In the Field: Greetings and Lessons from Anantapur
To kick off July, I spent the past week conducting interviews in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh. After five weeks of research, packing, and questionnaire designing, my preparation culminated into four days of focus group discussions and keynote interviews. If there is one lesson that I learned this week it is that research is unpredictable. Oftentimes, interviews were scheduled hours in advance, and we had to patiently wait all afternoon to find customers to speak with. Even if I had generated a thousand questions, there were still moments that caught me off guard. From getting to speak with the president of AFEC to blessing a car outside of the FPO offices, I enjoyed stepping outside of my comfort zone and taking each day one at a time. With that, I decided to organize this blog chronologically. From Tuesday until Friday, each hour was action packed and filled with new surprises. I tried to document a holistic reflection of my trip below. Hope to see you again, Anantapur!
Tuesday July 2nd, 2024
Travel day! After arriving to work at 8 am, I made a few final adjustments, printed out documents, and loaded gifts into the car before heading out onto the highway. I am always in awe at the vastness of India. We could spend two hours driving and still be in Hyderabad city. This trip, however, took a grand total of eight hours from Hyderabad into the city center of Anantapur. Comparatively, eight hours of driving in the United States could get me from Durham, NC to New York City, NY. I enjoyed peacefully looking out the window at the dry landscape stretching for miles on each side of the car. Occasionally, large hills jutted out of the flat planes, contrasting the green fauna with red, dry stone. Anantapur is known for being one of the driest districts, and we quickly learned that it hadn’t rained in a few days (despite being monsoon season). If rain did not arrive soon, many of the farmers might have to resow their groundnut seeds and other crops.
At 3 pm, we arrived at the hotel and rested until 6 pm when we met the coordinator for Rythu Nestham Food Producer Company Limited. Mr. Satheesh, the coordinator, works on managing the secondary processing unit in Anantapur, procuring raw materials, and he works through the Accion Fraterna Ecology Centre. He helped us throughout the week to contact farmers, the primary processing units, and other key interviewees. With his expertise and connections, we were able to speak with members of the board for one of the nine FPOs, visit the secondary processing unit, speak with AFEC’s director, and more. After a quick dinner and a visit to the bakery (to buy dates and pistachios), the day ended right as the sun dipped down over the city.
Wednesday July 3rd, 2024
Wednesday marked the first day of interviews, and I could feel my pulse quicken as I braved the elevator to get breakfast that morning. We enjoyed a peaceful breakfast at the hotel, and I was introduced to Shankar’s snake catching talents. Over breakfast, he showed me videos at ICRISAT of his skills capturing different snakes across campus with his bare hands. He grabs their tail and coaxes their head from the back until the snake’s head is touching the ground. Then, he grabs the head with his other remaining hand, so the snake can’t bite him. Pretty impressive stuff. That morning, we drove to the secondary processing unit (SPU) to talk with five of the full-time workers. The two food technologists spearheaded a lot of the nutritional ambassador efforts tied with AFEC, so I spoke with them about both the SPU and ambassador programs. They are working on developing a fourth type of cookie since one of the most popular products the SPU processes is ready-to-eat Ragi cookies. Hence, this new type was an attempt to cater towards customers and their preferences.
Right outside of the SPU, a small shop was set up on the highway to sell the processed products. Run by a differently abled woman, she sells two dozen different items and advertises their nutritional benefits to individuals traveling into Anantapur.
After finishing both interviews, we went back to the city and had lunch before a keynote interview with Mr. Satheesh.
After completing this interview, we drove into a rural village and had two focus group discussions with the local farmers. We interviewed ~10 women and then a group of 8 men. The ages of participants ranged from the youngest, 25, to the eldest, ~65. The interviews were conducted outside of one of the ladies’ houses, so we had to take off our shoes before entering. To begin the first interview, I broke the ice by asking them “I’m new to India, what crops do you grow?” Mr. Potta translated my question into Telugu, and the ladies started firing dozens of different names back at us. They were all very passionate about their work, and there was not a question asked that they were not keen on answering. I was saddened to learn that a large percentage of the individuals we interviewed hadn’t completed any formal education before. Some of them, largely the younger women, had up to ten years completed, but there was a significant number that never went to school.
Next, we asked the same questions to the men, and there was a group of children that gathered outside of the building to watch the interviews, too.
After we wrapt up the last questions, mostly spoken in Telugu with the aid of Mr. Potta, one of the women offered everyone coffee in small paper cups. It was warm, sweet, and the best cup of coffee I had tasted all trip. One of my favorite moments afterwards was when this little girl rushed up to me and tentatively asked “How are you, madam?” so I replied, “I am good, how are you?” I asked for her name, and she walked away smiling. After that, a few more kids worked up the courage to ask me how I was. One shy little girl with braids in her hair ran away with a hand over her mouth giggling with delight when I answered her question.
