Beyond Basmati: Making Native Rices Part of Your Everyday Kitchen

● Online | 12 March 2026 | 5:30–6:30 pm

Once home to nearly 1,00,000 indigenous varieties of rice, just a fraction dominate markets in India today. This online discussion explored the reasons behind their decline, unpacking how the pricing of commercial varieties does not account for social and environmental externalities tied to them, and offered practical ways to make native rice more accessible.
Farmers from the Rathwa community sowing seeds at rice conservation plots in Chhota Udepur, Gujarat. Photo courtesy of OOO Farms.

Over the past six decades, shifts in agricultural policy and market systems in India have reshaped what ends up on our plates. During the Green Revolution in the 1960s, high-yield, uniform varieties replaced thousands of regionally adapted strains, including native rice. While this increased production over the years, it also reduced agrobiodiversity, narrowed taste and nutritional diversity, and concentrated power within agricultural systems. As a result, today, native and heritage rice varieties are often seen as expensive, difficult to cook, or reserved for special occasions. 

To understand this nuanced landscape, this session of Beyond the Plate focussed on a few simple, practical questions: What happened to India’s rice diversity? Why does indigenous rice often cost more? Is native rice actually difficult to cook? How can we start incorporating it into daily meals and, more importantly, what does their conservation mean for the future?

Meet Our Panellists

Shailesh Awate, Co-founder, OOO Farms

Shailesh Awate brings a systems-thinking approach to food and farming conversations, with years of experience working with forest communities, seed savers, and smallholder farmers across Maharashtra and Gujarat. He started OOO Farms, a community farming movement, to revive indigenous seeds.

“Whenever you're choosing any crop—not just rice—try to understand where it is coming from. If it is from corporations, it's not food, it is just a commodity.”

Shailesh traced the long-term impact of the Green Revolution on food security, noting how despite being the world’s second largest producer of crops, India still ranks 102nd on the Global Hunger Index. He also highlighted the resultant loss of agrobiodiversity. Within salt-tolerant rice varieties alone, over 100 distinct varieties once existed, differing between marshy to mangrove ecosystems, while other varieties from Assam could withstand recurring floods, growing to a height of over 20 feet.

While the conservation and revival of native varieties is essential, an awareness of who controls this resource is equally important. Due to the rise in biopiracy, Shailesh noted that such indigenous knowledge and genetic resources are often exploited by corporations. This can be seen in the case of popular varieties of rice like Basmati, where hybrids are sold and marketed by appropriating its cultural memory, while eroding the sovereignty of indigenous people and systems that sustained them.

Devi, Co-founder, Bio Basics

Sreedevi Lakshmi Kutty (Devi) has been involved in the sustainable agriculture movement in India for over 20 years. Devi is the co-founder of Coimbatore-based social venture Bio Basics that curates heritage grains and retails organic food. She is also part of Akavayal, a seed conservation initiative based in Shoranur, Kerala, conserving over 100 paddy varieties.

“We have rivers which are fully contaminated. We have soils which are gone in Punjab. What we pay in the market is not the real price of rice. [The price of rice] has to take into account all the externalities that the cultivation of that rice creates.”

Drawing from her experiences as part of the Save Our Rice campaign, Devi pointed out how traditional rice varieties have been, and still are, an integral part of intergenerational memory across farming communities in India. Presently, problems surrounding food systems are multifaceted, encompassing issues of distribution, equity, social justice, nutrition, and access to resources. However, looking to GMOs as a proposed solution to this crisis, Devi noted, is an extension of what the Green Revolution put forth—siloed solutions to complex, systemic problems. She also highlighted that gene-edited crops are frequently positioned as distinct from GMOs, thereby allowing them to bypass stricter biosafety regulations. While commercial varieties of rice may appear cheaper, their social and ecological externalities are often not reflected in market pricing, nor is the differential paid by the state through subsidisation—the fertiliser subsidy alone is over 1.75 lakh crores rupees, for instance—which further sidelines native varieties. 

Neil Khopkar, Moderator; Partnerships Lead, The Locavore

Trained in culinary arts and business, Neil Khopkar has an array of interests ranging from gastronomy, history, and music. Through The Locavore, Neil aims to draw attention to the deep connection between good eating and sustainable eating.

Discussion

• The diversity of rice varieties in India is closely tied to indigenous communities and their knowledge, systems, and practices. However, modern-day narratives and nomenclature often distort these realities, recasting the use of dominant cultural and religious imagery—as seen in the case of Shankar Jata and Gobindobhog for instance—further distancing these varieties from the communities that sustain them.

• Prevailing price comparisons between commercial and native rice varieties do not fully capture the latter’s value. For example, even native rice from Maharashtra with the lowest iron content still contains nearly five times more iron per 100 grams than Basmati rice. Similarly, the sodium content present in just one kilogram of Tulshya, would be equivalent to purchasing 200 packets of Basmati.

• While there are nuances within preserving genetic purity and understanding the adaptive nature of crops, they are both distinct from gene-edited crops where priorities shift towards maximising yield and profit. Reasons why such interventions are problematic have been widely established. Removal of proteins and amino acids to enhance pest tolerance, for example, comes at the expense of nutrition; cases like Bt Cotton warn against adverse social and economic consequences, and the concentration of control in the hands of corporations rather than indigenous communities remains an ongoing concern.

Learnings

• Power asymmetries frequently make consumer-level changes unrealistic in most contexts. However, the preservation of native rice is one area where consumers and consumption patterns can play a crucial role. What is eaten on plates today determines what is cultivated in the fields tomorrow. If a variety is not consumed, market demand disappears, and farmers no longer have an economic incentive to continue growing it.

• Historically, recipes were centred on what was locally available in a particular region. Even dishes like biryani were originally prepared using short-grained, locally available rice rather than Basmati, be it in Lucknow, Hyderabad, or the rest of South India. Moving away from standardised approaches—such as using Basmati for every dish—allows for a deeper understanding of regional diversity and nuances that have been flattened over time.

• Understanding the ways in which native rice can fit into everyday life makes their incorporation more grounded and practical. These motivations can range from exploring what grows within one’s region, eating in accordance with the seasons, or to address practical needs. Several aromatic varieties offer quick cooking times, while light, easily-digestible varieties are ideal for the elderly. Native rice also spans diverse nutritional profiles, helping individuals meet specific dietary requirements and make their meals more nutritionally balanced.

This session was part of our Local Food Club’s first quarterly theme for 2026: Supporting Your Food Producers.

From January to March 2026, the theme looked beyond the food on our plates to the people behind it—farmers, fishers, foragers, millers, bakers, and processors. Through conversations such as this, we explored everyday ways to support food producers via more informed choices, deeper learning, and thoughtful advocacy. 

Beyond the Plate is an initiative by The Locavore where we engage in meaningful conversations, live events, and dining experiences that look at food beyond the sum of its parts. It is our attempt to narrow the divide between what’s on our plate, where it comes from, how it’s produced, and the deeper stories around it.