Food extinction: Anything indigenous is what we should welcome

Food and forever are like poles. It’s not just animals dying out there but also crops. Climate change and global warming are creating an immensely negative effect on the food supply. “One of the major reasons for food extinction is because, we have not focused on eating locally and supporting local produce. There is always that phenomenon where we are enamoured by the West; simple example is the turmeric latte. When we were young, our grandmothers used to give us manjal podi pal, when we catch a cold. Now that it has come back from the US as turmeric latte, we tend to take that very seriously,” says Rakesh Raghunathan, food historian and raconteur.

Keeping global warming and seasonal changes aside, “Revive things that are long lost and forgotten; indigenous grains, indigenous rice varieties, going back to times where things were grown only during particular months. For example, mangoes. Earlier we used to get mangoes during summer, but now raw mangoes are available throughout the year, its hybridisation,” he adds.

“In terms of the green revolution that happened, the whole hybrid crops, the rice and wheat varieties that we got, and all other vegetables and fruits that we have because of hybridisation is one of the reasons that could contribute to food extinction because at the end of the day, the main native seeds or the indigenous variety is lost in all of this,” Rakesh signs off.