Our food chain devoid of fertilisers and chemicals? Sure we want to believe it. Organic food is a noble concept and has a number of takers here, but really, India’s realism must win over Western concepts says Michael Fernandes.
The scenario appears appealing; soon we will regain some of our natural lives. An alternative is emerging to processed and chemically induced food which has come to dominate our modern lives. Organic farming is a growing phenomenon in India, or is it?
We are still an agrarian country with 70% of our population solely dependent on it. Tongue in cheek, the BBC recently reported that India is the best recycler of waste, thereby making us green. For generations our food was grown without pesticides. Its use is a fairly recent phenomenon and a necessity.
So are restaurants which serve organic food and create this hype self serving or is there more than meets the eye?
Britain’s Lord Northbourne coined the term organic food in 1939 in his push for a holistic approach to farming. The organic phenomenon as we know it dates to the recent ‘90s. In India, it is even younger.
Sure we have organic food today, but at what cost? For us restaurateurs, novelty sells which makes at least the concept of organic food appealing. Yet the issue is much larger than just designer food. It depends on which side of the economic line you stand or perhaps put, how hungry you are.
India is a developing country with all the challenges that come with this tag; poverty, hunger and malnutrition. Putting food on these plates is the priority of our society right now.
The challenge is very real because try as we may to boost production, farming techniques in India are underperforming, even after six decades.
The weather is no help either with its ongoing extremes. The erratic monsoon this year is already threatening to throw the annual crop schedule out of whack and send food prices up 15%.
On the other hand, yield from organic farming is much lower than those from chemically fertilised methods. The lack of volume in this segment increases cost anywhere from 10-60% above regular produce. Which makes the organic lettuce expensive. In a cost sensitive environment, this detail can be a red flag.
The entire food costing system is a factor supply. It might not always be the healthiest but fertilisers keep the supply high and the price manageable. This is important for the average Indian and so by extension, the restaurants and hotels that cater to this segment.
However, natural food does have its upsides and is in demand for those who can afford it. Not every restaurant or hotel can lay claim to its own organic vegetable patch, but the Renaissance Convention Centre in Powai, Mumbai does.
So naturally executive chef Jose Martin Ruiz Borja is passionate about maintaining his prized luxury. “Even while organic is a relatively common food term now, it is the distinct difference in flavours and awareness which sets its apart.”
The present translation of organic has come to mean good, clean and fair; good in terms of taste, clean in terms of environment sustainability, and fair in terms of price and value for the people who produce it.
“This means it includes the health of the soil, air and water which in turn offers better health for us,” says Borja.
The Renaissance Mumbai uses organic honey, olive oil and herbs organic marmalade, tea, cashew butter and organic flours. “Sadly, because organic produce is expensive, we cannot afford to make full meals as yet. Maybe in the future,” says Borja.
Genuine organic farms have always been small family units and the produce is available in select shops or farmers markets. The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) is very clear that organic agriculture should be based on living ecological systems and cycles, systems that must be adapted to suit climate variables of the location and the culture and scale of the operations.
In organic farming, factors like recycling, materials and energy management are important to sustain and benefit habitats, air, water and biodiversity. ‘The bottom line is one’s health is in one’s hands’: IFOAM states on its website.
However, Indian organic food consumers need education to become aware of the difference between natural and organic.
Ironically, India is the second largest producer and exporter in the world of fruits and vegetables.
However, the government through the Food Processing Ministry and the Food and Agriculture Department focuses solely on procurement, distribution and preservation, more than the growing of foods. A profit making market was the main consideration, until recently.
The National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP) by India’s Agricultural and Processed Food Products Development Authority (APEDA) is creating awareness and recognition for organic food.
However given the challenge of a hungry population, this is the government’s best display of its intentions to improve mainstream farming methods. The big constrain of how to make the process profitable unfortunately remains.
Natural does not mean organic. Standards are usually set by international bodies like the World Health Organisation and accepted by countries. The private sector equivalent to similar guidelines is the International Basic Standards for Organic Production and Processing created by IFOAM.
The consumer organic movement is growing as is evident by the increasing shelf space at upmarket stores chains such as Godrej Natures Basket, Navdanya, Hypercity, Fab India, Bharti Delmonte’s Field Fresh.
The certification of organic produce in advanced countries is regulated. In India where vertical growth is an uphill task, certification for even regular produce is non-existent for the local domestic market.
With her Health Awareness Centre, Dr Vijaya Venkat made early inroads into promoting healthy organic food in India long before it became a general craze. “Why is healthy food exported while we have to eat pesticide-laden food?” she asks.
Like Dr. Venkat, non-government organisations are successfully using organic farming as such social enterprise and in the process are capturing the market.
Special groups now support sustainable farming to protect the farmer and create a system of biodiversity.
Then there is genetically modified food which already covers thousands of farm acres and has found its way to our kitchens. Because India does not require companies to disclose their source, this remains a little known fact.
Critics are divided on their GM food stance, primarily on ethics. Purists decry the change in the DNA as unnatural; realists argue that the process improves the natural immunity. So long as it curtails the over dependence on chemical fertilisers, it should to be good.
The slow food movement founded by Italian Carlo Petrini has made inroads into the culinary world. It is finding takers among old school chefs because it preserves cultural cuisine while making people aware of what they are eating and from where it comes from.
