop had even a tiny bit of Early Blight, Fusarium Wilt, or Bacterial Wilt—all of which are very common in India—those pathogens will remain alive but dormant in the soil and attack new, young plants the next season. Populations of Root-Knot Nematodes, microscopic worms that love the plant’s roots, explode if tomatoes are planted consecutively.
The plant itself is a heavy feeder. It mines the soil for nitrogen, calcium and potassium, leaving it exhausted and in dire need of recuperation before it can be subjected to extraction again. All this to say, crop rotation needs to be planned on a farm growing tomatoes.
The mass-produced tomato can be cultivated en masse and is available throughout the year only because it has been hybridised. Big Ag is heavily dependent on chemicals to restore or, at the very least, compensate the soil for nutrient loss and killing pathogens in soil. Industrial production and trade networks are meant to stitch global harvests together seamlessly. More recently, hydroponic methods have gained popularity among tomato cultivators. By cutting out the dependence on soil altogether, growers now have precise control over the nutrients in the growing substrate. No “soil-exhaustion” when there is no soil to worry about, huh?
To farm it organically, and in a manner that is not extractive, remains a conscious choice. Each season, we feed the soil well, give all the nutrition we can to the crop, and pray the weather and rain gods are kind. This journey, although very nascent, has been the deepest learning curve of my life. And the bitter-sweet aftertaste of a bad harvest is no match for an honestly grown tomato—sliced thin, savoured as it is, after months of being patient.
Cover Art by Pearl D'Souza
Carousel Photos by Simran Moorjani
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On a humid morning in Chennai, as corporate employees set out to work in business parks and offices, a group of sanitation workers, too, begins their day—outside a public toilet.
At 10 am, on the dot, they gather at the office of the Toilet Repair Cafe (TRC) in the Triplicane neighbourhood, where they first check-in and report to their supervisors. Shortly after this, they travel together in a vehicle to their assigned public toilets, where upon arrival, they begin a systematic deep-cleaning process: manually scrubbing surfaces, clearing waste, and inspecting for structural issues like leaks or broken tiles. These are then reported for repair.
After soaking the toilets, they use high-pressure water guns to thoroughly wash them down. The work is intensive and methodical, transforming the spaces step by step.
This routine is now a familiar one at the TRC, an initiative to strengthen existing sanitary facilities rather than adding new ones. It was founded to address a gap: when a toilet becomes unusable, the typical solution is to build a new one. “But instead of adding new infrastructure, can we invest in the human resources around it?” asks Shebin George, who works with WASH Lab, one of the initiative’s stakeholders. “Everyone talks about building toilets, but few talk about what happens after that—who repairs them, who maintains them, and what kind of dignity do those workers get?”
Public and community toilets in Triplicane, a dense, low-income neighbourhood, serve as vital community spaces. Many residents live in small homes with cramped or non-functional toilets, making these public facilities essential to daily life. The urgency of TRC’s work lies in the chasm between infrastructure and maintenance. A 2022 report noted that Chennai had 812 public toilets under the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC), yet several were in poor condition, and instances of open defecation persisted despite official claims of being open defecation-free.
As of February 8, 2026, data from the corporation states that 5,176 toilet seats across 474 locations are available for public use, indicating expansion. However, the central concern remains not just the number of toilets built, but whether they are functional, clean, and consistently maintained. “It is within this gap between construction and sustained upkeep that TRC positions its intervention as necessary,” says George.
Public and community toilets in Triplicane, a dense, low-income neighbourhood, serve as vital community spaces.
At its core, TRC is a community-based repair system. Currently implemented as a pilot project powered by CSR funding and support from the GCC, it operates through two field teams. Every janitor posted at a toilet is given a TRC coordinator’s contact number. When a repair issue arises, the janitor alerts the coordinator, who dispatches a supervisor along with a crew of three members to inspect and address the issue. It functions as two mobile sanitation units—vehicles equipped with cleaning and repair tools, operated by deep cleaners, janitors, coordinators, and staff members.
The model is envisioned as building accountability and systematic functioning at each step: identify the problem, photograph it, carry out the repair, document before-and-after images, and submit a report. Once verified, the team moves to the next site. The pilot programme began with 23 toilets; currently, 20 centres across Chennai are managed under this system.
Implemented jointly by Studio Recycle Bin, WASH Lab, and Chennai-based NGO Cheer, the concept was launched on June 15, 2024. WASH Lab’s parent organisation Recycle Bin is an architecture and urban designing consultancy, and has been engaged in water, waste, and welfare interventions for over 8 years now. Cheer, on the other hand, is a community engagement partner in the project, raising awareness and enabling residents to take up shared responsibility towards community cleanliness.
A key component of TRC is upskilling: many janitors lack access to basic phone literacy, and training them to communicate repair needs via phone calls is one of the first steps. TRC also trains staff to identify problems, determine the level of intervention required, and carry out preventive as well as scheduled repairs.
The sanitation maintenance department under the GCC covers multiple divisions, with public toilets being just one component. And though tenders for Operation and Maintenance are floated and funds are allocated for this purpose, toilets frequently fall into disrepair for multiple reasons: heavy use, weak maintenance cycles, and vandalism.
Toilets frequently fall into disrepair for multiple reasons: heavy use, weak maintenance cycles, and vandalism.
George, the director of the programme, also points to design issues in these toilets, such as the lack of support bars for elderly users. Some of the other infrastructure challenges were assessed by understanding guidelines from organisations such as the Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organisation (CPHEEO)—such as one seat per 35 men and 25 women.
In developing a skill bank, training workers in deep cleaning, plumbing, masonry, and electrical work, TRC positions this project as a means to create employment within local communities. With a future goal of decentralising operations, it hopes to make maintenance more community-driven.
Also read: Recycled water helps meet India’s cleaning needs. But can it quench our thirst?
“Maintenance is an economy in itself,” says George. “Every flush, every mop, every repair is part of a value chain. When we recognise that, we begin to treat sanitation not as charity, but as skilled, professional work.”
Repair work, especially in sanitation, is carried out by those who live at the margins; a neglect of repair, therefore, is a neglect of their working conditions and livelihoods. “If I had been educated, would I have worked here?” asks Selvi, a 53-year-old janitor with TRC, who has worked in sanitation for over 13 years. Selvi’s reality is a result of the very system that has created these margins. There is no choice but to work instead of study, and there are very few outlets offering dignified labour to those who are not able to access education.
To ensure toilets are recognised as workplaces is a slow process, but makes a granular difference in the everyday lives of sanitation workers. Dhanalakshmi, a 37-year-old sanitation worker, has worked at TRC for nearly two years now. “Earlier, I worked as a housekeeper and my income was very low,” she says. “Now, through this cleaning work, I earn better. The sessions I attend and the support from the community make this feel like a job with dignity, compared to the work I was doing before.”
TRC is designed to be self-sustaining. Over time, more workers are being trained to handle plumbing and electrical repairs independently, reducing dependency on external contractors. “We want a system that builds capacity from within,” says George. “It’s not just maintenance, it’s ownership.”
To ensure toilets are recognised as workplaces is a slow process, but makes a granular difference in the everyday lives of sanitation workers.
Coordinator Charu Priya explains how data from each repair helps track usage patterns and recurring issues, allowing for planning to be preventative. One such intervention was the improvement of the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) framework that the GCC had introduced. From their ongoing data, TRC was able to propose refinements to this system, including conducting water tank inspections at more frequent intervals to systematically assess functionality.
TRC also conducts regular health check-ups and training sessions in community halls. Activities like ‘Toilet Birthdays’ and ‘Toilet Galatta’ celebrate sanitation workers’ contributions and challenge the stigma surrounding toilets. “Every year, during Toilet Festivals, we ask: can we see toilets as governance? After all, people work here,” George says.
