Multiple organics

Mumbai-based diamond merchant Girish Shah would agree. His family of five went organic seven years ago. ‘‘We don’t eat fruits because none are 100 per cent organic. Sometimes a friend sends some from his farm. In the last three years I’ve not seen a doctor. Chemicals are not good for you, even my children know that,’’ he declares. The Shah household gets its vegetables from a friend’s farm at Umergaon and Surat and grains are supplied from a tiny store at Opera House.

Elsewhere in downtown Mumbai, organic cereal and cotton fabric may not be flying off the shelves as yet, but the word is spreading slowly. At Dadar, Nishtha’s modest opening last year is still catching up with city taste. The store sells strictly organic wheat, rice, jowar, jaggery and cereals grown in the hinterlands of Maharashtra. Its estimated regulars: 50-60 clients.

Little To Cheer About: Eat healthy, eat organic is a chorus many have joined but even the cheerleaders know little of how to get hold of their foods. Neither do organic farmers have any idea where to take their produce. ‘‘Growers don’t know where to market their produce. Whatever I sell is basically from word of mouth,’’ says Ajit Grewal, a former Citibank executive, who owns a 40-acre farm in Rajasthan and who went completely organic in 1992. Grewal sells his produce to friends and acquaintances. For instance, salad leaves from his farm are served in the Delhi-based Italian cafe Diva. ‘‘The concept of marketing has to be helmed in. As more and more are turning vegetarian, it is also crucial that the quality improves,’’ says Grewal, whose produce has been certified organic.

Currently, there are only a few certification companies, mainly international, who certify farms after checking their records for the past one year and verifying their sources. Organic basically refers to food produced with natural nutrients like decomposed leaves, twigs and cowdung. It is grown entirely without fertilisers and chemicals. But purists say what often masquerades as organic is not the real stuff. ‘‘Very often cows are injected hormones to increase the amount of milk they give. If you choose this cow’s dung as manure for your produce, you cannot claim it is organic,’’ says Grewal. Which is why the Navdanya Cafe does not claim to be 100 percent organic. ‘‘We try and be as organic as we can. But our vegetables except potatoes are not organic,’’ says Nivedita Varshneya, a consultant with Navdanya. ‘‘Even in the West, if 35 per cent of their menu is organic, the cafes are called organic,’’ she adds.

In fact, organic vegetables and fruits are the most difficult to come by. This despite the fact the Government has recently announced its decision to set up separate mandis for organic food. It has also announced the opening of three new organic mandis in Delhi which will be connected online.

Meanwhile, in the absence of a marketing system, stores which are willing to stock organic produce are also reluctant to do so since they are not assured of a steady supply. Says Kisan Mehta, President, Prakruti, the NGO which pioneered the organic farming movement in Maharashtra: ‘‘This is an age of fast food and instant food. Supply of organic produce is very limited, production costs are high and there is no local network to market at the regional level. So, stores have no assurance of a regular supply.’’

Silent Revolution: In Europe, organic farms date back to 1920 but the movement took root in the Continent, North America and Australia mainly after Rachel Carson’s bestselling expose Silent Spring which was serialised in 102, in The New Yorker. Along the way it has transformed itself from a movement led by a few individuals to becoming a part of mainstream food industry and organic foods are found in all American and European supermarkets shelves. In India, going organic may be a trend which is catching on slowly but it is yet to capture the domestic market’s imagination with large scale organic growers still preferring to export their products.

Says C Jayakaran, owner of Kurinji Farms near Kodaikanal, ‘‘We are at the same stage as Europe in the 60s. However, people here have no idea about merchandising.’’ Jayakaran is trying to convince Foodworld in Bangalore to maintain a separate organic counter and hopes to supply organic fruits to the store. Though Jayakaran acknowledges the role played by NGOs in the movement, he points to the need of private enterprise. ‘‘NGOs may play a role in building awareness but they are not interested in commercialisation. The latter obviously plays a bigger role,’’ he says.

In Chennai, the Auroville Store is probably the only outlet with everything from organic coffee to honey and cereals, which is why their customers, expatriates in particular, make it a point to gather on time on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays when the produce is brought down from Auro Annam in Pondicherry. Says Josie Newman from Melbourne, who has been living in the city with her husband for the last five years, ‘‘It’s been very difficult to source organic food in Chennai. I get my rice at Rs 35 a kg from Auroville, but I wish there were were other outlets too. I used to be particular about free-range chicken and eggs back home, but that’s not possible here.’’

Size Does Matter: If plantation products, millets and fruits like pineapple are cultivated organically, and aggressively in states like Karnataka, and exported to countries like Germany and Japan, why is there no domestic retail wing on a smaller scale here? ‘‘There is a niche market, but it is for fresh farm produce,’’ says Sriram Chellappa from Ion Exchange, Pune. ‘‘We tried working out deals with retail giants like Mother Diary and Foodworld in the north, but the volume was too small for us to bother. We need to sell at least a couple of tonnes per day for feasibility. As for the south, the awareness is about 40 per cent of those in Mumbai and Delhi.’’

In the organic sweepstakes, it is the small town of Mysore which has emerged the biggest cultivator. The Green Hotel periodically has the Green Bazaar which is popular among yogis and foreigners alike. In Bangalore, the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation helped over 200 farmers in Kolli Hills in Salem (Tamil Nadu) get their organic pineapples internationally certified. They later linked them to corporate bodies like Ion Exchange Enviro Farms, who now export the processed pineapples to European countries. Perhaps in time the model can be replicated in the domestic market too.

And, hopefully, as in the words of Som Pal, Member, Planning Commission, the government will play a crucial role in marketing organic produce. ‘‘There should be a clear cut mandate to agricultural research bodies that they should evolve models of organic production,’’ he says.

But until then, organic appears to be a healthy option for only a chosen few.

(With Reshma Patil in Mumbai and Rosella Stephen in Chennai)