Promoting organic food by way of association, the movement contributed greatly to health concerns globally.
Executive chef Anup Gupta of Ananda Spa in the Himalayas says: “The impact of organic food on Indian cuisine is going to be dramatic in the times ahead. Apart from all the health benefits talked about, the usage of organic ingredients gets most aware people truly supportive.”
The organic concept is not novel to India. It has always been here, in a land where processed rather than raw food is the rarity. Fruit and vegetable juices are freely available and the concept of raw salads is not alien to this country.
An aptly named ‘living food’ diet is all the more interesting with wholesome fresh foods and ingredients.
It is not required to mimic the West’s organic food. It is here, has been here and should continue to be here.
First sustainable foods summit has a sustainable future
The first Sustainable Foods Summit drew to a successful close at the end of June in Amsterdam, with plans being drawn up for the second edition. International food and beverage companies, some with a presence in India, such as Starbucks, Metro and Unilever, played a crucial part.
In spite of the economic recession, the summit brought together about 100 key executives involved in sustainability in the food industry. A post-summit survey shows that 86% of participants were satisfied or very satisfied with the summit and that 79% found it informative.
Dr Nadia El-Hage Scialabba of the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) kicked off the summit with her ‘Inconvenient Truths for the Food Industry’ which set the tone of discussion at the two-day summit.
The first session of the summit looked at the various eco-labelling schemes for sustainable food products. Amarjit Sahota, director at Organic Monitor showed that the global market for eco-labelled foods was valued in the region of US$70 billion; the bulk of sales generated from organic foods.
The proceeding papers were from leading eco-labelling organisations that included Fairtrade Labelling Organisation (FLO), Rainforest Alliance, UTZ certified and the Carbon Trust.
The panel discussion looked at how convergence was occurring between some of these standards. For instance, a growing number of organic standards are incorporating social and biodiversity principles.
Investing in sustainability was the focus of the second session, with presentations given by financers and recipients of ethical investments.
Koert Jansen from Triodos Bank highlighted the importance of sustainable investment, especially in today’s capital markets while Wim Nienhuis, managing director of AgroFair showed how his investments in fair trade projects in Latin America and Africa created professional enterprises.
Pascal Grévarath, chairman of the CIAA Environment Committee opened the second day at the summit with his theme ‘Sustainability from Farm to Fork’. He expressed the need for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of food products, setting the scene for the session on sustainable supply chains.
Sustainable initiatives at various levels of the food supply chain were then highlighted in the proceeding presentations by Earthoil Plantations, Alpro, Nature & More and TetraPak.
A paper on ethical consumerism by the Boston Consulting Group showed that awareness and perceived choice, not price, were the major barriers for consumers to buy more green products.
Volkert Engelsmann from EOSTA showed how organic food companies are meeting rising consumer expectations by becoming carbon neutral and implementing traceability schemes.
The marketing and industry issues session rounded off the two-day summit, starting with Innocent Drinks, which shared its sustainable initiatives that involve offsetting carbon emissions, ethical sourcing and reducing packaging.
Hans van Bochove revealed that Starbucks has become the world’s largest buyer of fair trade coffee and how it aims to double its fair trade coffee sales.
The final presentations looked at retailer sustainability initiatives, with Royal Ahold Group giving details of its recently launched private label for sustainable food products, Pure & Honest.
The summit brought together various stake-holders in the food industry; these included food and ingredient companies like Royal Wessanen, Café Direct, Unilever, Tradin Organics, ADM, Givaudan, Natudis; retailers like Metro, Sainsbury’s and Albert Heijn; and various NGOs and inter-governmental organisations.
The second Sustainable Foods Summit is scheduled for June 2010, in Amsterdam. For details, visit www.sustainablefoodssummit.com.
Stats and facts of organic food today
The global market for organic foods is around US$26 billion and slated to hit US$102 billion by 2020. Over a billion rupees has been earmarked by the Indian government for the promotion of sustainable agriculture. Two units have been created to establish a system of certification promote export; the NPOP (National Program for Organic Production and the APEDA (Agricultural and Processed Food Development Authority).
In times of recession it is all about targeting high-end users. 50% of organic food production in India is targeted towards exports. In many ways Indian produce comes back to India repackaged with a foreign label and twice the cost like speciality teas for example.
Organic production has been growing steadily in India with over 332 organic certifications being issued and an estimated 200,000 hectares of certified organic land being cultivated by smallholder producers.
The conversion from chemically treated to organic farming takes three years under current government policies. With most small farmers still going through the transition period, it will take a while for prices to drop and for organic produce to be affordable at a certain point of time.
Several studies by various organisations prove that organic farming effectively sustains different ecosystems, uses less energy and creates less waste. However the volumes produced are far less than those produced by conventional chemical farming.
On the nutrition front, organic food is known to contain 50% more nutrients, vitamins and minerals as against chemically grown food, of which one would have to eat twice as much to get the same amount of minerals.
One ingests a whole dose of chemicals, pesticides, antibiotics and hormones that animals are fed with. The best attribute of organic food is that with more nutrients one gets more energy and the body is better able to fight off diseases.
It takes one away from genetically modified food which is a cash cow for producers of mass food, where it has been proven, that animals that have been fed with GM foods are prone to diseases.