Also read: Typhoid lurks in India’s water. Why are antibiotics failing to stop it?
TRC also conducts ‘Kakkoos Sabhas’, literally translating to “toilet talks.” These meetings bring sanitation workers together to discuss their challenges, share their experiences, and voice their needs directly to the management and government. Thus far, only two such meetings have been conducted, and both were attended by the GCC Commissioner and the Deputy Commissioner (Health).
Critically, these sessions also act as platforms to create visibility and agency for workers long left out of decision making.
“During the Kakkoos Sabha, we spoke about salary increments, umbrellas, and seating spaces for janitors, and all of these were implemented across constituencies,” says Srikanth, a TRC supervisor. “It was helpful to finally have a space to talk about our needs.” Critically, these sessions also act as platforms to create visibility and agency for workers long left out of decision making.
At its core, TRC aims to redefine how society perceives public toilets—not as a symbol of poverty, but as spaces of collective responsibility. By merging governance, welfare, and design, the project promotes what is called “a social rule of care.”
“The public toilets are very clean nowadays. Even though we have toilets at home, we prefer using this one because it has been reconstructed and is cleaned frequently,” says Vijaya, a 60-year-old Triplicane resident. “As users, we also feel responsible for keeping it clean.”
The TRC team plans to expand its reach across Chennai, including to public schools and institutions. “The change is already visible,” says repair staff member Dhanalakshmi. “When people tell us the area is clean after we finish, it feels satisfying. The number of users from the community has also increased.”
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Editor's Note: This article is part of the Good Food Movement's series to spotlight India's summer fruits. Here, we analyse both the ways in which their cultivation expands a farmer's horizons, and the challenges of growing them in a changing climate.
If you're not prepared, it'll slip right through your fingers. That is just the reality of peeling off the brown skin that envelopes the jelly-like, sweet flesh of the ice apple. Every summer, when the palmyra tree's fruit is still blackish green, it is harvested in bunches. The unripe fruit is skillfully hacked at till its 3 seeds reveal themselves. These, we treasure, as nungu (in Tamil), tadgola (in Marathi), or the myriad other names assigned to the ice apple in coastal India. Its flesh resembles the litchi or rambutan or coconut malai, but its mildly sweet, watery taste is uniquely its own.
In more ways than one, it is a miracle tree.
The palmyra palm (Borassus flabellifer) is native to the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. In more ways than one, it is a miracle tree: it requires neither watering nor tending to, withstands droughts and cyclones, and provides nourishment and livelihoods. Its ability to grow in saline water, where not much else grows, has enabled it to line India's coasts. As a result, its various parts—most notably the ice apple—find a place in Indian cuisine and culture.
This influence manifests in the generational occupations tied to the tree (like climbers), and the unique dishes prepared from this tender seed (like puddings and payasams!). Once widespread across states like Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, West Bengal, and Andhra Pradesh, these trees have faded from memory in recent times, owing to a shift towards urbanisation and monocropped plantations. The tree’s fall from favour is also attributed to the 10-15 years it takes to bear fruits, though it can live for over 120 years once established.
Reverend Godson Samuel of the St. Paul Methodist Tamil Church of Aarey in Mumbai witnessed this disappearance as his childhood unfolded in Kanyakumari. He recalls that in 1981, when he was 5, he could see dozens of palmyra palm trees from his home; by his teenage years, he would have to go to the roof to spot any. When he looks back, he realises that the tree has been a recurring theme in his life, from crafting booklets out of its leaves as a young boy, to pursuing his graduate thesis on its ritualistic significance, and travelling extensively across the country to document and champion the tree.
The most memorable of these efforts was his 18-day long motorcycle journey across Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu to document the distribution of the tree, and how it weaves itself into the lives of different communities. As May 16 marks the tenth anniversary of this journey, the Reverend reflects on how the tree's status and utility have changed since his expedition.
Though Godson’s interest largely lay in the lives of those associated with the palmyra, his journey became a documentation of the tree's distribution in India—something that has only been frugally studied so far. Seed dispersal in palmyras being poorly understood also makes it harder to trace how the tree was distributed across geographies, though humans and elephants are both known to be agents of this process.
Nonetheless, there is a common understanding that the palmyra is largely found in coastal regions, and particularly in Tamil Nadu. Godson acknowledges that two things are true at once: the tree remains more culturally relevant in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Maharashtra, but its historical footprint once extended much further. He recalls, from his own motorcycle journey, not spotting the tree across large tracts of inland Maharashtra and Karnataka, and then almost constantly once he crossed Hyderabad. This variance could partly be a result of different topography, he acknowledges, but he attributes it to cultural and economic shifts as well.
For instance, he points out that Kerala, the state now associated with the coconut tree, featured the humble palmyra on the cover of I. H. Hacker's 1912 book Kerala: Land of Palms. He theorises that a shift towards areca nut, coconut, and cashew plantations in Kerala and Karnataka could have replaced palmyra. Similarly, he speculates that because the Portuguese introduced coconut-based dishes into Goan cuisine, and because feni (made from cashew) was easier to prepare than palmyra toddy, the tree could have lost its relevance there. The Reverend confirms seeing the tree, though in scattered numbers, in Mangaluru and Goa, and even inland in Bihar, Aligarh, and Gadchiroli.
Until just three decades ago, palmyra wood, being salt-resistant, would be used to go across salt pans, and its leaves would be converted into baskets to carry the salt.
Godson explains that the tree's coastal presence held strategic importance in earlier times. Until just three decades ago, palmyra wood, being salt-resistant, would be used to go across salt pans, and its leaves would be converted into baskets to carry the salt. These leaves also proved particularly useful in maritime trade, making for light, accessible packing material. Given that coastal areas are also humid, the ice apple and toddy provided relief from the heat to those involved in manual labour. Godson shares that, in Kanyakumari, the tree was important enough that fishermen would barter their catch in exchange for palm fruit until half a century ago.
This historical importance contrasts sharply with the tree's status today, where the lack of economic incentives and hostile governance has allowed for unchecked felling. Though this erasure has not been quantified in official statistics, experts and eyewitnesses both testify to a sharp decline.
Also read: Maharashtra’s jamun capital won a GI tag. Its legacy remains a work-in-progress
With the environment surrounding the tree changing, the way it is utilised has changed too.
Traditionally, the sap is the most valued economically: it can be consumed as a refreshing drink, fermented to make toddy, or boiled to prepare palm jaggery. The hydrating seed was predominantly consumed by those living near the tree, rather than being harvested for commercial gain.
This reality has changed over the past decade, says Godson; the tadgola has now transformed into a consumeristic product, costing anywhere between Rs. 120 to Rs. 200 per dozen. "It used to be an accessible food for poor people, especially during summers. The scenario has changed now. Now the poor cannot afford it," he says.
Despite championing the need to propagate the tree and make it more visible, the rising popularity of the ice apple worries the priest.
Godson attributes this change to developments in both demand and supply. Intensifying summers have led to an increased demand for the hydrating seed. Simultaneously, palmyra climbers are moving away from relying on the tree as the sole source of their livelihood. Godson explains that if they want to utilise the sap, they need to climb the tree every day. With the tender fruit, however, they can harvest it once a week, allowing the tree to supplement their income.
Despite championing the need to propagate the tree and make it more visible, the rising popularity of the ice apple worries the priest. His concerns are twofold: one is that the incessant focus on the seed is erasing the traditionally multifaceted utility of the tree. Second, because what we are eating is a premature seed, we are left with nothing to plant.
