Hauling goods to and from market

Photos of a few of the ways I saw people hauling produce and other goods from place to place.

The huge trucks that haul wholesale produce to market are intricately
decorated and hung with good luck charms.

Smaller retailers bring carts to the wholesale market...

...and load them with produce to sell in the city.

In a rural village in Orissa, this salesperson goes from
house to house with all manner of plastic goods loaded on his bike.

What is efficiency?

I came to India expecting to identify ways in which new technology could make fruit and vegetable supply chains more efficient. But I soon discovered that the large numbers of people in need of employment in India, combined with the huge costs of capital and electricity, give "efficiency" a different meaning in India than in the United States. Expensive technology that takes the place of jobs and fails with the first power outage isn't always the best answer. 

Women peel garlic by hand.

I saw no electric scales at the wholesale market. Instead, large wooden scales like these are used to weigh sacks of garlic.

Brokers and wholesalers barter for apples at the wholesale market.
Many criticize the large chains of intermediaries between farmers and retailers.

What goes to waste in India?

Heat, monsoons, potholed roads, and supply chains with lots of middlemen can cause fruit and vegetables to rot while being transported from the farm to urban consumers. There's a market for less-than-perfect produce, though, as well as other things that might go to waste in the US.

According to many sources, 30-40% of produce in India rots between the farm and the consumer.

Cows roam the wholesale market in Delhi, snacking on discarded fruit and vegetables. 

Manure doesn't go to waste in this village in Orissa.
This woman shapes manure into patties to burn for fuel.

For more info on waste in India, check out wastelines.com, the blog of fellow Fulbright Scholar Rachel Leven.

Food for thought from the Rome Sustainable Food Project

Cutting cucumbers...

At the American Academy in Rome, Executive Chef Mona Talbott is showing that food can be educational, artistic, and sustainable. Over the last five years, Mona has made the Rome Sustainable Food Project (RSFP) a beloved part of the scholarly and artistic mission of the Academy: Mona and others train interns in the kitchen, gardening and food preparation take place where others can watch and join in, and the chefs write books about their work. Throughout, the kitchen team does its best to connect those who eat the food to the network of local organic farmers who produce it.

The benefits of a project like RSFP for the Academy are clear. Suddenly, invitations to meals are coveted. People are excited to spend time with each other over delicious food, and feel well-nourished. The seasonal and largely traditional food connects the people eating it to the land and culture around them. By tying the food to the educational and artistic mission of the institution, Mona helps people see it as more than just a service.

In turn, Mona says, teaching makes her a better cook. She thinks it's important that people preparing food identify with something bigger than just chopping vegetables. Cooking is a way of working towards a mission, of expressing a point of view: For example, the RSFP resists the American idea that "more is more." Instead of producing a food-court-like smorgasbord of different options, Mona's kitchen team "edits" the choices available. The spread is focused, healthy, and artistic, sustaining the scholars of the Academy both physically and mentally.

Mona thinks many other institutions offer opportunities to transform ordinary dining experiences into something special, like she has done with the Rome Sustainable Food Project. I agree.

 Scholars at the Academy can admire the herbs and produce RSFP grows in this garden. 

Alternatives to chemicals and GM seeds

A short piece I wrote about Navdanya's work to promote organic farming in India was just published on the Nourishing the Planet blog. Check it out here.

Some beautiful kohlrabi at the Navdaya farm.

Buying what I need from Delhi's mom-and-pop stores

An Indian mom-and-pop grocery store.

I did my Fulbright research on fruit and vegetable purchasing in Delhi. But I was struck by how very different all food buying patterns are from those in the U.S.

In most Indian cities, almost everyone buys foods from the mom 'n' pop grocery stores embedded in streets--and sometimes homes--throughout the city. These stores range in size from a simple window hung with goods to an entire room complete with a counter and cash register. Instead of strolling through aisles of products and picking up products as you would in a supermarket, you walk up to a counter and make your request. No marketing consultants have been through here: Many items are so hidden in back corners and recesses that the store owner has to clamber up on a chair and search for them in the shelves.

