Author: Sujata C

Celebrate the Harvest

Makar Sankranti, the four day harvest festival of India is here and we are ready to express our gratitude to the life giving Sun, the life bearing Earth and the bounty that we have received through them, through the year. Known by different names across the country Pongal, Lohri, Bhogali Bihu, the celebrations are diverse and specific to each region. The Sun moves into the Makar rasi or Capricorn constellation marking the end of winter and Dakshinayana and the start of spring and Uttarayana, the auspicious period.  Devotees take a dip in the holy rivers. Homes are stocked with newly reaped harvest and hearts are overflowing with thanks, joy and gratitude.

With more than half the population of the country engaged in agriculture and allied activities, the mood of celebration grips the entire nation. Preparations begin weeks in advance. City dwellers book their tickets in advance for a trip to the hometown because they know the last minute surge pricing will burn a hole in their pockets. Those who haven’t been able to go back hometowns take to rooftops and playgrounds armed with colourful kites because the breeze is inviting and the sun is nice and warm.

In every village, farmers clean and paint their homes. Old stuff is taken out and made a bonfire of, on Bhogi the first day of the festival. People dance and sing around the bonfire to keep the last of the biting cold away.  In a run up to the festival the front yard is given a cow dung water wash every morning. Rice flour kolams and colourful rangavallis decorate every threshold in the South.

‘Haridasu’ sing out their stories. ‘Gangireddu, the decorated bull who is seen as ‘Nandishwara’ dances to drum beats and music in every street. This is an ancient art form of entertainment that brings the community together. Recreational animal sports like cock fighting, jallikattu, kambalaare looked forward to. On the third day of Kanumu, the ancestors are remembered and blessings sought from elders.

Women get busy making snacks like palli laddu, sakkinalu and muruku in the South. In the North they make gajak, a popular snack. In the South, cooking Pongal in a mudpot with milk and new rice is an age old tradition. As the milk boils over, everyone calls out ‘Pongalo pongal’ to usher in prosperity into their homes.

 

Try out these traditional recipes and relish during Sankranti. In keeping with the spirit of gratitude to mother earth, we recommend that you choose organic and locally sourced ingredients, pour out all your love and gratitude in the making of these dishes. Nothing describes celebration more than a delicious and nourishing meal.

Ven Pongal (Also called the Savory Pongal):

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup rice
  • 1/2 cup split moong dal
  • Salt to taste

For Seasoning:

  • 2 tbsps ghee
  •  1/2 tsp cumin seeds
  • 1 inch piece of ginger
  • 1 tsp black pepper, coarsely pounded
  • 2 tsps cashew nuts pieces
  • 1 sprig curry leaves

Preparation:

Wash the moong dal and rice and keep aside. In a pot, add a little ghee and roast the dal till the raw flavour disappears. Add five cups of water and some salt. Cook till soft. Mash the dal rice mix well with a ladle. The consistency should be somewhat loose. In a seasoning ladle, take some ghee, add cashew nut and fry till golden brown. Remove and keep aside. In the same ladle, add cumin seeds, grated ginger and curry leaves. When it is spluttering, add to the pongal and stir well. Garnish with fried cashew nuts and serve hot with coconut chutney.

Sweet Pongal:

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup rice
  • 1/4 cup chana dal
  • 1-1/2 cup jaggery
  • 2 cups milk
  • 2 cups water

For Seasoning:

  • 2 tbsps ghee
  • Raisins, cashews, almonds, cardamom

Preparation:

Roast the rice and chana dal separately just till they are hot, not brown. Now boil the milk and water. Once the milk starts bubbling, add the roasted rice and dal and let them cook. In a separate pan, melt the jaggery in half a cup of water till it reaches one string consistency. When the rice and dal are cooked to a porridge like consistency, add this jaggery mixture and switch off the stove. Do not light the stove and cook once you add the jaggery mixture, as the pongal will curdle. (Jaggery and milk when cooked, curdle). Mix all the contents in your vessel, till they blend. In a seasoning spoon, add ghee. Once it melts, add the cashews,almonds, raisins and elaichi. Add this seasoning to the prepared Pongal and serve hot.