He uses an illustrative analogy to express this: "You get both raw mango and ripe mango in the market. The fruit constitutes the major part of what is sold, and raw mango is sold in far fewer quantities. You have enough seeds left for propagation because the fruit outnumbers the kaccha mango."
With the ice apple, however, the reverse is true. The tender seed floods the markets, while the ripe fruits are never seen. This imbalance means that we are not allowing enough fruits to mature, and risking sustainable propagation of the tree.
The mango analogy makes the solution evident: it lies not in abandoning the beloved seed but in diversifying how the fruit is consumed. The fruit usually matures when it rains, meaning that it matures between June and August for areas receiving the Southwest monsoons, and between September and November where the Northeast monsoons occur. By the time it has matured, the fruit becomes largely black from the outside, with hints of orange underneath. On the inside, it houses orange pulp and one to three hardened seeds. Unlike many other ripe fruits, this one can cause some gastric discomfort if eaten raw, and is traditionally either boiled or fried.
What Godson advocates, ultimately, is a more conscious and varied relationship with the palmyra—one that allows both consumption and regeneration to coexist.
The reverend reflects on how the ripe fruit used to be a part of his childhood diet, "We used to have it as breakfast or as an evening snack as children." Contrasting it with the Malayalam saying, 'Andikkadukkumbol maanga pulikum' (As you go closer to the seed, the mango starts souring), he claims that this is the only fruit that grows sweeter as you go closer to the seed.
Popularising recipes that incorporate the ripe fruit, he believes, can help with wider adoption, and bring it to our local fruit markets just like its tender seeds are brought. "We can learn from our Bengali friends," says Godson, referring to the way Bengalis add the juice of the fruit into flour to prepare a number of fried dishes.
The ripe fruit provides utility beyond the pulp. The mature seed, if planted, can either become a tree, or can be harvested in three months' time to yield a tuber that is in great demand during Pongal. The hard shell of the fruit (quite similar to a coconut’s) can be burnt for charcoal, or repurposed into household utensils like a ladle.
What Godson advocates, ultimately, is a more conscious and varied relationship with the palmyra—one that allows both consumption and regeneration to coexist.
Also read: How a shared love of the humble jackfruit transformed into a movement in Kerala
Godson’s approach to studying the palmyra, by his own admission, has been cultural rather than economic or scientific. What fascinates him the most, is the way each culture makes the palmyra its own—palm leaf pattachitra art in Odisha, canoes hollowed from palm trunks in Andhra Pradesh, the musical instrument tarpa among Maharashtra's Warli tribes, and Vishakhapatnam's distinctive palm leaf umbrellas. For Godson, the death of the tree is strongly linked with the loss of these traditional artefacts, and the associated knowledge of harnessing the tree without harming it. This understanding has made him a proponent of palmyra plantation drives across the country.
Some of the knowledge at risk of fading away is also intangible, like knowing how to climb, how much to harvest, and when to leave the trees untouched. Palmyra climbers have been the traditional custodians of this knowledge, and as they abandon climbing, the tree risks being overharvested for ice apples. Climbers, artisans—anyone who traditionally depends on the tree—are integral to its conservation.
In spite of these warnings, Godson believes that the ice apple still has untapped potential, largely because of its painfully short shelf life of 2-3 hours once extracted from the fruit. He stresses the need for more research on the kind of value-added products that can be created from it. But this investment in the seed will only make sense if there are enough trees to harvest from, and enough labour willing to undertake harvesting.
Godson believes that the ice apple still has untapped potential, largely because of its painfully short shelf life of 2-3 hours once extracted from the fruit.
Ironically, palmyras are also threatened precisely because of the qualities that make them resistant to harsh conditions. The wastelands and peripheries where they traditionally grew are the first to be taken up for infrastructural projects. "There is no place left to plant the trees," says Godson, his voice laced with a worried urgency.
Godson’s initiative to plant 1 lakh trees across Mumbai's Aarey forest is part of his efforts to move the needle. Since 2019, the Reverend has been distributing seeds, wrapped in newspaper and packed into cardboard boxes, across the country, and has already planted 40,000 trees in Mumbai. He has also been working with Maharashtra's forest department to create nurseries for the trees.
He believes the best way to restore the tree's former status is to plant it along roadsides and railway tracks, and establish mechanisms to harvest fruit from these trees regularly. This will provide the government with a steady source of income, generate employment, and allow a climate-resistant tree to take root in our landscape again.
In 2018, Godson authored a book 'Panaimara Salai' (Palmyra Road), which served as a memoir both of his 18-day journey, and his overarching relationship with the palm tree. Eight years later, he has just finished translating it to English to allow for it to be re-translated into French. Because the palmyra pilgrim's next horizon lies on the only other continent to house the palmyra tree: our neighbour from across the Arabian Sea, Africa.
Also read: Kiwi cultivation calls for patience. This Nagaland farmer took up the challenge
Edited by Neerja Deodhar and Shobana Radhakrishnan
Cover Image by Arwin R
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I'm obsessed with seaweed.
Here are some reasons why: its uncanny ability to grow from only seawater and sunlight. Its role in helping transition seafood supply chains from being extractive and linear—take, make and discard—to ones that are circular and regenerative. How densely packed this set of species is, offering Omega-3s, iodine, micro- and macro nutrients in a small, delicious bite. And finally, the plethora of ways in which it can be used, from an alternative to plastic, to anti-cancer medication.
Behind this pitch deck-speak, however, is a more human reason for wanting to grow seaweed, and see wild forests thrive underwater. It’s something I learnt as a child in my grandmother's backyard: the joy that comes from nurturing a garden.
I've seen my grandmother do very difficult things in her life, from raising her children on her own, to earning a degree while being a mother of four, to then educating hundreds of students in her long career as a high school teacher. Alongside this, she earned an income and the deep respect of her community. Like most women, she believes that when life gets hard, you just get on with it. But when the day's chores were done and the exam papers had been corrected, I saw her return to her plants with the curiosity and joy of a child. Day after day, I witnessed my grandmother turn her grief into gardens.
I do something similar with seaweed. I turn the anger and frustration I feel in everyday life into a small act of resilience: I grow something. My interest in growing and harvesting it began when I met a community of women seaweed harvesters and farmers in coastal Tamil Nadu in 2016. I was incredibly inspired by the sea women, who would venture out on boats in the early hours of the morning and harvest seaweed while freediving in sarees. The money they earned from selling it to agar-agar manufacturers fed their families, put their children through school and brought them respect in their communities.
It was terribly exciting, putting a raft of seaweed out into the ocean and waiting for it to grow.
My interest in seaweed was seeded, then, in Tamil Nadu, but it was years later that I decided to farm it myself along the coast of my home state, Goa. I started growing it on a raft in 2022, along with my friend and marine conservationist Nisha D’Souza. It was terribly exciting, putting a raft of seaweed out into the ocean and waiting for it to grow. However, as any skilled gardener will tell you, without the right conditions, you cannot expect a plant to survive. Our farm—faced with changing salinity, a disease outbreak and a storm—didn’t grow for very long, and we eventually lost all our crop.
Also read: To Tamil Nadu’s fisherwomen, the Cauvery delivers catch and self-reliance
The thing that makes seaweed challenging to grow is that it’s neither plant nor animal. It is marine macro algae with very different ways of growing and reproducing. While we have farmed plants and animals for millennia, seaweed farming has a much shorter history. It took humans over 10,000 years to fully domesticate the banana into what it is today, and even the most advanced seaweed farming countries, such as Korea and Japan, have only a 400 year-old history of cultivating it.