When I go to the supermarket in the US, I'll usually browse the aisles and count on visual triggers to remember what I need ("Oh, yeah--we ARE out of flour"). I frequently end up buying more than I plan, whether it's because I notice that my favorite yogurt is on sale--got to stock up!--or see a new product I want to try. 

In Delhi, I was far more likely to go to the store with a list of items to buy, ask for them, and then leave with exactly what I needed--and nothing more. On occasion I made impulse purchases, such as picking up a pack of gum at the counter, but I wasn't walking past every item in the store and was therefore far less likely to grab extras. 

A small general store in one of Delhi's slums.

Compared to the mom 'n' pop format, exposure to every product in the aisles of the supermarket encourages people to buy and consume more. Therefore, the predicted transition from mom 'n' pop grocery stores to supermarkets in India seems likely to increase consumption. This can’t be good for India’s growing epidemic of obesity.

But where are the nutritionists in the debate over changes in food retail in India? While there have been protests and political debates over how supermarkets will change supply chains and affect employment, no one mentions nutrition. I think that's a problem: We need to collect data on how the shift from mom ‘n’ pop stores to supermarkets will affect food buying patterns, and therefore nutrition. Then we need to use that data to inform food retail policy. 

Making pasta from scratch in Italy

Rolling out pasta dough with a water bottle

Cutting and shaping spinach tortellini

Now that I'm in Italy, I've been immersing myself in the "slow food" culture and making ravioli, tortellini, and gnocchi from scratch. Making gnocchi isn't hard, but using a can and metal water bottle to roll out sheets of pasta dough for the ravioli was quite an endeavor!

Serving bread by the bucket at a Sikh temple

This large bucket of roti bread in the Gurdwara

kitchen will be served to worshippers in the hall.

How difficult must it be to put eyeliner on a baby? My friend and I contemplated this question while sitting cross-legged on large carpets with a mass of Sikh worshippers. We were waiting for the next serving cycle at the Bangla Sahib Gurdwara, which, like all Sikh temples, has a kitchen that distributes free food to all comers. Many of the babies around us had eyes daubed with eyeliner and tiny wrists adorned with mini-bangles. Like the Sikh women carrying the babies, we covered our heads with scarves.

After we had waited for about five minutes, the doors to the huge dining hall opened and the crowd crushed forward. We all hustled to get seats on the floor in long rows. Then volunteers—including one boy who looked as young as six—walked down each row dispensing metal trays and spoons. Next came handfuls of roti bread from giant baskets. Volunteers ladled out servings of dal (lentils) and sabzi (vegetables) onto our plates.

All of the food we ate came from a huge kitchen in which volunteers prepare food for over 10,000 people a day. Unlike the centralized school meal kitchen I visited earlier, the giant spoons and vats of lentils in the temple were all used by humans rather than machines. Each of the roti on my plate was clearly made by hand.

Instead of using a machine, volunteers will make roti by

hand at "stations" marked by piles of flour.

At first I was surprised by how quickly the people around me in the dining hall were eating. Then I realized why they were scarfing down their food so quickly: another group of worshippers was waiting eager to enter the hall. My friend and I were taking too long to finish, so two volunteers came and stood in front of us encouraging us to eat quickly and make room for the next crowd. While processes at the Gurdwara may not be mechanized, they are efficient!

Volunteers make dishes in vats and serve them with giant

 spoons. The woman in the back left is making roti.

Fruit for Lord Shiva

While cracking open a wood apple on our kitchen counter this morning, I reflected upon the tight connections between food and religion here in India.

Bael with sweet flesh ready to scoop out.

Bael fruit growing on a tree.

The shell of the wood apple (called bael in Hindi) is almost as hard as a coconut’s. I had seen bael tucked among necklaces of marigolds and other items used in sacred festivals, but hadn't known why those items were sold together. My friend Shalabh explained that the leaves and sweet fruit of the bael tree are sacred to the Hindu god Shiva. Bael is also supposed to be "cooling," so the fruit is often made into drinks on the street. The gritty texture of the fruit I bought wasn't a hit with others around the breakfast table, but Shalabh and I like the custardy taste and the hard shell made a perfect bowl.

Bael is not the only fruit with religious significance. I've been researching fruit and vegetable retail for the last eight months here in India, but am continually surprised at the many ways in which religion influences diet. For instance, many Hindus will eat only fruit and milk during Maha Shivaratri, buying so much fruit that the carts look empty and forlorn. 

