“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need” — Cicero
Sometimes, the greatest pleasures of life come from the simplest of joys. Reading a book and being in my garden are two of my pleasures, wonderful de-stressors that place the immediacy of the moment in perspective. In the fascinating book, Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari talks about three important revolutions that shaped human history — the Cognitive Revolution, Agricultural Revolution, and the Scientific Revolution. Of these, it’s the Agricultural Revolution that interests me because it was the most important leap for human civilization.
The roots of farming can be traced to Turkey and the Middle East about 10,000 years ago. Agriculture itself came into being during the Neolithic Era with crops such as lentils, barley, chickpeas, wheat, peas and flax. With agriculture, our food systems began to constantly evolve. Irrigation systems were invented, and farmers started to use a variety of methods to improve production.
Since then, we have seen agriculture technology develop rapidly. From the primitive plows to today’s modern tractors, humans have benefited from the use of technology, innovation, and modernization. Developed countries have huge, mechanized farms while subsistence farming is still prevalent in many developing nations.
Meanwhile, mass-production definitely made food cheaper. But we aren’t becoming any healthier. Modern farming techniques, such as genetic modification, and industrial farming have led to increasing concerns over the sustainability of food production and its impact on our health and the environment.
The growth of AgTech
Which is why there has been increased awareness and funding in AgTech companies. India is now among the top six countries worldwide with the most venture investments in AgTech.
Since 2013, we have seen more than 350 AgTech startups with more than 50% of these starting up between 2015–17. One of those is AgNext (Kalaari Portfolio), a data-driven startup that uses technology for disease analysis, crop monitoring, crop models, improving quality and traceability across the agri value chain. AgroStar is a platform for farmers to procure agricultural inputs, while NinjaCart brings fresh fruits and vegetables from farmers directly to small, specialist retailers.
Leading a sustainable life
All of these have led me to increasingly think about our relationship with food. In an earlier post, I wrote about how the foremost aspect of fitness comes from the food we eat. Sustainable living. Organic farming. These can be trendy buzzwords, but words that need to be truly considered by us — consumers who have the power to influence change.
A documentary I recently watched, ‘The Biggest Little Farm’ follows a couple who decides to move out of Los Angeles to create a sustainable organic farm. The environmentally conscious documentary traces their struggles and successes for almost a decade as they turn the dry, desolate land they bought into a thriving farming community.
There are many such initiatives with a growing interest in right sourcing food. In India, there are examples such as Navadarshanam, a small community close to where I live, which has been promoting healthy and ecologically sustainable food choices from as far back as 1990. Swayam, another eco-conscious outfit, has an ‘Open Shell Farm,’ that uses permaculture principles in producing food such as millets, peanuts, sesame, and more.
Our food’s perilous journey
While these kind of projects are heartening, the challenges we face in ensuring that healthy food makes its way to our dining table starts right from the food supply chain.
In India, our food supply chain ecosystem is incredibly complex. The farmer grows the food, and then it makes it to the local mandis, kiranas, hawkers, warehouses, truck and transport companies, industries such as fertilizer and seed companies, and government bodies that orchestrate an intricate, tangled web supply chain.
The result is this fragmented chain places us, the consumers of food, in a weak and fragile position. Because of food’s long journey from harvest to consumption, damage or contamination is a major problem. And sadly, weak supply chains also result in food wastage — it’s estimated that about 30% of the total food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted somewhere along the supply chain.
The question then remains: Can we transform the way we think, consume, market, and produce our food? We can’t all do self farming and produce our own food. So What can we do?
Harvest to health
To answer that, I need to step into the past a bit.
The food that our grandparents procured is vastly different from the way we obtain ours now. While they sourced directly from the farm, if not the farmer, we source or food online or at the retail store. As a child, I would often be sent by my mother for quick runs for Hara mirch, or Dhania Patta or other fruits and vegetables, even as a 5-year-old!. You ran to the corner store where these were fresh and procured almost always daily and just in time. We didn’t have a refrigerator at home. Even a child was taught how to select the best produce, be it bhindi or watermelon, an art and skill in itself! But nostalgia aside, this ensured we understood the food we were consuming. It’s what led me to develop a keen interest in kitchen gardening and urban farming many years later, leading to my quest to find more sustainable sources for the food we consume every day.
I grow almost all the herbs like mint, oregano, thyme, and basil in my garden and I love the feeling of plucking them when needed. This small garden has helped us procure all the fresh vegetables we need every day. There is a sheer joy in consuming something that you have grown in your backyard, balcony or rooftop! Especially if you have children, they learn so much from observing and being involved. And perhaps this is why my children eat any vegetable or fruit whether baigan or karela.
There are several startups that are trying to encourage a shift into more sustainable living. In Mumbai, Urban Greens enables people to use unused spaces to grow microgreens. Living Greens says that it dreams of creating a million organic homes by 2020 and provides portable farming systems that can be installed on a rooftop. Farmizen has an app that allows those in Bangalore to rent out a patch of land and grow their own vegetables. Nurserylive, which is one of India’s largest online plant nurseries, allows gardening buffs to order everything from plants, seeds, bulbs to gardening accessories. Hyderabad-based Homecrop provides a farming kit for terraces, which use coco peat rather than soil. Chennai’s Acqua Farms, which started operations this year, promises the city’s space and water-starved residents the dream of growing 6,000 plants in just 80 sq.ft of space! In Bangalore, Greentechlife says it is working on ‘smart gardens,’ with smart kitchen dustbins for food waste management and garbage disposal.
With these and other resources, cultivating a lifestyle that’s good for you and the planet is now easier than ever before. As we step into a new decade, we have seen how rapidly the world around us can shift.
Our Harappan Valley or Mayan and Aztec ancestors were great agricultural scientists. The Harappans have one of the earliest records of using the humble plow and developing irrigation methods, leading to a large city and civilization concept. The Aztecs developed probably the earliest known form of aquaponics with their innovation of agricultural islands called ‘chinampas’ for raising plants in swampy lands. This was somewhere around 1000 AD. This century, we continue to face new challenges. I feel that one of our greatest challenges is to prioritize and protect our well-being and find sustainable ways to cultivate and consume healthy, nourishing foods. We have the opportunity to draw knowledge from these old systems that have been disused.
We have already begun a new decade and new year. One new year resolution worth considering is knowing your food supply chain better and investing to procuring or sourcing better quality food to eat. And better yet if we make a resolution to grow something in our garden, even if it is a small balcony.
Disclaimer: Views represented in this blog are personal and belong solely to the author and do not represent the views of Kstart or Kalaari.