The word seaweed is, in fact, not the name of any single species, but a broad term for sets of similar algal species
In addition to this is its diverse nature. The word seaweed is, in fact, not the name of any single species, but a broad term for sets of similar algal species—the three primary groups are red, green, and brown algae. The groups are called seaweed not because they are closely related, but because they are functionally similar. In his book The Seaweed Revolution, Vincent Doumeizel states that green seaweeds are more closely related to tomato plants and fir trees than they are to red seaweed!
This genetic diversity means that each type of algae requires its own approach to cultivation. Once you understand their lifecycles, you can grow them through various methods, ranging from wooden stakes, to floating rafts, to ropes in the open sea. Seaweed such as kelp start out in hatcheries, under careful conditions to oversee their reproduction, before being taken to the sea.
Cultivation can take anywhere between 6-8 weeks, or longer, depending on the species. There’s also a geographic divide: cold water species like Kelp, Wakame and Dulse will not grow in the warm waters of the tropics, whereas Sargassum, sea grapes and Kappaphycus thrive here. This also means you can't easily replicate farming technology designed for cold water species in warm conditions. Techniques developed to grow Kelp in countries like Korea move freely to advancing countries like the US—where similar cold-water conditions exist—but we, in the tropics, are only just starting to build a knowledge bank for farming warm water species.
Also read: The promises—and perils—of Indian aquaculture
Having experienced first-hand the challenges of farming seaweed with limited research support, I turned to growing a seaweed business, where I wild-harvest small batches instead. My days start early—I usually leave my house at 7 am, and make my way down to the tidepools with my team mates, Bhagwan and Francis. We spend an hour swimming in seaweed forests and harvest small batches of the best quality produce we can find. We remain very careful not to pull the seaweed from off the rocks, but instead cut it from a height, so it can continue to grow. When we’re done, I take it back to our processing unit where it's cleaned, sorted, dried and packed by Shobha, who is an expert at checking quality. The rest of my day is spent engaging with chefs and potential customers, and also working as a seaweed consultant.
We remain very careful not to pull the seaweed from off the rocks, but instead cut it from a height, so it can continue to grow.
While I've enjoyed running a wild harvesting company, I have been waiting for a chance to start farming seaweed again—and this is the year that I finally can, with a wider knowledge pool to learn from. I have never stopped believing in a resilient future full of seaweed farmers. The ‘ocean gardeners’ of our time. Just like my grandmother taught me how to grow a spinach plant, I do predict that there will be a time that women along the coast will teach their children how to grow seaweed.
While I believe anyone and everyone should be able to farm it, I see an opportunity for women along the intertidal to transition into it first. Intertidal zones are places where the land meets the sea: rocky ledges, or long, sandy stretches—areas that are submerged during high tide, and exposed during low tide.
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Women in coastal communities have always been intertidal foragers. From the Ama divers of Japan, to the Haenyo of South Korea’s Jeju Island, and the sea moss farmers of Tanzania (often called “seaweed mamas”). While men venture out to sea to fish, women dominate the intertidal, and earn money as well as respect in their communities, all while staying close to their homes and raising their children. This is the key to why small fish, seaweed, clams, crabs and mussels are farming systems that women can thrive in.
In the seaweed sector, we see women succeed both on farms and in companies. A shocking statistic that emerged a few years ago revealed that around 85-90% of the labour force in seafood companies were women, but over 99% of the CEOs leading them globally were men. The seaweed sector is very different. The last decade has seen a sharp increase in companies led by women: 40% of them now have female CEOs. Seaweed farms are also largely run by women in countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia. Over 85% of farms in Tanzania are female-run. The difference is stark.
Having more women at decision making levels can change how we build seafood businesses.
Having more women at decision making levels can change how we build seafood businesses. Women leading companies and owning farms puts earning power and property rights into the hands of those who sustain their communities. We have seen this across the globe, including here in Tamil Nadu, where the income from farming seaweed has put more children into school. Women’s inclusion needs to be not only along supply chains, but in other aspects of the sector too.
The ecosystem around seaweed farming should include women at a policy making level. Farms should be designed for women and seaweed processing units should be built with facilities such as daycare rooms, along with offering menstrual leave and well-paying, consistent work.
Along with the farms and processing units, there is an urgent need for scientists to build more seaweed hatcheries, where seed material can be grown and distributed among farmers. This expansion could create significant opportunities for female marine scientists in the sector. Further down the value chain, seaweed companies specialising in high value markets like food, nutraceuticals and skincare, can financially sustain this ecosystem.
Seaweed supply chains, thus, have the potential to nurture both ecosystems and people. We have a long way to go in making farming seaweed a well paying and accessible enterprise, but seeing a large number of women engaged in it gives me hope. Just like my grandmother and countless women do everyday, we put our hands in the soil and in the sea and grow some gardens.
Also read: Omega-3 fatty acids: The hidden costs of ‘health’ to our seas
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Editor's Note: This article is part of the Good Food Movement's series to spotlight India's summer fruits. Here, we analyse both the ways in which their cultivation expands a farmer's horizons, and the challenges of growing them in a changing climate.
Rukhiya Moidu, a teacher from Malappuram in Kerala, was anxiously on the lookout for a solution to a problem of plenty. “I have 10 jackfruits with me. I have no idea what to do with so many… I cannot throw them away while they’re still so fresh,” she said. Rukhiya was speaking at an online meeting where at least 30 others were present to discuss their opinions and concerns about one thing that is the glue holding together this group for 7 years now—the jackfruit.
They’re members of a larger WhatsApp group of 400 people, and this sub-group is just one of 1,400 groups comprising over 40,000 fans of the jackfruit, who call themselves Chakkakkoottam—a collective that began to take shape in 2018. It is a coming-together of those who own jackfruit trees, who trade it, who fashion products out of it, who research it, and just about anyone who loves the fruit.
Rukhiya asked for the contact details of a meeting attendee who owns a successful business that sells value-added products made from the fruit. Another attendee offered advice on ways to preserve it for a longer period. The group was also planning to visit an agricultural engineering institute, not far from Rukhiya's home, to conduct a recce of the facilities for a practical study. They needed volunteers who would bring the fruit to test a dryer machine. At the end of the hour-long session, Rukhiya had found ways to ensure that her jackfruits did not go to waste. She could now rest easy.
Rukhiya has aspirations to start a jackfruit products business of her own, and has already invested in freezer and dryer machines. But she is hesitant to begin without the headstart she can get from a training camp organised by Chakkakkoottam each month in Chalakudy, Thrissur district; it’s a three-day crash course that offers hands-on training to novices like her. “Only after I attend these classes will I feel that I have a Master’s in jackfruits. Otherwise, I fear that I’d be plunging head-first into the deep end, unprepared,” Rukhiya expressed during the meeting.
These weekly meetings are not the only forum where Chakkakkoottam comes to life. The WhatsApp groups buzz with activity as different members send variations of a similar message: “There are a large number of ripe jackfruits in my home which may go to waste. Anybody who needs them, please contact me,” accompanied by a phone number and details of the location. There are entrepreneurs requesting large quantities of the fruit for their business units. And there are members sharing pictures of the recipes they have made with this fruit that they collectively cherish.
Not everyone in the Chakkakkoottam fold is a farmer or an entrepreneur. The community also comprises those with day jobs who have nothing to do with agriculture. What brings them together is a keen interest in fully leveraging the jackfruit trees growing in their backyards. The underlying sentiment is the nostalgia that the taste of the fruit represented in the personal memories of a handful of city-dwellers. Yet what began on an informal note has transformed into a committed cause for the fruit’s conservation.
