A question that arose in a recent conversation with Priyanka (founder of Comini Microschool). The query has come my way in other forms as well, such as Why are there no good vegetables available (in the summer)? Given our complex society, my response to this is multi-layered, and comes from observing historic patterns in food and field realities.
CONSUMPTION PATTERNS
Variety per meal: Traditionally a pulse or vegetable paired with a grain or millet made one meal. There were exceptions, often to celebrate abundance, for example, undyu. Today, the average meal comprises a vegetable, pulse, and two grains (one consumed as flour, another whole).
Seasonality. Our seasonal trends resembled something like this:
Fruits, laden with water, fat, vitamins, sugars arrived with spring, and carried the summer and the early monsoons. Hot summers make it near impossible to grow vegetables naturally. Vegetables appeared in other forms, such as raw fruits like jackfruit, mango, banana, mahua; leaves from edible trees like drumstick; even flowers turned into vegetables like banana flower or sun hemp. Pulses supplemented the diet in the summer (and other seasonal cusps); whole as dal, sprouted for a vegetable, or pounded for a paste.
Monsoons express earth’s natural abundance of greens (pale bhajis) like Amaranthus, sorrel, drumstick, phodshi, kurdu, tender greens of pulses; bamboo shoots and tubers like air potato.
Winters, the time when everything grows, including our modern take on 'vegetables' (peas, spinach, salad greens, tomatoes, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, zucchini, kale, onion, garlic, and so on). Dependent on the length of the monsoon, winter harvests are enjoyed beginning one to three months post rain. For example, green salads are harvestable within a month, while peas, carrots, tomatoes would take about three, and onions six. It’s also when tubers sown in the monsoon make for dense nourishment to match the colder moments. These favourable cool growing conditions carry us into the subsequent spring, bringing back a diet of fruits, roots, flowers, and pulses.
DEFINITIONS OF VEGETABLE
Our knowledge of edibles was once expansive. As exemplified above, it included fruits, flowers, shoots, leaves, pods, tubers. Today, vegetables represent a rather limited view of tomato, potato, cauliflower, carrot, bottle gourd, aubergine for example. In addition, exotic vegetables (e.g., kale, broccoli, zucchini) have entered our daily diet. Most of these vegetables, naturally grow only in the winter. That said, not only are they available year-round, they also dominate vegetable stands.
THE ECONOMICS
India’s annual inflation rate has reached a high of 6% this month of October 2024 (MOSPI, 2024), more than half of it is driven by food, specifically vegetables. Triggers that affect prices are both short term (like offseason vegetable and fruit sales) and long term (like urban migration and low standard of living amongst the farming community).
a. Off Season Foods. Farming offseason is the luxury of a large producer. It requires inputs like irrigation, fertilizer, and methods to climate control (for example, shade nets or greenhouses). It has also become the tool with which a retailer can command a higher price in the market, purely because less is available (think mangoes that are sold to you in February, with an asking price of Rs. 3000/kilo*).
That said, about half of the nation's food is produced by small-scale farmers (FAO 2022/23). A spike in market prices alludes to off-seasonal production. Prices drop once the vast majority (78% of India’s farmers (FAO 2022/23) send their seasonal produce to the stands.
b. Urban Migration. Farming is the only “business” which sells at wholesale and purchases at retail. It has led to poverty within the farming community. As the youth migrate into non-agricultural fields, the feat of growing food and all its associated activities (tending to cattle for example), is left with the grandparents. Agricultural work once carried out by large families, is now conducted by hired help, thus substantially increasing the cost of production.
c. Changing Basic Needs. Life and our needs were simpler yesterday, for all of us. Today, what we consider basic needs (example the phone, medical care), can be costly. Farmers also once received most of their sustenance and health care from their land or the forest. Forests have reduced, as has the knowledge of 'vanaspatis' and needs are increasingly being met by marketplaces or health care at hospitals. Farmers need to earn more to maintain a basic standard of living.
d. Purchasing Inputs/ Manpower. With the dependency on store bought inputs such as seed, fertilizer, insecticides, machinery, the cost of production increases. You’ll wonder why naturally grown or organic produce costs are so high then. Natural farmers have hidden costs. They’re maintaining a holistic ecosystem to bring you a vegetable, examples include hosting cows for manure, working fields by hand, saving seed, to name a few, which ties back to the earlier point of hired manpower. Natural farmers also, always, share their produce with nature, almost equally. That is to say, half of what is produced is naturally claimed by weather/ animals/ rodents/ disease, thus increasing the price naturally grown produce is sold at.
WEATHER NUANCES
Minor shifts in weather patterns, experienced by three-quarters of India’s farming community, can cause significant changes in the availability of our food and its price. For example, the extended monsoon this year made for a delayed season of ‘cutting rice’, an activity which occupies the majority of India's manpower, as well as the land. While this time last year, small-scale producers had already sown their vegetable seeds, we can expect a delayed (but bountiful!) crop to arrive in the market this year.
BRINGING IT TOGETHER
The way I look at it is this: We now (scientifically) understand the importance of synchronizing with Nature’s rhythms (for example, the circadian rhythm). We have also come to understand that most of our health issues stem from the gut. It makes logical sense then that we eat according to seasonality**, expand our knowledge of edibles, and while we’re at it, pay fair price to those growing the food**. The consumer holds the power to create tomorrow.
FOOTNOTES
*If the produce was good and wholesome, pay the price. But, off-season production also means unnatural production, which impacts the quality of your produce by way of flavour and nourishment.
**Sourcing directly from farms ensures the fair price you pay for the produce goes directly back to source. I understand this isn't easy; we could start by sourcing one pantry item from a single farm, consistently. Sourcing direct will also, inevitably, teach us about the seasonal cycle of that pantry item.
REFERENCES
MOSPI - Government of India, Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation; Inflation rates for October 2024 (https://www.mospi.gov.in/dataviz-cpi-map)
FAO - Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific; Smallholder farmers in India: Food Security and Agricultural Policy, RAP publication 2022/23 (https://coin.fao.org/coin-static/cms/media/9/13170962616430/2002_03_high.pdf)
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