You can buy organic ingredients listed in the above recipes from Amazon or BigBasket

Good Health is Cold Pressed

 

Ola acquired Foodpanda two days back. So now not only will they drive you home, they will also deliver hot food at your doorstep. Away from the hustle and bustle of the food delivery apps world, there is a quiet revival of the traditional oil mill all over the country – not in remote villages , but in the heart of happening cities. It appears to have made a silent comeback after seven to eight decades much to the delight of discerning consumers like Uma who lives in Yapral, Hyderabad. Since the past six months, she has been making a monthly trip to the traditional oil mill (ghani in hindi, ganuga in telugu) near her house to get fresh cold pressed oil.

Good old ‘ganuga’

Prabhakar is the lone ‘ganuga’ operator in the region who uses two bullocks to run his mill and prepare oil for select customers. He is from the oil crushers’ community, who took to selling garments when his livelihood of traditional oil milling was no longer profitable. Couple of years back, he chanced upon a meeting of Subhas Palekar,  the ‘rishi of  krishi’ in his village, advocating traditional food and farm practices. This proved to be a turning point in his life. Everything that Palekar said about chemical farming resonated with him. He had heard about the ill health caused by adulteration and chemicals in food. Prabhakar decided to revive his ancestral occupation and set up his ganuga in Balaji Nagar at Yapral, Hyderabad. Prabhakar says oil from a traditional mill is especially good for diabetics and heart patients.

Prabhakar at work
Photo courtesy: Telengana Today

Time for mindful eating

You can imagine what wonderful meals Uma must be cooking for her family, if she takes so much care about the cooking oil. While many of us may not have access to a ghani near our house, we can make the switch to mindful eating by including cold pressed oils in the shopping list.

The fast pace of our lives has taken its toll on our health. We tend to be mindless when it comes to something as basic as food. We just need to slow down and bring our awareness to things around us and the food on our plates. You can make mealtimes more interesting by talking to your children about the food they are eating. Even the most ordinary everyday meal has something extraordinary about it, if we chose to think about it. This way we can help one another become more mindful and thus make wiser choices about our health, our food, our farmers and the environment.

If you know of any traditional oil mill becoming operational in your locality, do drop a line in the comments section. We would love to spread the word.

Sujata C

Daana.in sells cold pressed oils that you can order conveniently from Amazon.in

The zoo beneath our feet

Organic farming is about building healthy soil.
Our farming community has preserved soil and biodiversity for generations. Read more about the hidden universe of soil in this wonderful article in Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/the-zoo-beneath-our-feet-were-only-beginning-to-understand-soils-hidden-world/2017/08/08/f73e3950-7799-11e7-9eac-d56bd5568db8_story.html?tid=ss_fb&utm_term=.e4b67f42e5b8

Meet your farmer: Howgir Deshmukh

Howgir-ji has been growing food using natural and organic methods for the past 11 years. He grows rice, mangoes, jowar, maize and some dals.

He uses only natural fertilisers and sprays for his crops. (e.g., crushing neem leaves and soaking them in boiling water and using that extract). He also uses a cover crop called Dhaincha (Jeeluga in Telugu) to increase soil fertility. Once the Dhaincha grows, he tills it into the soil to provide it with a rich boost of nutrients.

He has 40 acres of which he is cultivating 10 acres. His big challenges are water and labour. He wants to bring more area under cultivation if he is assured of a good market that provides him with fair prices for his produce.

https://youtu.be/HiLorT3gh4M

Meet your farmer: Bhaskar from Metalkunta

Bhaskar and Lakshmi are organic farmers from Metalkunta village in Medak district in Telengana. They grow Bansi variety of wheat in a chemical free way. Listen to his story in his own words.

 

Bhaskar is a tailor who turned to organic farming 5 years ago. He and his wife Lakshmi grow wheat, dals and vegetables in their 11 acres of farm, in Metalkunta village near Zaheerabad, Telangana.

His farm is entirely rainfed. He uses mulch and rain water harvesting methods to maximise water conservation. There are many organic farmers in the region. As a result, the fertility of the soil is very high, and the groundwater levels are very healthy. A naturally fertile soil has a large capacity to retain moisture. This is not the case in regions that use chemical farming methods. In these regions the soil becomes rock hard and does not have any water retention capacity. Any water poured on it is only washed away, and does not get absorbed.

Meet your farmer: Tuljamma and group

Tuljamma (far right) is one of many women farmers in the Bidekanna village, Zaheerabad area In Telengana, who have been growing crops organically. They have been doing so, following traditional methods, for the past 3 generations. Most of them are small farmers, with land holdings between 1-4 acres. Their co-operative society helps women in the villages in various aspects of their life. As a group they are able to help each other out, and are also able to negotiate fair prices for their members with their buyers.