Also read: At this mango ‘museum’ in Gujarat, 300-plus varieties thrive
Jackfruit trees grow with minimal effort and offer abundant yields; a single plaavu (jackfruit tree) can produce as many as 250–300 fruits in a year. The labour is in handling the fruit that weighs anywhere between 11–35 kg. Cutting it open and retrieving every seed and every bit of flesh is an arduous effort. In Kerala, this is often an activity of familial bonding, where relatives gather to conquer a jackfruit with knives and sort its pieces into vessels, to be eaten raw or cooked into a stir fry. The plaavu is a common sight in the backyards adjoining Malayali homes. The bounty offered by the tree becomes a problem of excess for people who are neither farmers nor traders, whose relationship with the fruit is limited to occasional consumption.
It was in 2018 that the jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus) was declared the official state fruit by the Kerala government. “Though the jackfruit is one of the most widely produced fruits in the state, we are yet to tap its potential completely,” the then agriculture minister V. S. Sunil Kumar had said in the state assembly, as he announced the landmark decision. The data at the time suggested that 32 crore jackfruits were produced in Kerala every year, of which 30% were getting wasted. An area of 97,536 hectares is devoted to the fruit’s cultivation in the state.
The public discourse spotlighting the fruit’s severely underutilised potential set a new movement in motion. Chakkakkoottam—which translates to ‘Jackfruit Collective’—was born in Kochi out of a casual conversation between Anil Jose and his friend T. Mohandas at the latter’s home, where Mohandas had several plaavus. The friend shared his concerns about the fruits going unused since there is only so much that can be consumed by those at home. This gave Anil the idea of forming a WhatsApp group of friends who enjoy eating jackfruit, who could come together on occasion purely to savour its ripe yellow bulbs.
Not everyone in the Chakkakkoottam fold is a farmer or an entrepreneur.
Chakkakkoottam began to take shape as Anil reached out within his circles to connect with fellow fans of the fruit. The group’s first meeting took place in March 2019 at a home in Kakkanad, Kochi. The purpose of the meeting was simple, but its proceedings were halted by an unexpected hiccup: “There were 16 of us, none of whom knew how to climb a tree to pluck the fruit,” Anil recalls. Finally, a doctor in the group volunteered to do it, and they shared the fruits of their labour—pieces of a ripe jackfruit eaten as is, and steamed parts of a raw one prepped for cooking.
A Malayalam publication carried an article about this gathering and its exclusive interest in jackfruits in the next day’s edition, along with Anil's phone number. “I began receiving phone calls from interested parties at 5 in the morning!” Anil recalls. That year, Chakkakkoottam hosted 20 get-togethers in Kakkanad alone. A Chakkakkoottam gathering in Ramanattukara, Kozhikode had 150 attendees. The single WhatsApp group that they began with mushroomed into hundreds, spread across Kerala. “There are 941 Panchayats in Kerala. Chakkakkoottam has groups present in all of them,” Anil says.
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The typical Chakkakoottam gathering entails a talk delivered by a member with extensive knowledge about jackfruits, the plucking and cleaning of a fruit, and cooking it. He said that the group operates on the principle of “gift economy”, where members can volunteer to host a gathering at their home while others can bring the fruit or its products.
“There are 941 Panchayats in Kerala. Chakkakkoottam has groups present in all of them,” Anil says.
The meetings had come to a halt due to the lockdown enforced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even then, Chakkakkoottam’s efforts continued at a low-profile scale. A few members drove to various locations and delivered jackfruits free of cost to anyone who requested them. After the lockdown was lifted, there were serious discussions within the group about Chakkakkoottam’s future. They agreed that sharing and consuming jackfruits at occasional gatherings is not doing much to resolve the problem of fruit wastage, arriving at the decision to formally register Chakkakkoottam as a company in 2021. It was founded by R. Ashok along with Anil, Manu Chandran, Vipin Kumar, Sabu Aravind and Ciby Mon. Their entrepreneurship, driven by the objective of maximising the potential of the jackfruit, was endorsed by the Kerala government for "championing the circular economy”.
Steering the operations of the company led them towards a deeper understanding of the fruit’s peculiarities. “It is difficult to determine its ripeness high up on a tree. With coconuts, you can just cut them and let them drop down. They won’t get damaged because of their hard shells. But a jackfruit can get spoiled if it falls from a height,” Anil explains.
Anil characterises Chakkakkoottam as a movement. “There is no membership form, no fee… We simply want to share the knowledge that we gained from our experience of running the company to others,” he adds.
Only 20% of a jackfruit that weighs 10 kg is likely to be flesh. “A company that will only utilise the flesh of the fruit is accumulating 80% waste,” Anil says. With every complication that the company’s leadership encountered, they could see that Chakkakkoottam had to serve as a knowledge sharing platform.
Steering the operations of the company led them towards a deeper understanding of the fruit’s peculiarities.
For instance, Chakkakkoottam International produces flour out of kothan chakka, a variant of the fruit that is not fully mature and therefore ordinarily ignored by consumers. But the company’s research to identify value-added products led them to find that kothan chakka is dense with nutrients like potassium and pectin, a soluble fiber that helps in improving digestive health. Those involved in the company’s operations share such learnings within the larger community of fans who knew little beyond cooking a stir fry or consuming the ripe fruit.
On a typical day, the company uses 3 tonnes of the fruit to manufacture a range of 38 products. They were exporting to 20 countries, until their operations were put on hold due to the ongoing LPG crisis.
However, the establishment of the company did not mean a deviation from Chakkakkoottam’s core goal of community building. The platform fosters kinship and education at once; its initiatives range from practical training sessions to interactive programs with experts well-versed with the fruit. The group will soon start a farming project where agricultural experts will visit interested members to advise them on the cultivation of jackfruits with methods that can increase the soil’s organic carbon levels.
Also read: In Uttarakhand’s Shama, kiwi cultivation has restored faith in agriculture
The group’s consistent engagement with its members also encouraged many of them to venture into their own businesses. Kollam’s Sundaran Balakrishnan is one such member. “Long before I joined Chakkakootam, I had many jackfruit trees and was selling the fruit as a whole,” he says. “I had a feeling that it has the potential for the making of many value-added products.” But he did not have the necessary know-how.
Some time in 2024, it was at Chakkakkoottam’s monthly training camp in Chalakudy where Sundaran learnt that the jackfruit is, in fact, a zero-waste fruit. “We usually throw away the thorns on the exterior of the jackfruit. They can be cut and dried to make dahashamani,” Sundaran explains, referring to a herbal drinking water made in Ayurveda. The rind is useful for making pickles. Over the course of three days, Sundaran said, they learnt how to make over 30 products. The attendees were also taught how to use parts, which are otherwise discarded, for cattle feed, compost and biogas.
Anil characterises Chakkakkoottam as a movement. “There is no membership form, no fee…
The seemingly endless possibilities motivated Sundaran to start a business back home. He is now the busy owner of a store named Chakka Kada (Jackfruit Store), where he produces over 50 products.
Challisserry Chakkakkoottam is another example of how the WhatsApp community has aided members to become independent entrepreneurs. It is a small collective of women who ventured into production and sales of jackfruit products, drawing confidence from the training imparted by the larger community.
Chakkakkoottam’s training camp in Chalakudy is run by food processing trainer Padmini Sivadas who was a resource person at the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation in Wayanad. She traveled across Kerala during her years at the foundation and noticed that jackfruits were growing in large numbers but were severely underutilised across the state. “I wondered why they weren’t being promoted widely as a food source. That led me to focus on value addition,” Padmini said. Her background in home science and food technology aided her research.
At the root of it, Chakkakkoottam is invested in conserving a fruit that is indispensable to Kerala’s culture and geography.
