Sumeet Kaur, founder of Spudnik Farms and tuber enthusiast, talks to Mukta Patil about these resilient root vegetables, how the Kunbi community preserve and worship them, and making mudali bharta at home.
The story of how Sumeet Kaur started working with tubers is intertwined with her experiences as a farmer. Upon quitting her role as a legal consultant in 2013, she began farming on a small piece of land on the outskirts of Bengaluru, near the Kolar Gold Fields. By her own admission, as a “city-bred” person, she journeyed through various forms of agriculture—including organic cultivation, hydroponics, and even trying her hand at growing mushrooms—until she settled into natural farming.
The agricultural practice entails the use of naturally and locally available resources to address concerns like soil health, nutrient deficiencies, and pest control, working with crops that are suited to the local agro-climate. Sumeet started understanding the need to grow indigenous, seasonal produce, and partner with farmers that cultivated them, in order to provide urban consumers with such produce. This led her to establish Spudnik Farms in 2019, a network of community-supported agriculture farms that offer a subscription service in Bengaluru.
Spudnik Farms partners with the members of the Kunbi community in the taluka of Joida, Karnataka. The Kunbis are custodians of an astonishing variety of tubers, ranging from the small air and Chinese potatoes that fit in one’s palm, to the giant round elephant foot yam, and the several-feet-long Kunbi mudali. In trying to bring some of this diversity to urban areas, Sumeet remains inspired by the annual tuber melas that have been taking place in Joida for a decade.
The community has preserved tuber diversity in the region for centuries together, and the crop remains a marker of identity and vital source of nutrition for the Kunbis.
Read an excerpt from our interview with Sumeet here:
Why did Spudnik Farms decide to work with tubers?
We realised that if we wanted to meet the customers’ demands, we needed to partner with farmers and work with more indigenous produce. Around this time, I was introduced to Joida, a town in the Western Ghats that is home to the forest-dwelling Kunbi community that has been growing indigenous tubers for centuries. On an exploratory visit, I was astounded and humbled by this diversity that existed, literally in our backyard, that I knew nothing about.
These are very important, climate-resilient crops—in the sense that they can grow under a varied climatic spectrum. Yams are a staple in Africa, where temperatures can go up to 50 degrees Celsius. It’s also one of the only crops that survives in places like the Philippines, which are very prone to floods and typhoons. For example, taro is a crop that consistently manages to provide yields even if there is flooding. Most indigenous communities throughout the Global South have been relying on tuber crops for their sustenance; it’s part of their cultural heritage as well as their food and dietary habits, whether its tribes from South America, Asia, or Africa.
People think that because they contain starch, they make you fat, not realising that they have a lot of resistant starch, which is good.
When all of this came together, three things became very obvious. First, that these were important crops. Second, the kind of farmers we want to work with—smallholder farmers, often marginalised—are the ones growing these crops. And third, because the people who grow these crops are marginalised, the crops aren’t part of the mainstream.
There are a lot of misconceptions and unfortunate taboos associated with tubers. People think that because they contain starch, they make you fat, not realising that they have a lot of resistant starch, which is good. They think that these are foods eaten only by the poor, or those from scheduled castes and tribes.
What makes Joida such a hotspot for tuber diversity?
Joida is one of the largest talukas in Karnataka, almost as large as Goa. Before I went to Joida, my idea of tuber crops was very limited—potato, sweet potato, elephant foot yam. I didn’t even know that there can be more than 15 to 20 different cultivars available in the colocasia family, all various shapes and sizes.
But the Kunbi people have preserved over 40 varieties of tubers here, and are very attached to them. They have preserved the genome of the mudali for centuries together. While the Kunbi mudali is prized, there’s also suvarnagedde (giant elephant foot yam), kaate kanaga (lesser yam), jhaad kanaga (dasheen taro), dhave kon (white yam), and kasaralu (from the elephant ear family).
The community is dispersed along the western coast, right from Gujarat to Kerala. Culturally, in Joida, the community is very similar to the local populations of Goa, having moved into the forests of the Western Ghats after the Portuguese conquered Goa around the 16th Century. The tubers were a means of sustaining themselves.
Since the Kunbi community is a forest-dwelling one, what do its farming practices look like?
If you were to imagine it, think of a place that is 95 percent forest, and in the middle of the forest are small clearings of land—this is where the villages or hamlets are located. These can range from maybe 40 to 50 houses to places with just one or two houses. They also grow paddy—imagine paddy fields in the middle of the forest, and these tubers, typically grown by the women, in the backyards of the houses. Every house has a small backyard where vegetables and tubers are grown, because wild boars are a big threat to tubers—they love them.
Cultivating paddy is a combined effort by the family, but tubers have always been grown by the women. The kind of attachment that they have to tubers is really incredible; tending to with the same love they show their children.
What are some of the rituals and customs of the Kunbi people associated with tubers in Joida?
The Kunbis worship tubers; this deep association with the crop formed from the time they were driven into the forests. At many cultural events, instead of a lamp-lighting ceremony, tubers are typically worshiped.
The harvest of the tubers in Joida typically starts after Deepavali. Everybody harvests a little bit from their backyard, brings it to a common ancestral mud house, and has a potluck [of sorts]. It’s a way for the community to come together, where everyone learns what kind of tubers have been grown by each household.
At many cultural events, instead of a lamp-lighting ceremony, tubers are typically worshiped.
Even today, tubers are a mainstay. In early June, when it rains very heavily, they eat the leaves and shoots of the tuber crops. So right from the growing stage to the harvesting, every part of the tuber is consumed. During the Gowri-Ganesh festival, the goddess Gowri is worshiped in the form of the colocasia leaf—tender colocasia leaves packed with herbs and unripe grains from young paddy plants represent Gowri. Around Dasra, people observe fasts, so certain types of tubers can be consumed then, like the air potato.
