No food, no water in lush Kerala

An article that appeared in Business Line which shows the side effects of the development model in the state of Kerala . Thanks G K Nair for the article 

Kerala, glorified as the land of rivers, backwaters and lakes in a narrow strip of land in the southern peninsula, is faced not only with acute shortage of potable water, but is also designated as a ‘Statutory Ration State’ with over 90 per cent need of food grain met by imports.

The reasons for this are indiscriminate and ever increasing human interventions in the rivers, wetlands, lakes and paddy fields. The State has 44 rivers and over 900 tributaries, seven lakes including the Ramser Site Vembanad lake, and yet the government has to reportedly think of ‘rationing of water’.

Indiscriminate sand mining from rivers and reclamation of flood plains, which function as natural reservoirs recharging the underground water table, are pointed out as the reason for this precarious situation. Encroachment of forests and their destruction, coupled with demolition of hills resulting in removal of green cover, have contributed to it.

At the same time, riparian vegetation, an integral environmental component of river ecosystems, is also under threat from unscientific sand mining. This results in the destruction of feeding and breeding grounds of fish, apart from reducing the self-cleaning capacity of river water. Besides, pollution due to domestic and urban sewage and run-off from agricultural fields has led to water quality deterioration, fish mortalities and toxicity in organisms.

Hills and hillocks

If the hills are called Thannir kudangal (water pots), the wetlands are Thannir thadangal (water reservoirs). These two systems are nature’s two important organs and work as unique ecosystems providing habitats for several rare plants and animals of ecological and economic importance.

Demolition of hills and reclamation of wetlands means destruction of our hydrological cycle that sustains life and greenery of the Earth, says D. Padmalal, of Centre for Earth Science Studies (CESS), Thiruvananthapuram.

Soil quarrying and levelling of hillocks is not only reducing the net area of the region, but also wasting the soil resource.

Laterite soil from hilltops is usually used to fill the paddy fields. Since the water retention capacity of that soil is poor, the converted fields become harder, which leads to the growth of more amphibious grass and other weeds.

Wetlands ravaged

Wetlands are wet or water covered areas with a water depth of 6m or less and located between land and water bodies having depth greater than 6m, according to scientists. Most of our backwater systems, lakes, rivers, paddy lands, etc., are examples of wetlands. Of the various wetlands in the country, the Vembanad lake, Ashtamudi lake and the Sasthamkotta lake in Kerala were recently declared as Ramsar sites of international importance.

Our paddy lands are wetlands used traditionally for raising paddy. They act as the feeding and breeding grounds for a variety of aquatic organisms. Besides, many don’t bother to understand that groundwater recharging occurs when water moves from the wetland down into the underground aquifer.

Reclamation of paddy fields under the cover of skewed developmental projects — such as airports at Aranmula in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district, Panamaram in Wayanad and Arankkara in Idukki districts and tourism projects in Kuttanad — is being carried out, depriving the people not only of drinking water but also of their staple food, rice.

Studies show that wetland and paddy-cultivated acreage in the State fell by 65 per cent in 30 years. If more than 30 per cent of the cultivated area in the State was under paddy in the middle of 1970s, it shrank to 12 per cent by 2000. The area under the crop has dropped to 213,185 ha in 2010-11 from 8.81 lakh ha was in 1974-75 while the total production fell to around five lakh tonnes from 13.34 lakh tonnes.

The estimated annual requirement, at present, is 40 lakh tonnes with a minimum per capita food availability of 320 g, according to official sources. “At a time when there is an overdependence for food grains/pulses on outside sources, paddy fields are sold out or are being reclaimed for non-agricultural purposes under the facade of 'development'”, Thomas Peeliyanickal, Executive Director, Kuttanad Vikasana Samithy, told Business Line.

Land grab

Even Kuttanad, the granary of Kerala is not spared, he said. The area under paddy in this region has shrunk to around 37,000 hectares from around 55,000 ha. The Kayals are allegedly being reclaimed rapaciously for converting into resorts, townships with golf courses.

The “Rani kayal” (lake) included in the Rs1,860-crore Kuttanad package created by M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation in order to bring it back to paddy cultivation, has gone into the hands of a major private group engaged in financial and tourism business. The “Metran Kayal” (lake) covering an area of 517 acres has allegedly been bought by a private company at Rs 15 lakh an acre. It was hitherto being used for cultivation of paddy.

Now this entire area is proposed to be reclaimed for developing into a major township, alleged farmers in Kuttanad. Add to this another 300 acres from the MN Block covering an area of 1,000 acres also said to have been sold. Negotiations are said to be under way for sale of nearby “Maran kayal” at Rs 9 lakh per acre while in the Marthandam kayal around 30 acres have already been left aside for reclamation, they alleged.

According to the Kerala State Land Use Board, a major land use change that has occurred in Kerala is the conversion and reclamation of paddy cultivated areas, both in the lowlands and uplands, to non-agricultural uses, jeopardising the food security of the State, when it is designated as a ‘Statutory Ration State’ with over 90 per cent need of foodgrain met by imports.

Thus, large scale reclamation of lakes in the granary of the state, under the guise of tourism development, is not only depriving Kerala of its paddy fields but also threatening the Vembanad wetland system already included in the National Wetland Conservation Programme. The shrinkage of Vembanad Lake to 37 per cent (13,224 ha) of its original area of 36,329 ha as a result of land reclamation is the most important environmental consequence of various human interventions, experts said. 

