LOCAL FOOD CLUB STORIES
JANUARY 2025
We’re used to encountering food at the end of its journey—plated, priced, and ready to consume. What often disappears along the way are conversations about the people who grow, harvest, and prepare the food, and the conditions they work in. This reading list is a step toward bringing those realities back into view.
Part of the Local Food Club’s January-March 2026 theme on Supporting Your Food Producers, this collection draws from The Locavore’s reporting on food producers and production.The stories look closely at how food is shaped by labour, seasonality, climate, risk, and constraint—tracing what happens when rains arrive out of season, yields fluctuate, logistics fail, and producers adapt in ways that rarely make it to brand narratives or menus.
You can also find our ongoing work with Producers and Organisations whose ideas, labour, and politics shape the food systems we believe in, here.
The list is a curated repository from The Locavore’s archive, along with crowd-sourced reading suggestions from the LFC community.
The Locavore’s Best On Producers and Production
Bringing Bengal’s Cherished Winter Jaggery to the World By Throvnica Chandrasekar
It’s in the peak of winter that the sap of the date palm trees is sweetest. Sharing their own memories of eating nolen gur in winter, the co-founders of Earth Story Farms talk to Throvnica Chandrasekar about making date palm jaggery, and its skilled makers.
How Food Producers in the Mountains Navigate Unseasonal Rains By Yashvi Shah
From harvesting honey to growing indigenous vegetables, unpredictable rainfall severely impacts the food we eat. In the face of such varying weather patterns, farmers and producers, including The Locavore’s partners, often have to contend with challenges such as landslides, logistical hurdles, and even changes in local diets.
Where is Seaweed in India’s Culinary Canon? By Ranjana Sundaresan
Seaweed is gaining attention as a nutritious and climate-smart food. And yet, there’s very little that we know about local seaweed, and how it is consumed in India. In this piece, Ranjana Sundaresan attempts to uncover this mystery.
When Faced With Water Scarcity, Local Millets and Beans are Hardier Than Peas by Yashvi Shah
Farmers working with Kilmora, a social enterprise in Uttarakhand, tell Yashvi Shah how their harvest has halved over the last five decades, especially as sources of water dry up.
Picking and Eating Mahua Flowers in Jharkhand By Yashvi Shah
What happens when an indigenous ingredient earns a largely notorious reputation due to archaic excise policies? How does one reintroduce it to modern diets, while preserving indigenous knowledge? We gather perspectives from four people who pick, eat, and consume Mahua.
GI-Tags for Food and Drinks: A Complex Web of Determining Origins and Authenticity in India By Ranjana Sundaresan
Kai Chutney from Odisha is one of the latest food items to receive the Geographical Indications (GI) tag in India. As GI-tagged foods appear in news headlines and on supermarket shelves, Ranjana Sundaresan gets to the bottom of it: what gets the GI-tag, how easy is to get one, and what even is the point?
When Bamboo Rice Carpets the Forest Floor By Manju Vasudevan
Forested groves in central Kerala’s Edamalayar valley have showered the Muthuvar people with bamboo rice for the first time in six decades. In a labour of love, women of the community have gathered, cleaned, and dehusked the seeds to bring them to our plates.
Farm Workers On How Heat Impacts Their Work by Mukta Patil
We spoke to agricultural workers from The Locavore’s community of partner producers to understand how heat intersects with labour, especially for working women, and how they cope with rising temperatures.
A New Appetite for the Old Grain By Sharanya Deepak
As millets enter the culinary imaginations of urban dwellers, we must centre the land on which it grows, and the people who have preserved it.
NE Origins: One Portal, Many Cultures By Chetana Divya
Founder-CEO of NE Origins Rewaj Chettri talks about challenges common to producers from Northeast India, and taking the plurality of cultures of the region to the rest of India through food.
Want to keep reading?
Head to The Locavore’s Stories from the Fields, which brings together reporting, essays, and dispatches that trace the long, often invisible journeys food takes before it reaches your plate.
You’ll also find our ongoing work with Producers and Organisations whose ideas, labour, and politics shape the food systems we believe in, here.
This reading list is a living thing. If you’d like to keep the conversation going, add to it, or share what you’re reading, join your city’s Local Food Club WhatsApp group—or write to us at connect@localfoodclub.in