Many places of worship provide prasad, food first offered to the gods and then eaten by the community. Long lines form at the temple across from my apartment as working men and families from the neighborhood line up for free meals. The halwa, poori, and chana masala from the handouts I've tasted have all been delicious--even better than the bael! 

Schoolchildren eat prasad (served in bowls on the table) outside the temple.

Stretching 5 cents into a healthy school meal

Given six cents per kid and some rice and wheat, is it really possible to make a healthy, balanced school meal?

The ISKCON Food Relief Foundation has turned this daunting challenge—the Indian government’s mandate that states provide kids with cooked meals—into a modern “stone soup” story:

• The central Indian government provides rice, wheat, and about six cents per child to cover other ingredients and charges. (For context, the US National School Lunch Program reimburses an average of $2.68 per child.)
•  Former businessmen voluntarily manage the operations and serve on the Foundation Board of Directors.
• Corporations like Tata and Indian Oil give land, money, and food delivery vehicles, amounting to up about half the program’s total funding.
•  Individuals donate on the phone or in the workplace.

Put the donated ingredients together, and you’ve got hot meals that help keep 177,000 children a day in school and learning on full stomachs.

Steam powers the rice boilers on the left. Kidney beans cook in the vat on the right.

Preparing all those meals requires a truly massive kitchen. The ISKCON kitchen I visited was their biggest, serving 352 Delhi schools. Walking in between rows of cauldrons, each holding 100 kg of boiling rice, and 600L vats of cooking beans, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the scale. 

Machine churning out 20,000 pooris

 (fried Indian flatbreads) an hour.

Kids get a different meal every day of the week. Menus are set by the central government to provide 450 calories and 13g of protein per child, and attempt to accommodate the diverse culinary traditions of India. In South India, all meals are rice-based (rice and dal, for example). In Central India, where wheat is the staple grain, they’re wheat-based. The Delhi kitchen caters to both rice- and wheat-eaters, so meals are rice-based three days a week and wheat-based the other three. Since most of the children reached by the program don’t get two square meals a day, the menu includes fried bread (poori) for extra calories. 

Not everything goes smoothly, however. According to the kitchen manager who showed me around, the cooks can't predict exactly how many kids they'll be feeding on a given day. Beans have to start soaking the day before, and cooking starts at midnight. That means they can't respond quickly to rainstorms that keep a large number of kids at home. Although the leftovers would probably be safe to serve to humans, they're instead given to piggeries. This seemed like a strange choice for a Hare Krishna organization operating in a city in which few people eat pork, but it frees the Foundation from liability in case of food becomes contaminated after being served.


Avoiding the potential for scandals is part of ISKCON's effort to keep its reputation pristine in the sometimes-controversial school meal effort. (Other NGOs, schools, and teachers have all been accused of stealing grains and meals.) ISKCON's kitchen meets the highest sanitary standards, and even has an effluent treatment plant of the kind usually seen in fancy hotels. Each metal canister of dal or rice is double-checked before it’s loaded onto the trucks, and is sent back if the ziptie holding it closed is broken. 

Lugging a giant cauldron of dal to the wash area. 

Seeing the impressive operation--and sampling the delicious halwa in the kitchen--made me eager to head to Delhi’s Gurdwara Bangla Sahib kitchen tonight. This Sikh temple feeds 10,000 visitors a day for free!

Rescuing leftovers from fancy hotels to serve to the hungry

Ever wondered what happens to the leftovers from fancy hotel buffets? From those famously lavish North Indian weddings? You’ll be relieved to know that at least some of them end up in the mouths of hungry children. This Friday a friend and I visited AWB Food Bank, Delhi's oldest “food rescue” organization. AWB collects leftovers from four of Delhi’s five-star hotels five days a week and distributes them to eight schools as well as a nearby leper colony. The Bank also picks up leftover rolls, butter, jam, and the like from airport flight kitchens twice a week. So if you decline that mid-flight snack, it just might not go to waste!

Washing the food tins outside the office.