Creamy & Crunchy: Uncovering the Politics of Peanut Butter

Article that appeared in Knowledge@Wharton 

Most adults have experienced those moments in the grocery aisle or at the kitchen table when they realize that a once-cherished favorite snack from childhood just doesn't taste the way it used to.

Time and expanding palates can be blamed for some of this. But some foods taste different because they are different. An entire mini-category of books -- Dan Koeppel's Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World and Jennifer 8. Lee's The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, to name a couple -- has sprung up to chart the corporate machinations, cultural mores and political turmoil that in many cases have become the main influencers of what and how we eat. InCreamy & Crunchy, author Jon Krampner explores how the aforementioned factors and others have shaped one of the more ubiquitous treats from our childhood lunchboxes: peanut butter.

Krampner begins his history with the origins of both peanuts and peanut butter, pointing out that while the spread's use in the United States only dates back to the late 1800s, it's not an entirely original concoction. About 3,000 years ago, South American Indians were grinding peanuts into a "sticky paste" and mixing it with cocoa, and people living in West Africa have been eating ground peanuts for hundreds of years. Very few peanuts -- which are legumes having more in common with beans or peas than walnuts or almonds -- were grown in the United States at the time of the Civil War, Krampner writes, but that changed with the invention of better harvesting equipment.

Not all peanuts are created equal. There are four main types of peanuts grown in the United States -- runners, Virginias, Valencias and Spanish peanuts. In writing about the different varieties, Krampner explains one way that peanut butter today is not quite the same as it was in its early years -- or even as recently as 40 years ago: It used to be made primarily from Virginias and Spanish peanuts. But Krampner describes how runners -- which are easier to harvest and make for a more consistent taste across batches -- became the legume of choice as peanut butter moved from a product dominated by small, regional brands that customers bought from bulk bins at the general store to one typified by a few national brands and bought in plastic jars off supermarket shelves.

And then there is the matter of who invented peanut butter. The book notes that it's not entirely clear who the first person was to create a spread from ground and roasted peanuts. It might have been John Harvey Kellogg, one of the founders of the cereal empire. But it could have been George Bayle, the owner of a now defunct St. Louis snack food company. One person it most definitely wasn't, according to the author, was George Washington Carver, the African-American scientist who Krampner suggests became the inventor of legend because the white-owned mainstream media liked promoting a black man who was seen as deferential toward whites.

Krampner is exhaustive in his reporting of peanut butter's rise to pantry staple and the various skirmishes in the battle for dominance in the industry, with Peter Pan emerging as the number one brand, only to lose that title to Skippy, which subsequently relinquished it to today's top seller, Jif. For example, he goes so far as to track down George Bayle's great-granddaughter in an (ultimately unsuccessful) effort to learn more about his peanut butter--making exploits. And Krampner also interviewed a number of people who formerly worked in the plants and front offices of the "Big Three" brands.

Tough Nut to Crack

But one nut he was unable to crack was to actually get inside a plant owned by one of those companies or to talk to current executives from the corporations about where they see peanut butter going in the future. Rattled by bad press from salmonella outbreaks and other past reports of product contaminations, ConAgra (owner of Peter Pan), Unilever (which owned Skippy until its recent sale to Hormel) and J.M. Smucker (owner of Jif) all declined (or outright ignored) Krampner's efforts to include them in the book. While he dutifully documents all the unreturned phone calls and emails that went nowhere, it's a glaringly absent piece of the peanut butter puzzle.

To be sure, those peanut butter marketers and magnates might have had stories to tell as interesting as that of Frank Ford, the self-described conservative guy who created Deaf Smith, the precursor to the Arrowhead Mills brand that marked a rebirth in "natural" (i.e., the kind you have to stir) peanut butter and gained a following among the 1970s hippie community. Like its successor, Arrowhead Mills, Deaf Smith was one of the few peanut butters to be made with Valencia peanuts, which are smaller and sweeter, but harder to grow than the other varieties grown in the U.S. Then there's Herb Dow, the film editor whose efforts to create the first "gourmet" peanut butter (complete with a square jar) were felled by the dot-com crash of 2000. Krampner also interviews nonprofit groups and others working to use peanut butter to fight hunger in developing nations.

It's unfortunate that the author didn't try to incorporate more of these "peanut butter personalities," possibly by expanding passages that include interviews from some of the few independent and regional companies that still make it or by going into more detail about the international brands of peanut butter. (One interesting fact: Consumption in Canada is actually higher, per capita, than that of the United States.) Instead, the book is padded to 298 pages with recipes that are mostly curiosities and a throwaway chapter on music celebrating peanut butter. Spoiler alert: There isn't much, although Elvis was a famous fan.

But Creamy & Crunchy is buoyed by Krampner's obvious affection for his subject. Among the recipes included in the book is one of his own for a sandwich dubbed, "The Simon and Garfunkel," involving a whole wheat bagel, peanut butter, mozzarella cheese, mushrooms and garlic, among other ingredients. At the back of the book, he includes his personal rankings of the best brands from various categories (among them, creamy, crunchy, international brands and the best made from the various types of peanuts).

While Creamy & Crunchy won't answer every question about peanut butter, it will likely spark a desire to crack open a jar and start spreading.