Tuljamma and a few others have been invited by many groups in Hyderabad to provide inputs on organic farming. She recently attended the National Permaculture Convergence held in Hyderabad, and talked extensively about the health benefits of growing and consuming organic food.

Chemicals in your food

This is a video we put together that explains how our current farming methods pump hundreds of toxic chemicals into our food. It also talks about how we can address it.

Big thanks to Maitri for all the amazingly cute artwork.

https://youtu.be/G_2Q1tbmbc0

Our water crisis

Wednesday, 22 July 2015

We are looking at a bad monsoon for yet another year, and we wonder what the “water scene” will be like. What should we be worried about? Why do we need water?
  1. To drink
  2. To grow food
  3. To clean our homes, schools and offices.
  4. We also need water for many things that aren’t obvious….. More about it in a bit.

So, what is the crisis? What can be done practically, by us as individuals? It is easier to understand the water crisis if we look at it this way:


In the Cities:

  1. Huge water consuming urban lifestyle: Western toilets, filtered water, showers and more
  2. Bad infrastructure: Cities have grown, but the water pipelines, tanks, filtration units, haven’t kept up.
  3. Rainwater is wasted: The city’s land is almost entirely covered with flooring, concrete or buildings. The rain doesn’t get into the ground. Instead, it goes into sewage lines and becomes polluted, dirty and unusable.
  4. Vanishing Groundwater: We keep drilling deeper and deeper to pull out water that has been lying underground for millions of years, and we dont replenish it with rainwater.
  5. Garbage: Garbage clogs drains and pipes. It mixes up with drinking water. This provides opportunity for private companies to start selling clean water in tankers and bottles.

As water becomes scarce in the city, it is transported by petrol consuming vehicles from some other place. This deprives those other areas of water, and makes it very expensive for those living in the cities.

Our industries consume water without any control or responsibility. In turn, they also dump chemicals that pollute our rivers, groundwater, soil and air. The Pollution Control Boards are seen as evil departments impeding our ‘progress’.

In the villages…

  1. Farmlands turning into deserts: Running heavy tractors, pumping chemicals and other pollutants into the naturally fertile soil makes it hard, dead and sterile. The organic material in the soil is gone. The earthworms and other life is dead. The hard soil can no longer hold water.
  2. Crops need more water than before: Chemicals like fertilizers and pesticides need far more water than natural farming methods. The fertilizers and pesticides industries consume huge amounts of water too.
  3. Cities take the water away: Many farmers are forced to sell their water to the cities. Tankers come and collect water from them. Water is no longer a resource but a commodity to be traded.
What’s to be Done?
Quite a lot, actually. Here are some basic steps. Pick as many as you can, keep increasing over time. BOOND BOOND SE BANTA HAI SAGAR.
  1. Conserving energy conserves water: Take a bus instead of a car, a fan instead of an AC.  All our coal based electricity plants consume massive amounts of water.
  2. Products consume water: Every toy, laptop, cell phone has indirectly consumed thousands of liters of water to be made. Each time you decide not to buy that new gadget, trinket, shoe, whatever…. Well, Congrats !!! You have saved water.
  3. Consume Organic: Organic food consumes far less water than chemically grown food. It is healthier too.
  4. Eat less meat: Huge amounts of water, land and energy is needed to grow animals for meat.
  5. Skip junk food: Not only are burgers, pizza, nuggets, chips and coke bad for you. They waste a lot of water in being produced!
  6. Water efficient machines : Opt for front loading washing machines, avoid western toilets (if not, ensure they are optimised for water), use simple water filters instead of RO systems.
  7. Save rainwater: Install rain-water harvesting solutions in buildings to recharge the groundwater. A city should learn to live by the rainfall it receives.
  8. Say NO to Plastics: They use up a huge amount of water to make. And then, they clog up the city drains and water pipes!
  9. Segregate your Garbage: Compost at home and give it back to the soil. Reduce the amount of garbage you generate.

There’s a lot more to be said, discussed and understood. If you are curious, here is a reading/viewing list :

  1. Articles and videos at India Water Portal
  2. Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, at the UNICEF Portal
  3. Water conservation videos on youtube
  4. If you understand Tamil, watch K Balachander’s classic, Thanneer Thanneer

The misconceptions about organic food

There are many who are skeptical about organic foods and like to take every information about them with a pinch of salt. Here is an article that talks about many such misconceptions.

https://foodbabe.com/2017/03/20/is-organic-food-a-scam/