Notes from the field:
Food markets at the forest margins in Keonjhar, Odisha
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In December 2024, a couple of us from the Indian Food Systems for Improved Nutrition (INFUSION) project spent a few days in Keonjhar (or Kendujhar) District in Odisha. We were there to do a bit of scoping for research that we are planning on food markets and neglected nutritious foods in Adivasi (‘tribal’) communities living in and around forested areas.
About a third of Keonjhar District is forested, and 45% of the population is Adivasi. Adivasi communities face numerous challenges relating to livelihoods, nutrition and vulnerability to climate change.
These communities are custodians of biodiversity embedded in a range of traditional varieties of cereals, vegetables, tubers, flowers, fruits that they have historically produced or collected and consumed. Many of these traditional foods are under threat as the food system relentlessly homogenizes, and climate change and natural resource depletion pose ever greater challenges. Therefore, under its ‘Forgotten Foods’ programme, the Government of Odisha has been recording and profiling some of these traditional foods and examining ways to revive them by bringing them into the mainstream of the food system.
Given INFUSION’s focus on policy-oriented research on food markets and nutrient-dense foods, we have been thinking about ways in which we can contribute to this objective. So we spent some time wandering around the Harichandanpur area of Keonjhar District that is marked by abundant forest cover and dotted by waterfalls. We visited many little food markets and asked numerous, doubtless naïve-sounding questions of the ever-patient traders and customers.
Sophisticated darts game at the market.
We found the food markets in Keonjhar to be different in some ways from the types of markets we have been working in intensively in Bihar over the last couple of years. For starters, they are less densely packed with people, and as such the sensory intensity is lower!
The markets were also more evidently a centre for community interactions and entertainment. At one market, we took part in a complex darts game where you could win a prize depending on the combination of throws you landed on a board crammed with numbers. Needless to say, we didn’t win anything – I’m not even sure we understood the game! In another place, the market was combined with a small fair, with music and dance and locals decked out in bright traditional clothes.
Insects for sale
In these markets, we came across several examples of local food products being sold on a very small scale by Adivasis from their production or collection. This included many indigenous tubers, leaves, vegetables, mushrooms, fruits and edible flowers, as well as oils such as safflower (Kusum) oil. Occasionally we came across small piles of partially ground-up local insects available for sale.
This raised many important questions in our minds. Firstly, what is the extent to which these less mainstream nutrient-dense foods appear in the markets? Which are hyper local, which have a larger geographical spread and traded quantities, and how do they come in and go out of the markets as the seasons change? We hope to shed light on this by carrying out a version of the innovative high-frequency market-level data collection we have been undertaking in Bihar across a network of markets in Keonjhar.
Then, are there foods that have the potential to become more mainstream ‘opportunity’ foods traded further in local as well as surrounding regions? How can demand be built and boosted, production be scaled up and value chains be strengthened to enable this? What are the trade-offs and how can we ensure market orientation happens without eroding the natural resource base or compromising other dimensions of wellbeing of the Adivasi communities? What policy levers can best support this?
Homemade oil pressed from Safflower (Kusum)
Several groups around the world are thinking about the promise of neglected, underutlilised and indigenous foods. It is easy to get carried away by warm thoughts in this space. As an economist, my inner scepticism is never far from the surface! Yet, in Keonjhar, the potential to improve the welfare of highly disadvantaged communities is a great motivator. We are hoping to undertake research that can help gauge where potential lies and how it can be realised.
Bhavani Shankar, February 2025
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