When I read an article about AWB Food Bank in the Hindustan Times, I didn’t expect it to be a two-person operation housed in an unmarked, one-room office with donkeys wandering below. The office doesn’t hold much beyond some tins used to collect leftover dals and curries from the hotels. Since the hotels donate the food, the car and salaries for Sucheeta and Dev Chandra--the two employees who drive around to the hotels every morning--are the Bank's only expenses. Sucheeta has been working at the bank for 18 years, since soon after it was founded by a Delhi-ite living in New York. She estimates that the Bank feeds about 800 people a day. It used to feed more a few years ago, but funds have declined over the last few years for reasons that Sucheeta doesn't explain. Back then, it had seven employees and two vans. 

My friend Zach with Dev Chandra
outside the strangely fortress-like
AWB Food Bank office.

Garbage guru and fellow Fulbrighter Rachel Leven points out that AWB Food Bank’s work has benefits beyond feeding the hungry: In India, 70% of all municipal solid waste is organic matter, and food waste is a major problem. Food causes all sorts of problems when it rots: When added to garbage piles, food gets everything else wet and makes it impossible to recycle paper trash. It attracts flies, rats, mosquitoes. It can’t be burned efficiently. Once in the landfill, bad things leach out of it. It generates methane, a greenhouse gas about 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

As if you needed another reason to make sure those leftovers get eaten!

Supporting farmers in Northeast India with kiwi jam

Although few Indian farmers are certified organic, many use organic practices because they can't afford chemicals. Others would farm organically if they knew they would be paid a premium for their crops. Increasingly, there are consumers in Indian cities willing to pay that premium. But these farmers and consumers need someone to connect them. 

One small corner of the overwhelming array of stalls
 at the International Food and Hospitality Fair.

I've encountered a variety of efforts to make those connections, sometimes in the strangest of places: this Sunday, I found one at a massive "food and hospitality" expo showcasing industrial electric ovens, ice cream cone machines, frozen potato parathas, and everything in between.

Among stalls wooing customers with samples of imported chocolate and ice cream, the North Eastern Regional Agricultural Marketing Corporation (NERAMAC) had brought small food processors from Sikkim, Meghalaya, Manipur, and Assam to sell their pickles, jams, and "squashes." NERAMAC helps small farmers in Northeast India, many of whom use organic practices by default, to process and get good prices for their produce. Farmers in Arunachal Pradesh, for instance, grow kiwis, and small food processing plants turn them into jam. Kiwi jam is delicious! Fellow fruit nerds can find more information on kiwis in India here.

Micro-processors from Sikkim and Manipur stand in front
of their products at the NERAMAC stall.

Kiwis grown by NERAMAC's farmers in Arunachal Pradesh.

Sharing organic ragi halwa in Lodhi Gardens

There couldn’t have been better weather for a picnic in Lodhi Gardens. As a follow-up to last week’s discussion about organic food in India, about 20 of us met in between the two tombs at the Gardens to share organic dishes. I ground up some organic ragi (finger millet) and added juice and coconut oil—inspired by the recent New York Times piece on coconut oil—to make an improvised halwa-type dessert.

Our organic picnic group, including two organic farmers
who brought juice from amla they grew themselves.

In addition to enjoying the spring sunshine, it was great to see folks chatting and connecting. One of the guests enthusiastically offered to organize follow-up events to bring together the community of people interested in organic food in Delhi on a sustainable basis. Since I’ll be leaving India within a few months, it's exciting to see someone else stepping forward to organize future events. I look forward to seeing the ideas and efforts that develop!

Un-Boxing Organics

How can we use design thinking to improve the ecosystem for organics in India? Yesterday, the UnBox conference gathered a group of 18 people--including farmers, designers, architects, and others from at least four countries--to tackle this question. Four of us presented what we had learned from recent visits to farms and conversations with farmers, retailers, and middlemen. 

Then we divided into groups to brainstorm and scheme. We thought about how to reach people through institutions like schools, hospitals, or temples, what celebrities would be good champions for the benefits of organic food, and what it would take to make policymakers want to mainstream organics. The excitement in the room was tangible. People were exchanging contact information and farmers were arranging to deliver produce to others in the room. 

Discussion participant with some brainstormed ideas.