She says that many make the mistake of venturing into jackfruit farming under the influence of success stories they see online, thus risking debt. A forum like Chakkakkoottam, she adds, is an important space where members are encouraged to be fully informed before committing their life’s savings to a business. “They should understand which products do well in the market, and which ones have a significant number of takers. If they get educated about these factors, it is possible to run a stable business,” Padmini says.
At the root of it, Chakkakkoottam is invested in conserving a fruit that is indispensable to Kerala’s culture and geography. On World Environment Day last year, Chakkakkoottam’s members were present at the Agriculture Research Station at the Kerala Agriculture University, Thrissur. They hugged the native jackfruit trees there in protest against a plan to cut them down to convert the land into a fodder cultivation area. “We managed to halt the decision with our protest,” Anil says.
He describes Chakkakkoottam as a platform founded in love. “The jackfruit is a social fruit. You cannot consume it all alone. It needs a community.” The WhatsApp group, buzzing with daily messages of generosity, is a testament to this.
Cover Art by Sharath Ravishankar
Also read: Maharashtra’s jamun capital won a GI tag. Its legacy remains a work-in-progress
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Editor's Note: This article is part of the Good Food Movement's series to spotlight India's summer fruits. Here, we analyse both the ways in which their cultivation expands a farmer's horizons, and the challenges of growing them in a changing climate.
Tongues stained purple, and mouths teased by a sweet, tart flavour—this is how 67-year-old jamun farmer Prakash Kini remembers the summers of his childhood in Maharashtra’s Bahadoli. The village, situated in Palghar district, on the outskirts of metropolitan Mumbai, is also eponymously called Jambhulgaon. For a brief window between April and June, it comes alive with harvest activity; families collect, sort, and transport the jamun fruit (Syzygium cumini) growing on trees in every corner to nearby urban markets. For generations, it has sustained entire households belonging to the Agri Koli community, with families relying on a short but intense selling season to earn a significant portion of their annual income. While the men are engaged in plucking the fruit and transporting it, the women are responsible for selling it and turning it into value-added products.
Maharashtra is India’s largest jamun producing state, with cultivation concentrated in the state’s Konkan region. The ‘Konkan Bahadoli’ variety, recognised by the Maharashtra Agricultural Department in the early 2000s, is the most coveted, even winning a GI tag in 2023. It is oblong, succulent, has a white-pinkish pulp and fewer seeds.
For generations, it has sustained entire households belonging to the Agri Koli community, with families relying on a short but intense selling season to earn a significant portion of their annual income.
Produce from Maharashtra’s jamun capital has become a fast favourite among consumers, fetching a premium. However, Jambhulgaon’s economy, primed by this seasonal fruit, now finds itself in a lurch. The vagaries of climate, a market demanding scale and consistency, and difficulties in farmer organisation stand in the way of a legacy.
Bahadoli sits at the confluence of the Surya and Vaitarna rivers, whose floodplains are home to fertile alluvial soil. In their pursuit of a GI tag over a decade and a half, farmers dug into archival documents to piece together a history of how their village came to be associated with jamuns. “We collected ancestral property papers from generational jamun-farming families. In the process, we found that one Bala Joshi had planted the first two trees in 1885,” says Kini. “Perhaps they were carried in on the tides of the floods and deposited here, and then birds spread the seeds all across the village.”
Paddy was once Bahadoli’s primary crop—for sale and sustenance. “A few jamun trees stood on baandhs [the raised edges of fields], but our parents discouraged us from growing them because rice couldn’t thrive in the shaded canopy of these trees,” says Madhav Prabhakar, 72, another jamun farmer. “We had lived through the 1972 drought and famine, we couldn’t afford a bad harvest.”
There was a scarce market for the fruit at the time. The village was isolated from Mumbai, and jamuns were consumed only at home along with mangoes. The purple fruits were converted into liquor, while raw mangoes were dried and prepared as the amboshi souring agent, the Agri-Koli community’s kokum equivalent.
Eventually, some farmers started experimenting with selling the fruit in the 1980s. “My father, along with some of his friends, began transporting jamuns across the river in hodhis [small hand-rowed boats] to the Vasai-Virar phata [the junction connecting Mumbai’s northern-most suburbs],” says Kini. There, intermediaries (colloquially referred to as bhaiyyas) would decide the rate of each batch—selling for as low as Rs. 4 per kg.
Today, nearly every farmer in Bahadoli has anywhere between 10 to 25 jamun trees growing in his backyard and fields. Over a thousand families farm jamun across about 70 acres in the village, with some trees dating back to over a century. A mature tree can bear between 50-80 kg of fruit every season, with each kilo fetching anywhere between Rs. 1000 to Rs. 2500.
It is sweet success that comes after much patience and long-term planning. “The tree takes around 10 to 15 years to mature and become economically viable,” says Jagdish Patil, Senior Field Officer, Palghar Agricultural Department. “However, it had the potential to become a major crop in the Konkan region. With this aim, the Palghar Agriculture Department organised a Jamun Mahotsav in Bahadoli in 2004 (and every year until 2008) to promote and scale up its cultivation.” The famed Konkan Bahadoli variety was popularised in this festival.
Today, nearly every farmer in Bahadoli has anywhere between 10 to 25 jamun trees growing in his backyard and fields.
Jamun trees were hitherto cultivated via seeds. The introduction of grafting techniques (a process of propagation by which a young bud is fused with a rooted plant, such that their tissues merge and grow as one) during the festival enabled the propagation of superior, true-to-type varieties, improving uniformity and yield. State support in the form of sapling distribution, workshopping new ways of growing and caring for jamun trees, and guidance with storage and processing laid the groundwork for scaling jamun as a commercial horticultural crop in the region.
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Every summer, this glistening violet fruit arrives in fruit markets across India. Apart from its distinct astringent taste, it is also valued for its many medicinal properties, from controlling blood sugar and managing diabetes, to lowering lipid levels in the body and boosting iron content.
The Dr. Balasaheb Sawant Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth in Ratnagiri, in partnership with the Palghar Agricultural Department, began conducting workshops for Bahadoli’s farmers 2015 onwards, to train them in better practices. Farmers were encouraged to use organic fertilisers, and even now, many trees in the village are coated in the green hue of simple medication comprising chuna, rock phosphate and jeevamrutha.
While the aim had been to bring jamun farmers together, formalise supply chains, and help them make value additions, things played out differently on-ground.
In 2018, the Jambhul Utpaadak Shetkari Gath (Jamun Farmers’ Collective) was established as a farmers’ outfit with state support, with Prakash Kini at its helm. While the aim had been to bring jamun farmers together, formalise supply chains, and help them make value additions, things played out differently on-ground. “Dahanu’s chikoo had earned a GI tag,” says Patil, “and I wanted Bahadoli’s farmers to mobilise themselves for a similar effort. The establishing of a producers’ union was a step in this direction.”
A GI tag would not only help the eponymously named jamun get recognition, but would ideally also protect the people and land behind it—and instill a sense of pride in them. “Working towards the application for a GI tag helped us learn a lot about the fruit’s ancestry to this village. We used the Devgadh Hapus mango as an example to understand the benefits that this could bring,” Kini says. Farmers also compiled a resource book tracing the history of the Konkan Bahadoli jamun and insights gleaned from the jambhul mahotsavs, agricultural officers, and scientists—both to support their GI tag application and to serve as a one-stop cultivation guide.
Previously, bhaiyyas would offer the village’s jamuns as ‘taste tests’ to consumers, disguising the fact that the fruits actually being sold (which were smaller and more sour) were sourced from places like Nashik and Badlapur. The GI tag would help tackle this ‘identity theft.’ “No one will be able to pass off counterfeit produce under the Bahadoli jamun’s name now,” Kini adds.