July 4th, 2024
Day 2 of interviews. The day began with a slow-paced morning. We had one interview prepared with the head of communications for the Walmart project, but it only lasted 20 minutes because he had to head into work. For lunch, we went back to the same restaurant, and I ordered uttapam. After lunch, we headed out for more interviews at an FPO office space. After greeting a few people outside, I sat down in a circle and interviewed the president of the Board of Directors and board members of the FPO. I had not been expecting to speak with so many members, so I had to think on the spot with my questions. I had questions prepared for workers at the FPO and the president, but I was not expecting to speak with the board members since they usually meet once a month. However, this interview was extremely enlightening, and I am grateful that they took time out of their day to speak with us.
After wrapping up, we walked outside, and I saw that everyone was crowded around a shiny, white and yellow truck. We quickly learned that the FPO had purchased the truck that day, and they were blessing it before driving. Shankar informed me that a lot of Hindus bless their cars to give them good fortune. One by one, different staff would go up to the car with a coconut in their hands and their shoes off. They would grab the coconut, place three stripes alternating between orange and bright red powders on the outside, crack the coconut, and spray its water on the car. Afterwards, they would make small stripes on the rim of the broken coconut before placing it on the ground and standing up to wish for the car’s safety and security. I’m glad I was watching this process so closely because they asked me to bless the car next. I took the coconut in my hands, and walked over to the ladies with the powders. She took the red powder and placed it on my coconut and a small dot on my forehead. Then, I cracked the coconut in three strikes, put the powder on it, and placed it in front of the truck. Luckily, one of the ladies on the side was helping me throughout this process. While others were taking turns cracking coconuts, I noticed that a lemon was placed in front of each of the car’s tires. When the car started moving, it splattered each lemon. Similarly, I noticed a woman later that day who placed a lemon on the ground and stepped on it before entering a restaurant.
After going to the FPO offices, we went to a primary processing center in a nearby village, and we visited a small shop where products are sold via the PPC to farmers (tools, drip systems, etc). As we sat in the car, I was delighted to see monkeys on a nearby roof. However, Babu told me that this is not a good sign; the monkeys enter town due to deforestation and a lack of food in the nearby forests. Just a few years ago, he noted there were not nearly as many monkeys in town. After bidding the monkeys farewell, we drove home, and I interviewed the FPO coordinator in the car on the way back. We had tea with him at the hotel before finishing off the day.
July 5th, 2024
Today was the final day for interviews. First, we drove back to the SPU to speak with consumers. After waiting for an hour at the SPU, we spoke with three customers before leaving at 11 am. We drove over to the AFEC’s headquarters and spoke with their director. We got to try the Ragi and chocolate chip cookies that are produced at the SPU afterwards. While waiting to pack up these boxes, I attempted to write some words in Telugu, and Shankar helped me fix my letters. For lunch, we went to a small local restaurant where I had the best mushroom curry with chapathi to ever exist. It was so good. The chapathi was so soft and fluffy, and the curry was warm and had just the perfect amount of spice (That is, after telling them to make it mild).
Shortly afterwards, we went back to the SPU’s store and spoke to two more customers. At the shop, I sat in the shade with the shop owner who runs the SPU’s stand. She did not speak English, and I do not know Telugu, but we bonded over my drawings of the scenery as she would point to different things that I could draw. Even though we could only stay for a couple hours, it was nice to connect with her and smile over a cup of chai. After a long and travel-filled week, we drove home before calling it in for an early night.
As I spoke with the president of Accion Fraterna Ecology Centre, Dr. Malla Reddy, he contrasted agricultural systems in the United States and India. “For a country with over 50% of its population in agriculture,” he explained, “the agricultural model and solutions used in India and the United States are vastly different. Many farmers here might own one or two acres to grow on.” As we drove home that Saturday, I started to understand what he meant from this comment. When I flew to Iowa for the initiation of this internship, I recall seeing vaste plots of monocropping, largely corn and soybeans. Comparatively, scattered across the red soil, hundreds of different land plots connected like a puzzle in the countryside landscape. We drove by a variety of farms, from wind farms and goat herders, to groundnut and finger millet. During this journey, I took the time to reflect on what this week has meant for me.
I’m forever thankful to Mr. Babu Potta and Shankar for helping me conduct my research in Anantapur. It was amazing to experience a different part of India, try new foods, and meet dozens of new people. Even when I was sitting in silence with the shop owner or couldn’t understand what was being said in Telugu, my first dive into qualitative research could not have been any more memorable. It opened my eyes to the complexity of the value-chain and allowed me to learn from the experiences of countless individuals who turned the Walmart project from an idea into a reality.
Thank you, and I’ll talk to you soon.
Z. Miller