Ideas ranged from the practical to the pie-in-the-sky: 
--Asking local restaurants to feature at least one item on the menu made from organic ingredients
--Giving people portable testers to monitor their own food for pesticide residues
--Connecting Indian organic farmers with retailers, restaurants, and customers through an “E-Bay” type platform
--Featuring organic food on food, parenting, and health shows and magazines

--Making a viral video like “The Story of Stuff” for food

While implementing some of the ideas will take years of work, we've decided to get started on others right away: We’ll be gathering in Lodhi Gardens next weekend for an organic potluck to start weaving a community of people interested in giving everyone access to healthy, chemical-free food. Join us and help build the movement! 

Why does the export authority control organics?

A vertical garden at the Navdanya farm.

“Organics in India fall under the domain of the export authority--and that's deeply insulting.” Dr. Bhatt’s voice was filled with emotion. “There are good reasons for harmonizing organic standards with the rest of the world, but it’s not just Westerners who have a right to eat healthy, organic food! Indians, even poor Indians, have just as much of a right to eat good food. Rather than growing organics for foreigners—which is what putting organics under the export authority implies—we should be growing organic produce to ensure India’s own nutritional security.”

Organic and sustainable farming is Dr. Bhatt’s expertise and passion. He’s worked closely with Vandana Shiva over the past decades and now helps direct Navdanya, a network of seed keepers and organic farmers in India. I was speaking with Dr. Bhatt at the Navdanya farm, a lush block of fields in which Navdanya staff and volunteers cultivate and store seeds from heirloom varieties of mustard, wheat, millet, and other traditional Indian crops. Farmers also come to Navdanya for workshops on organic farming.

Farmers attending a workshop on organic techniques.

The visit was part of an “organics fellowship” organized by an innovation firm (modeled on IDEO) based near Delhi. The other three fellows—a designer, a filmmaker, and a principal from the innovation firm—and I set out to explore organic food in India from a multidisciplinary perspective. We spoke with retailers, organic and non-organic farmers, experts, and others involved in the organics ecosystem. 

People get into organics for different reasons: The owner of a small retail store, for example, prides herself on the quality of the craft organic products she sells, and on making sure the farmers with whom she works get good, fair prices. She says she’s, “In it for the farmer, not looking to provide cheap organic food to Delhi.” 

Satish, from a much larger-scale operation with a very different mission, gave us a different perspective. He manages the North India purchasing of fresh food for Spar, the world’s largest food retail chain, which recently opened its first hypermarket in Delhi. They stock a variety of organic produce, but find that organics make up far less than 1% of sales. Although Satish sees organic as a growing market, it’s limited by the lack of a year-round supply from certified farmers, and the small base of customers currently aware of organics and willing to pay a 30-300% premium. But with a special area in the wholesale market that would facilitate streamlined connections to certified farmers, he thinks retailers could easily create demand for organic food. 

Navdanya stores seeds from these heirloom crops in a seed bank.

Right now, India has streamlined systems to send organic food abroad, not to sell it domestically. Is it a surprise that more than half the organic food produced in India is exported?

What role should organics play in India? In other emerging or developing economies? If you’re interested in exploring these questions some more, join the other fellows and me for a panel and discussion this Friday at the UnBox design festival in Delhi. 

"Leveraging Agriculture to Improve Nutrition and Health"

For all those interested in the broader context for my research on supermarkets and fruit and vegetable markets in India, I wanted to belatedly link to materials from a conference I recently attended on "Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health." You can also check out my e-poster.

When you ask for a raspberry in India...

"Rasbhari" fruit in a round bundle.

When my Hindi teacher told me the name for this small orange fruit, a little like a sweet tomatillo, was "raspberry," I thought he must be mistaken. But no! The Hindi name for the fruit is "rasbhari," which comes from "ras" (रस), meaning "juice," and "bhari" (भरी) meaning "full."

The English name for the fruit is the cape gooseberry. They're all over Delhi's fruit and vegetable stands right now, artfully bundled in balls like a pincushions, with papery leaves stuffing the inside and the berries studding the outside like bright orange pin heads. The berries are sweet with a slight sour edge, and pop in your mouth like a cherry tomato. Perfect for a snack while walking to the metro!