What made the jamun truly Bahadoli’s? The Vidyapeeth worked with farmers to conduct soil tests, assess different parameters of the fruit such as size, shape and pulp-to-seed ratio, to establish its distinctness. “However, only a few farmers incorporated what we practised during the sessions,” says Dr. Lahanu Gabhale, Associate Professor of Horticulture, Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth, who has worked with Palghar’s farmers for over a decade.
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The journey towards earning a GI tag was one where farmers were disjunct from realising the full promise of their produce, and how intellectual property tools could help play a role in this. “Getting farmers together for meetings, and convincing them of the benefits of a gath was a mammoth task in itself. Only about 25-30 farmers attended the first meeting,” recalls Kini. Farmers remaining suspicious of administrative intermediaries and village politics along caste lines meant that the Gath remained a fragmented effort carried on the shoulders of a few village elders—a reality that persists today.
Enthusiasm remains low, and the farmers are somewhat divided. In the process of obtaining a GI tag, Kini, Prabhakar and a few others carried the season’s best jamuns and different associated products, such as wine, wadi and barfis and powder made from crushing the seeds that aids in managing diabetes. The farmers, the state, and the scientists are united on one opinion: the awarding of the GI tag has not resulted in any benefits materialising yet—an unfortunate reality observed in the case of more than one product across India. And how will they, asks Patil. “The Gath needs to raise a minimum amount of money to translate some of these benefits into practice,” he says.
Jamuns are a perilously perishable fruit. They must be consumed within 2-3 days of being plucked from the trees. Jambhulgaon’s farmers line their tokris with sarees to prevent them from getting squashed during transport. “We balance 8-10 tokris on each side of the bike and drive slowly,” says Prakash Kudu, whose first jamun trees were an inheritance from his uncle. The summer heat is relentless, which makes jamuns mushy quickly, and more likely to burst during the ride. “We also don’t water the trees too much once they start flowering to prevent the fruits from bloating becoming more susceptible to damage,” he says.
Part of the GI tag effort was also to urge farmers to raise funding requests for storage and transportation. “We experimented with packaging and design. The blueprint of the corrugated boxes inscribed with the GI certification is ready,” Patil says. This would extend shelf life by about a week and enable them to travel farther and garner a greater consumer base. Farmers, however, have been slow to respond to even encouragements to apply for subsidised fertilisers and bamboo through the Gath.
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Harvest is a hand-picked, laborious process. The jamun’s branches are sprawling and delicate, hollow on the inside and unable to bear the weight of climbing farmers. “We erect bamboo structures around the trees and pick fruits on alternate days,” say Prabhakar and Kudu. Farmers also tie sarees to poles, creating a hammock-like structure where jamuns rain down and are collected into the soft fabric.
Climate change is increasingly unsettling Bahadoli’s fruit economy in other ways. It has disrupted the fruit’s tightly timed season and, in turn, the prices it commands. Erratic rainfall and shifting weather patterns are delaying flowering and fruiting, pushing the harvest deeper into the monsoon. “Trees that would start typically flowering by late March and ripen by May are now burgeoning with fruit as late as July,” says Prabhakar. The monsoon births conditions that jamuns are particularly vulnerable to, causing the fruit to split, rot, and fall prematurely, say farmers.
The jamun’s branches are sprawling and delicate, hollow on the inside and unable to bear the weight of climbing farmers.
In recent years, especially post 2020, such shifts have led to significant crop losses. “Jamuns may get infested with worms and bacteria during wet weather. Customers are hungry for jamuns, but wary too. The fields are littered with fallen fruit and we are forced to sell a kilo for Rs. 500–Rs. 800.” As a result, even though Bahadoli jamuns are valued in the market, farmers’ incomes have become far more unpredictable.
Bahadoli’s crisis is not one of state neglect, but of stalled collectivisation. Even as climate change disrupts fruiting cycles, and jamuns and associated products command a premium in urban markets but lead to uneven gains across the value chain, the institutional mechanisms meant to buffer these shocks remain underused. The GI tag has been secured, but without capital, coordination, or trust, its benefits remain largely symbolic.
“We have asked for a cold storage and processing unit where we can box our produce in air-conditioned hygienic environments,” says Kini. The challenge is now to continue to raise awareness about the value and promise of these jamuns beyond Bahadoli's Mumbai market that has already been tapped into. The infrastructure to adapt remains out of reach without co-ordinated investment.
To face these challenges, it is imperative that farmers band together, with each other, and with those trying to aid their effort. “The next generation will continue farming because it fetches a lot of profit in one go,” say Kini and Prabhakar. For the Bahadoli jamun to endure a changing climate, new knowledge systems must work alongside traditional practices. Otherwise, a legacy built over generations risks being lost just as it begins to show new promise.
Cover Art by Sharath Ravishankar
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Editor’s note: To know Rama Ranee is to learn about the power of regenerative practices. The yoga therapist, author and biodynamic farmer spent three decades restoring land in Karnataka, envisioning it as a forest farm in harmony with nature. In ‘The Anemane Dispatch’, a monthly column, she shares tales from the fields, reflections on the realities of farming in an unusual terrain, and stories about local ecology gathered through observation, bird watching—and being.
Until half a century ago, this could be said with some certainty: farmers in India grew what they ate. Their choice of crops was determined by their dietary habits, which were in turn shaped by the flora supported by the local climate and other conditions, such as soil, water and access to seeds. In Karnataka, in and around our village Kasaraguppe, commonly grown produce included hardy vegetables and drought-resistant varieties of millets, pulses, groundnut and other oilseeds. Consider, for example, the typical breakfast of ragi rotti served with a nutty chutney made of Niger seeds—a simple meal that kept farmers full in the early morning as they worked in the fields.
They indicated how communities optimised the fruits of the land, and, as some of the elders in Kasaraguppe admit, led a life of fulfillment.
Here, traditional integrated farming systems took into account crops, livestock, poultry and agroforestry. These systems built resilience against changes in weather, like droughts, by reducing and recycling waste, sustaining soil fertility, and managing water. They were sustainable and circular, offering farmers a level of self-sufficiency. Indigenous diets and cuisines in the region reflected this agricultural skill and culinary acumen. They indicated how communities optimised the fruits of the land, and, as some of the elders in Kasaraguppe admit, led a life of fulfillment.
Then came the Green Revolution, which transformed agriculture with its four-pronged strategy of chemical fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides, hybridised, high-yielding variety (HYV) seeds, and irrigation. By the 1970s, the production of rice and wheat in India increased manifold within a short span of time, achieving food security to feed a burgeoning population, and reducing the risk of famine and hunger. The greater availability of staples like rice and wheat impacted indigenous dietary habits.
Conversations with farmers in Kasaraguppe and the Bannerghatta area reveal how the transition from a varied diet to a more homogenous one—consistent with the conversion to chemical input-based agriculture—occurred. While access to the Public Distribution System (PDS) ensured a steady supply of food for families, it further sped up the shift to a more rice- and wheat-based diet, rich in carbohydrates. The integrated, multi-cropping systems and millet-based diets, suited to the region, have declined considerably. Some direct consequences include declining agrobiodiversity and a rise in health issues such as cardiometabolic diseases due to nutritional imbalance.
A considerable proportion of Karnataka’s land area, nearly 77%, is arid or semi-arid. The Eastern Dry Zone of the state, including the Kolar and Bengaluru districts, and the North Western Zone of Tamil Nadu, including the Krishnagiri and Dharmapuri districts adjoining south Bengaluru, are classified as drylands. These areas are characterised by red soil, red loam or lateritic soil in pockets, and high variability in rainfall. The Eastern dry zone has an annual average of 680 to 890 mm of rain, and the North Western Zone of Tamil Nadu an annual average of 811 mm.