Tubers aren’t saved the way that seeds are saved, and they’re not planted the way seeds are planted. Could you tell us about how the community does it?
Tubers undergo vegetative propagation. In the case of potatoes, you wait for tiny sprouts to come up on the skin, then cut each of those tiny bits and plant them in the soil as your new potato plant.
The Kunbis always save a portion of their harvest from each year as planting material for the next year. Traditionally, they are stored by digging a small hole or a cave in the side of the hill, and layering it with cow dung slurry. They then cover the tubers with wood ash, place them in the hole, and seal and cover it using mud or wood. When you put ash on the crop, the degradation process slows down.
As the weather becomes warmer (around April in Joida), the tubers are taken out. Under ideal humid conditions, they sprout. Each tuber is then cut into pieces with individual sprouts. The Mudali, for example, yields around 25 to 30 pieces of sprouting material.
Big trenches are then dug and layered with leaf litter, cow manure, and some dry leaves. The sprouted pieces of tubers are put into the trench and covered with soil. So rows and rows of tubers are typically ready for harvest after five to six months; the indication for when they are ready is that the leaves start drying up.
You don’t sell minor forest produce, though you have access to the forest, and there is a growing demand for some of these foods. Why?
We feel that the forest and forest-dwelling communities have the first right to the produce. Better purchasing power does not give urban consumers the right to minor forest produce. There is a need to strike a balance between creating livelihood opportunities for local communities and over-harvesting and exploitation. It’s not good for the ecosystem of the jungle; this is also happening with wild mushrooms in places, even with bamboo shoot.
There are so many different types of berries available in these jungles, but it’s the animals who rely on these berries. So we are very clear that we should not attempt to commercialise minor forest produce.
We look at what is cultivated—then I can multiply it. Even with tubers, there are a lot of wild cultivars available in the forest, but we don’t harvest any of those. We only work with varieties that are grown in the locals’ backyards for their consumption.
Similarly, a variety of lime known as rasna limbo grows here locally. It is similar to the calamansi lime. I’ve still not been able to figure out what its scientific classification is, or if it even exists. We are trying to see if people will grow these trees in their villages, instead of procuring them from the forest.
What kind of minor forest produce is part of the cooking and diet of the Kunbis’?
Monkey jackfruit is one—it is a souring agent used to make curries. The Kunbis also use all kinds of greens, such as wild coriander. Different citrus varieties are available in the forest—apart from the rasna limbo and local berries—and are all part of their diet. There’s bamboo shoot and wild mushrooms too. I think there are about 10 different varieties of mushrooms that we’ve documented around the area.
How did you first experience cooked tubers in Joida? What are some ways that you like to cook them in your home now?
The first dish I tried was rava fry, made from mudali. It was at Yogesh Derekar’s home, who is known as the mudali rava fry ‘specialist’. Belonging to the taro or colocasia family, mudali is a long cylindrical tuber, the size of your arm or forearm. You peel them, slice them up, and cook them just as you would fry fish. That’s the way it’s locally consumed—coated with either rava or rice flour and then fried. Another dish I love to eat, which I [now] make at home, is a mudali bharta. You almost barbecue the entire mudali on coals, without peeling the skin. You take off the skin later, mash the mudali, add green chillies, some coconut, grated ginger and monkey jackfruit to it, and mix it all up.
Belonging to the taro or colocasia family, mudali is a long cylindrical tuber, the size of your arm or forearm. You peel them, slice them up, and cook them just as you would fry fish.
Find Yogesh Derekar’s recipe for Mudali Rava Fry here.
The Rooting for Tubers Festival, which Spudnik Farms has organised since 2023, tries to bridge the gap between growing and eating tubers, and connecting the communities that grow them with urban consumers. You have held residencies with chefs in Joida, and had events displaying tuber diversity as well as meals cooked with a variety of tubers in Bengaluru. How has the experience been?
You know, we had to figure out, if we want to work with this crop and these communities, how do we popularise tubers? How do we address misconceptions around them and bring about consumer awareness? And if we want to bring them into the mainstream, how do we present these crops in a format which is suited to the urban audience?
If you’re trying to bring a new kind of crop into the market—one that people are not very aware of—then you have to create a space for the audience to become familiar with it. So we began by creating the chef residency. If they are comfortable cooking with and presenting tuber dishes on their menus, then people will slowly show interest. We took chefs from Bengaluru for an immersive experience where they interacted with the community in Joida, had cooking classes, and learned how these crops are associated with our cultural heritage. It concluded with a meal that was a collaboration between local home cooks and the chefs.
We had Mudali rava fry. We had a stir-fry with Chinese potatoes. We had some 20 dishes made with taro and different crops, and we used them in different forms. We even made some pie! A few weeks later, we hosted a lunch at The Courtyard [in Bengaluru] for over a hundred people, where we invited the same home cooks who worked with us in Joida, and got them to work in the kitchens of the chefs who we had taken with us. It was an exchange of knowledge, and the cooks from Joida could see that people cared about these crops outside of their geography. When they came to Bengaluru and saw how happy people were with the meal, they were really thrilled.
In the second year, it became more of a festival, with the residency, special tuber menus, panel discussions, and tuber stalls and displays from communities from Odisha, Goa, Meghalaya, Tripura, Kerala, and Karnataka.
Sign up to attend the 2024 edition of the Rooting for Tubers Festival, which showcases the rich traditions, stories, and uses behind these remarkable crops.
Mukta Patil heads The Locavore’s Editorial Lab at the Millet Revival Project. She works on stories that spotlight the intricacies of our food systems, and how they interact with the climate emergency, the environment, and people.
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