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!