In these drought-prone drylands, farms are typically small and marginal, less than two acres in size, rain-fed, without any perennial water sources like rivers. Largely, they were managed as subsistence agriculture. After providing for the family, the excess of crops like ragi, sorghum, and maize were sold locally for cash to purchase other food items and meet living expenses.
In these circumstances, nothing is wasted—not even the water in which pulses such as Bengal gram are cooked.
Terracotta storage bins and stone-and-mortar granaries were a part of the farm architecture, built into living spaces. Some were large enough to hold four years’ worth of grain, ensuring kitchen fires remained lit through drought years or other contingencies.
In these circumstances, nothing is wasted—not even the water in which pulses such as Bengal gram are cooked, which is the base for ‘Uppu-saaru’. This thin soup-like dish, made of pulse stock, is spiced with black pepper, garlic and chili.
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The cultivation of sweet pumpkins and bottle gourds directly on compost heaps was once a common sight. Ridge gourds, on the other hand, were grown on the borders of fields along the hedges, and snake and bitter gourds in the gardens attached to homes. Wild edibles like tubers, berries, greens, and mushrooms added variety and nutritional value to regular fare.
There was one main cropping cycle in a year: the Southwest monsoon season, called Mungaru or Mungari. The lunar calendar was a useful tool, indicating potential rainy days which coincided with specific stellar constellations. Each of these was conducive for certain crops. Preparation of the land and ploughing began in the middle or end of April, after the Ashvini showers. Sowing or transplanting ended in September. Between December and January, the grains were harvested, threshed, winnowed, and stored.
With Bharani in late April, the planting season began with Yellu (sesame), intercropped with a larger variety of Doddatagari (pigeon pea), also called Totada tagari. In late May, after the Rohini showers, Muskina Jola (maize) and Billi Jola (sorghum) were sown. Paddy sowing required regular showers, starting with the onset of monsoon in June, in the constellation of Mrigashira. A hardy dryland variety Doddabairnellu was the natural choice. This was the ideal time for sowing groundnut and raising seedlings of brinjals and chili, too.
The planting season in and around Kasaraguppe peaked between June and early August, showcasing the diversity of produce once cultivated. Castor, an important oilseed, Avare (hyacinth bean) and ragi were sown in mid-August during the Magha rains. By late August, towards the end of the south-west monsoon in Purva Phalguni, Hurli (legumes), Hesaru (green gram), and Uddu (black gram) were sown.
Ragi mudde, or steam-cooked ragi flour shaped into balls, with saaru, a spiced soup-like dish made with lentils—usually pigeon pea or green gram, with or without vegetables—or uppu-saaru constituted the mid-day meal or lunch.
Other lunch options included bas-saaru—an extract of greens and lentils cooked with spices—rice and palya, a dry vegetable side dish. Recently, I sampled a traditional palya courtesy of one of the villagers. It was made of raw jackfruit, whole hyacinth bean, Bengal gram and horse gram, cooked together with a tempering of mustard seeds, onion, chili, a little garlic, and curry leaves—dense, flavourful, and surprisingly easy on the gut.
Usually, one of the women of the family carried the lunch meal to the fields. At night, ragi mudde were served again with saaru. But finger millet wasn’t the only staple; others like foxtail millet or little millet were major components of the diet, served like rice.
Alongside millets, pulses were the essentials of local cuisine, supplemented by dairy, meat, vegetables and greens—cultivated and wild, native, and therefore adapted to the region, its soil and climate. The cuisine was a combination of complex carbohydrates (gluten-free choices, with low-glycemic index), high in fibre, rich in minerals like iron and magnesium, vitamins like B12, and protein, micro-nutrients, as well as antioxidants.
The cuisine was a combination of complex carbohydrates (gluten-free choices, with low-glycemic index), high in fibre, rich in minerals like iron and magnesium, vitamins like B12, and protein.
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Usuli or steamed whole pulses, either horse gram, black-eyed peas or green gram, was a protein-rich snack washed down with buttermilk. Black gram was one of the main ingredients in Dose, and the only one in Vade, other than salt and chilies. Vade is a popular snack to this day, but what made the old variant so distinct was the oil used for frying: Niger oil or Hucchellenne, which served most of their needs. All edible oils were extracted in a cold press called ghana, or wooden press—a slow-turning pestle operated by oxen. This ensured that the oil retained most of the seed’s nutritional elements.
All edible oils were extracted in a cold press called ghana, or wooden press—a slow-turning pestle operated by oxen.
Unde or laddoos for children were prepared from either foxtail millet, little millet, or sesame, dry roasted till the grains popped, with a sprinkling of roasted groundnuts and fried gram, sweetened with jaggery syrup.
Livestock, chiefly cows, sheep, and goats, were integrated into the system. Most households in our village reared cows of the indigenous Hallikar breed, whose milk was valued for its flavour and nutritional benefits. Today we know that it contains the A2 beta-casein protein, is rich in omega-3 fatty acids and vitamins A, D, E, K, and is excellent for gut health and immunity.
Meat, chiefly chicken, was consumed once a week or on special occasions, especially when guests were entertained. Though there were coops to protect them from mongoose and other predators, chicken ranged freely in the home yard during the day, scouring the ground for insects and seeds—an effective pest control measure that could keep termites and even smaller snakes in check.
Indigenous food sources are said to be better suited to meet the nutritional needs of local populations due to higher nutrient density, higher-quality protein, and nutrients which are more easily absorbable by the body, like minerals. The antioxidant, anti-inflammatory properties of wild greens and tubers were immensely valuable as complementary sources of nutrition. Manual processing, such as the case of Niger oil using wooden presses, and simple cooking methods ensured the nutrients in produce were preserved. All foods grown by the farmer were, by default, organic and natural without the risk of chemical contamination. Whatever was healthy for the farmer and the farm and its animals, was healthy for the planet too!
The small farmer for whom minor millets (kodo and little millet) were staples, now finds them out of reach.
Today, organic food is available at a premium on store shelves. Millets are processed and packaged as high-value health food items. Their consumption is mainly in urban areas, driven by health concerns. The small farmer for whom minor millets (kodo and little millet) were staples, now finds them out of reach. He can neither afford to grow them without incurring losses, nor afford to buy them regularly, limiting their use to festivals and special occasions. Tragically, their cultivation and consumption by farming communities has declined.
In Karnataka, 80% of total farm holdings belong to small and marginal farmers. This group is adversely affected by the shift towards a market-driven economy, making survival a battle. The growth of cities, often unregulated, has increased the pressure on agriculture in the rural outskirts. The demand on land for non-agricultural purposes; escalation in input costs and labour; the perception that farming is an unattractive profession among younger, especially educated members of families; the aspiration for alternate livelihoods without access to appropriate skillsets and training; the fragmentation of communities and loss of their knowledge bases is making traditional subsistence farming unviable. The promotion of monocropping systems and mechanised, resource-intensive agriculture is further displacing small farmers.
Concerns surrounding subsistence farming, therefore, must be addressed because it is deeply connected to the social fabric and cultural life of communities. It has been the substratum upon which agriculture has sustained. The integrated system of farming which was the backbone of sustainable agriculture and stable, healthy communities, must be protected, or re-invented, and given a new lease of life. In these times of climate change and declining agrobiodiversity, it might provide viable solutions for food security.
Also read: What the past, present and future of agriculture owes to women
Cover Art by Khyati K
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