Located just outside Ainghar, a quaint village in Maharashtra’s Raigad district in the Konkan region, Maaticha is a farm owned by the Kazi family that grows local, seasonal produce. ‘Maaticha’—which translates into ‘of the soil’ in Marathi—incorporates traditional farming methods that have been passed down over generations to cultivate mango, coconut, chikoo, black pepper, turmeric, and other native crops. This produce is then sold fresh and is also used to prepare small-batch products like mango powder, fruit preserves, nut butters, and chutneys.
While Maaticha’s journey as a brand officially began in 2020, the farm has belonged to the Kazi family since the 1980s. When the mango orchard was being contracted out from 1980–2012, the family continued to grow other fruits including chikoo and papaya. They adopted permaculture practices like composting, incorporating ingredients such as eggshells and fishbones as natural fertilisers, and intercropping, along with sustainable beekeeping.
Today, the Kazi family continues to work together on the farm, with each member carrying out a specific role—be it farming or logistics and operations—to harvest the best of produce. For instance, Zeeba Kazi, who we spoke to, oversees marketing and communication. Her aunt and uncle, Namra and Tabish, who are both certified in beekeeping from the Central Bee Research and Training Institute in Pune, are responsible for harvesting honey.
Maaticha actively collaborates with local farmers and tribal communities like the Thakars and Katkaris. Zeeba and her family are extremely mindful of their relationships with the immediate community. For instance, they’ve been working with Shiva Dada—who belongs to the Thakar community and oversees coconut and mango harvesting at the farm, along with harvesting honey from the surrounding forests—for over 17 years. Maaticha further supports local communities by sourcing naturally grown turmeric from Gajanand Bachat Gat, a women’s self-help group in the neighbouring village of Rabgaon.
In order to develop a close-knit relationship with their urban consumers, much like they have with the local community, Maaticha continues to regularly organise and partake in pop-ups, including farmers’ markets, across Mumbai.
The Locavore Bite
TL Bite offers a glimpse into how a partner producer runs their operations, and reflects their core principles and values. The idea is to provide insights into their practices and highlight their positive efforts descriptively. We have identified seven key areas of assessment – origin and source of ingredients, composition and integrity of the products, workforce policies, production practices, community-related initiatives, approach towards preserving or celebrating traditional knowledge and the materials used in packaging. While this assessment may not be entirely comprehensive, we hope it helps you make an informed decision about why you might want to support them, and the ways in which to do so.
The information below offers you a snapshot of where Maaticha stands on these parameters. We have put this together based on several rounds of conversations with Zeeba Kazi. Click on a piece of the pie below to find out more.
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Why We Love Maaticha
- Sustainable beekeeping: Maaticha works closely with local foragers to harvest honey sustainably and relies on their expertise for sourcing honey from wild rock bee hives in Raigad and Apis mellifera hives in Talegaon. The family is mindful of only harvesting areas in the hive with the honey, and retaining the remaining larvae.
- Relationship with the local community: Maaticha started buying moringa leaves, that are typically pruned and fed to cattle, from neighbouring villages to make moringa powder. This created an alternative source of livelihood for the community. They regularly engage with communities during Lavni and Jhodni (rice transplanting and harvesting), and celebrating festivals like Diwali and Holi. They also support the community by offering access to their well when there’s a shortage in the water supply.
- Natural and sustainable farming methods: Maaticha avoids burning their fields, which is otherwise practised to kill critters and worms in the soil. Instead, they use ash generated from their wooden boiler that heats up the water at the farm. This ash is enriched with potassium, phosphorus, and magnesium (or NPK), thereby eliminating the need for additional external elements to the soil. They compost using natural materials like mud, coconut husk, and cow dung.
- Minimising waste: To ensure sustainability by optimising available resources, all the waste generated at the farm is segregated and composted. For instance, they create their own cocopeat, a biodegradable material used for mulching, by composting coconut husk during the monsoon. Even the wood from fallen mango trees is repurposed to make a dining table that sits at the farm.
Having focussed so much on seasonality, what are some things you have learnt that you wish more people understood?
Eating in accordance with the seasons is not just about sustainability—it’s about experiencing food at its absolute best. Fruits and vegetables have the best flavour, nutritional value, and freshness during their respective peak seasons. While everyone eagerly awaits the arrival of mangoes, I also cherish the jackfruit and pineapples that appear just before. There is joy in picking karwanda in summer, the local cucumbers in monsoon, and the winter harvest of vaal, kanak, and sweet potatoes. Understanding seasonality reconnects us with our food and our land, amplifying the joy of eating what is naturally meant to be eaten at that time.
— Zeeba Kazi, Co-founder of Maaticha
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If you would like to learn more about Maaticha, or try their products, check out their website. If you’re interested in supporting them in other ways, please contact us at connect@thelocavore.in.
At The Locavore, we’re always happy to see people like Zeeba Kazi, who is part of The Locavore team, do good through food. We’ve tried to remain unbiased in this process, striving to keep the practices of a producer transparent and honest across all forms of partnerships.
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