Reimagining Marginalized Foods: Global Processes, Local Places

6. Redefining and Re-presenting Minor Millets in South India

109 chapter six Redefining and Re-presenting Minor Millets in South India Elizabeth Finnis When agricultural priorities and technologies change, historically important crops can become marginalized in the foodscape. Such processes can contribute to a loss of agricultural biodiversity as well as changes to local dietary and culinary practices. After India embraced Green Revolution crops and technologies, beginning in the mid-1960s, the total area of land devoted to coarse grains, including minor millets, began to decrease (Suryanarayana 1997). This trend, later coupled with an increased focus on specialized cash crops, meant that by 2000, only 15.76 percent of the total cultivated area in India supported coarse grains; this is compared to 29.45 percent of the total cultivated area in the 1960s (MSSRF 2004a:29). However, the precise local-level reasons for decreases in minor millet cultivation , along with the outcomes of these decreases, differ from place to place, as do strategies for encouraging the cultivation of millets today. In this chapter, I examine two minor millet varieties, analyzing the ways that samai (Panicum sumatrense) and thenai (Setaria italica) millets are being reimagined and repackaged for urban consumers. I demonstrate how refocusing attention onto different relevant features can change the social meanings, or regimes of value (Appadurai 1986), ascribed to these food crops. This allows for a consideration of the contested meanings surrounding the criteria that are used to determine the exchangeability (Lind and Barham 2004:48) of millets. The move to reimagine and then market millets to an urban consumer base reflects emerging and ongoing concerns about Indian agricultural biodiversity, and plays on themes of cultural heritage, authenticity, and health. How does this attempt to present 110 · Elizabeth Finnis millets as desirable grains intersect with the perspectives of the farmers who have traditionally grown and relied upon these grains as dietary staples ? By merging a discussion of a millet cookbook and millet packaging with ethnographic research among Kolli Hills Malaiyali communities, I reveal symbolic tensions and intersections between millet promotional strategies and the perceptions of Malaiyali farmers. Food can be a site of contestation regarding historical and contemporary processes of the globalization of agricultural and culinary practices and the creation of national and local identities (Bordi 2006; Leitch 2003; Lind and Barham 2004; McDonald and Topik 2008; Meneley 2004; Grasseni , this volume; Stanford, this volume). In undertaking an analysis of local-level perceptions of specific crops, notions of agricultural and culinary resilience can also be examined. Resilience can be defined in a number of ways, ranging from notions of ecosystem diversity and integrity to the preservation of cultural practices in quickly changing circumstances. In the final part of this chapter, I consider resilience and food in terms of a global pool of agricultural biodiversity and culinary diversity, and also from local perspectives . A simultaneous consideration of these two levels can demonstrate similarities, tensions, and disjunctures between projects to promote certain foods as authentic, and the experiences and perspectives of the people who have traditionally cultivated and consumed those foods. The Kolli Hills: Shifting Agricultural and Economic Practices The ethnographic data in this chapter emerge from work with Malaiyali communities in the Kolli Hills, Tamil Nadu, India. Since 2003, I have worked in three adjacent villages, tracking changes in agricultural and dietary practices and patterns.1 The Kolli Hills cover approximately 282 square kilometers, and support a population of about 37,000, primarily Malaiyali farmers. Although the Kolli Hills are not precisely isolated, their height, rising between 1,000 and 1,400 meters above sea level, coupled with limited road access means that inhabitants can face obstacles when traveling within the hills and to lowland communities. The hills can be considered geographically marginal, particularly areas farther from the hill administrative center. The inhabitants, as a scheduled tribe, are in some ways culturally marginal, at risk of being stigmatized and overlooked politically .2 In addition, the inhabitants of the Kolli Hills are generally considered economically marginal due to limited available livelihood options. Redefining Minor Millets in South India · 111 Most Malaiyali are primarily small-scale farmers. In the last twenty to thirty years, as roads into and throughout the hills have been improved and extended, there has been an accompanying shift from subsistence to commercial agriculture, raising concerns about food security, agricultural and natural biodiversity, and changes to local cultural practices (Arunachalam, Rengalakshmi, and Kubera Raj 2005; Bohle 1992; Kumaran et al. 1998; Kumar...