India's Organic Farming Revolution: What It Means for Our Global Food System

Foreword: From India to My Plate

Foreword From India to My Plate When the British government announced in 2000 that it would cut 60 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to mitigate climate change,nooneexpectedthatthisplanwouldconflictwithsustainabledevelopment and poverty alleviation in countries like India. Unfortunately, developmentagencies,nonprofitorganizations,andreligiousgroupssoon found themselves working at cross purposes with each other. The problem was “food miles.” Asconsumers,activists,andpolicymakersbegantorealizethatthedis-­ tance that food travels to reach us could increase its “carbon footprint” —the amount of energy required to bring food from seed to plate— importing fresh produce and dry goods from afar seemed increasingly like a bad idea. Several organizations therefore advocated that British consumers only buy local food. The logic went like this: if everyone were to lower their food miles by consuming smaller amounts of imported goods and greater amounts of local produce instead, less air, ship, and rail transportation would be needed to bring imported foods into Britain . The consumption of fewer fossil fuels and less energy in shipping would lead to a smaller amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere, and climate change’s disastrous effects could potentially be forestalled. Organizations dedicated to development, on the other hand, found themselves conflicted about this announcement from the British government . Oxfam, for example, had been promoting organic and Fair Trade farming in the developing world as a sustainable development strategy for years.1 It hoped that connecting poor, organic farmers in places like Africa and India to premium export markets (typically in countries that formerly colonized them) would augment farmers’ incomes and improve xii Foreword their livelihoods. But Oxfam was also committed to mitigating climate change and supported the goals set by the British government. Meanwhile, British consumers concerned about these issues were becoming confused about which products they could ethically buy from grocery stores. For example, when given the choice between local British apples or Fair Trade apples from South Africa (produced with minimal chemical inputs), what were they supposed to select? This is precisely a choice I encountered at a store in Oxford, England, in 2005. At the time, I was not sure which to purchase. I hemmed and hawed, oscillating between the selections, and then eventually bought both, using my research as justification. Between 2005 and 2006, I studied the trade-­ offs between Fair Trade and local foods while earning a master’s degree from Oxford University. To gauge consumer attitudes, I interviewed 460 shoppers at retail food outlets in England. I discovered that many people grappled with similar concerns about their food. Said one customer to me, when given the choice between an organic apple from abroad and a local apple produced conventionally: “I personally never, ever buy a foreign apple. They taste disgusting. They are revolting . If you can get them banned, I’d be for it. They are disgusting.” Another consumer expressed less scorn and more anxiety: “[I] tend to buy local . . . food rather than imported, although I then worry that by notbuyingandsupporting[developing]economies,IcondemntheThird World to continuing poverty.” And yet another shopper told me, “I am often unsure whether to buy organic.” Through these interviews I unearthed a diversity of feelings— mixtures of doubt, disdain, and even paternalism toward countries like India that export food to the United States and Europe. While I found that several consumers focused on questions of taste and provenance, whereas others emphasized farmers’ livelihoods, I also found that most people were uncertain about how to make sense of competing arguments while shopping. Further, I began noticing that these consumer opinions echoed growing debates about the place of organic agriculture in our global, industrial food system. Foreword xiii Soon after I conducted these interviews, Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006) hit bookstores. Exasperatedly, he described difficulties —much like those I had encountered—in determining the merits of various ethical products in a Whole Foods grocery store in California. The answer to “what to eat for dinner,” he concluded, was not simple. This book is actually not about consumers, but organic producers. Asking myself “what to eat for dinner” prompted me not just to think about what I was buying but to study farming practices hundreds of miles away from Oxford, England, as well as from my home in the United States. I wanted to explore how the food I bought was produced, to find an answer to the dilemma I had identified in 2005: Is there an inherent conflict between sustainable agriculture and a globalized world? My interest in this question wasn’t purely...