March has just
ended – Chennai is already hot – experts are predicting
gruelling summer and oppressive heat. as
you travel, at home and in workplace too… it is also the time when there will
be inundation of advertisements of sugary drinks and energy drinks ~ you will
find favourite sports persons and cine-actors, actresses actively promoting
various brands targetting children. As
the mercury shoots up, people start
predicting that ‘this year summer is going to be more hot’ …. Every magazine you will find health
advisories – advocating intake of more liquids, more fruits, more juices and
more ....perhaps, the easily available
‘buttermilk and lemon’ would do more
good. Medics will advise on possible
infections and ill-effects of juices made with poor quality water and ice.
Summer also is the
time of delicious mango season. Mango is
a fruit that has enriched literature. So many stories, real as well as
apocryphal, are associated with this sublime fruit. Like cricket among all
sports, mango among all fruits has lent itself to the folklore of Indian and
sub-continental literature. Gone are the
days, when only butter milk or traditional sweetlime, lime, mango, orange,
grape juices were available.
Now there is so
much of variety that one flounders in making the selection. It's not just the gadget market that is
flooded with imports. With advanced technology,
improved preservation, improved transportation, better marketing - the
fruit basket is increasingly acquiring a foreign presence. You walk into any smaller shop aspiring to
resemble a super-market, you find many fruits -
names, taste and quality of some – not known to us thus far !!
Apples dominate the
fruit imports, followed by pears, oranges, lychees, peaches, kiwi, gooseberries, strawberries, butter fruit
(avocado), durian, dragon fruits and
more. Even in bananas, there are so
many varieties – and so many fruits which were only available at select places
like Mangusthan, Manoranjitham, rambutan, paneer fruit are also available. The import of fruits has nothing to do with
taste or customer preference. It is packing, transportation and marketing that
ensures that the fruits are made available and sold even during their
off-season. Then there are the packaged juices which sometimes openly confess
of not containing ‘fruit juice or fruit pulp’yet sell hot !
Among the foreign
ones, I am fond of ‘kiwi’
– the fruit somewhat sour in taste. It comes from New Zealand – the
island Nation in the southwestern
Pacific Ocean. The country geographically comprises two main landmasses – that
of the North Island, and the South Island,– and numerous smaller islands. It is
also known as the ‘kiwiland’ .. .. .. the
‘kiwifruit’ the edible berry of a woodyvine in the genus Actinidia. Some
articles suggest that this fruit helps preventing asthma, obesity, colon cancer, heart disease
and protect our DNA from mutations. Reportedly,
kiwi fruit contain more vitamin C than oranges, as much potassium as
bananas and high amounts of beta carotene.
Kiwi fruit is high in fiber which aids in controlling blood sugar levels
and lowering cholesterol.
Kiwi is the name of
the flightless birds endemic to New Zealand. At around the size of a domestic
chicken, kiwi are by far the smallest living ratites and lay the largest egg in
relation to their body size of any species of bird in the world. The kiwi is a
national symbol of New Zealand, and the association is so strong that the term
Kiwi is used in some parts of the world as the colloquial demonym for New
Zealanders. Kiwi is also the nickname used internationally for people from New
Zealand, derived from the bird.
Everybody
talks about the way the country’s depressed agriculture sector, the main source
of income for 40 per cent of our population, has been pulling down our growth
figures.But does anyone really care about what our farmers have to offer and
how our traditional crops can be turned into money-spinners with some
intelligent marketing? ~ here is some interesting piece of information from
MailOnline.
Kiwis from
Arunachal Pradesh are 30 per cent cheaper, yet they’re sold in Delhi with
foreign labels and at prices commanded by the imported fruit so that people buy
them. There are some who shunned Wall street and IT field, entering the domain
of farming. Puneet (who had been
developing technology solutions for Wall Street) and Ishira (who was with the
International Finance Corporation after after a stint with NGO Self Employed
Women’s Association) launched CropConnect with the purpose of discovering
hidden gems in our fields and getting them onto the table.It is a very
different startup in a market driven mainly by the urban hunger for a better
lifestyle. To set it up, the pair criss-crossed India - across 70,000
kilometres - to contact farmers and see for themselves what’s pulling the
sector back.
Of all the
stories they shared with me, I found the one about kiwis grown in Arunachal Pradesh
most telling. India imports 4,000 tonnes of kiwis from New Zealand, Italy and
Chile - the most favoured brand name being Zespry - but those grown in
Arunachal Pradesh sell for 30 per cent lower than the price commanded by the
multinational.Over the last three years, Puneet and Ishira have seen
Arunachal’s kiwis struggle to gain a toehold in the national market;
ironically, there are no takers if they’re identified as locally sourced and
cheaper to boot.What is more worrying is that many of the traditional crops,
some with healing properties, are getting lost forever.
Fruit
wholesalers therefore have hit upon a novel idea, as Puneet and Ishita have
discovered, to clear domestic kiwi stock and make more money. They sell them
under a foreign label at prices commanded by the imported fruit. Well, the
market subterfuge does ensure their stocks don’t remain unsold, but do they
benefit from the higher prices their produce now commands? No way!
The north-east
especially, Puneet and Ishira have discovered as they go about 'mapping the gap
between the consumer and the producer', is a treasure trove of products that
deserve to be better known in the rest of the country. These include Nagaland’s
pineapples, Meghalaya’s ginger and turmeric, Manipur black rice and passion
fruit, and the badielaichi from Arunachal and Sikkim.
What is more
worrying is that many of the traditional crops, some with healing properties,
are getting lost forever. These include Karnataka’s ‘Diana’ rice, which has
been found to be beneficial for diabetics. And then there are products just
waiting to be discovered, such as jamun powder from Jharkhand (again,
beneficial for diabetics); bajra whole wheat biscuits from Jhajjar (Haryana)
and bamboo ‘rice’ from the seeds of bamboo blossoms growing in
Karnataka.There's also jhangora or barnyard millet, from Uttarakhand, which is
now being hailed as an alternative to quinoa (for which production cannot match
the worldwide demand); and another hugely beneficial product from the hill
state - nettle tea. That's not all.
Many of the
local products can be sexed up for the urban palate, such as the vinaigrette
developed from the ubiquitous rhododendron flowers growing in Uttarakhand, or
the rock salt flavoured with bhangjeera seeds.And then there's the white munsiari
kidney beans (rajma), which are accompanied by a sachet of the herb named
gandrayani, which reduces the possibility of flatulence resulting from intake
of the beans.These diverse ingredients, sourced from 10 farmers’ groups from
across India, find a place in the Original Indian Table boxes that Puneet and
Ishita are test-marketing via their online store, www.originalindiantable.com.These
are baby steps that they hope will lead to the creation of an FMCG brand
dedicated to the traditional produce of India- neatly packaged and
intelligently marketed.
It’s a
commendable and creative initiative, but one is not good enough. Indian farmers
need many more CropConnects to enable them to enter the marketplace without
middlemen getting into the picture. Let the free market work in their favour
too.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
31st Mar
2016.
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