Work in progress · Ziro, Arunachal Pradesh

What It Takes to Grow

working title

My mom is a farmer, and growing up I saw how much work goes into food and how little of that effort is valued or fairly paid. This project started from that.

I don't know yet whether it becomes a brand, a service, or something else. I am in the divergent phase, trying to understand the system as it is. Right now that means looking at logistics in and out of Ziro, supply chain and storage, and what certification and lab testing would take for produce from here to be trusted far away.

I am sharing the process openly, in episodes and field notes, and will keep updating this page as things progress.

If you work in food, logistics or rural livelihoods, or just have thoughts, I would love to talk.

How I am exploring

I started by going out and asking. Since mid-September I have been travelling around Ziro, and every conversation has pointed me to the next one. So far I have spoken with the state's livelihoods mission, sat in on a fishery insurance training and a green gram training with a small farming group, visited a dairy and flour cooperative in Hapoli and talked to farmers in my own village.

I look at everything through three lenses. Margin, or who earns what along the way. Logistics, or how food gets from a field to a buyer. And demand and supply, or what people actually want to buy.

A few numbers that stayed with me

  • ₹25 vs ₹120What a farmer gets per kilo of peas wholesale, against what the same peas sell for in the market.
  • ₹7Roughly what producers were left with per item after selling through a big online marketplace, so some stopped.

"If we get even half of the market price, every farmer will do it."

A farmer in my village

What keeps coming up

  • Where the food comes from gets lost on the way to the buyer.
  • Support schemes often reward connections more than need.
  • There is little nearby storage, and the paperwork is a barrier.
  • Margins disappear once you count the labour.
  • "Organic" is not yet a premium people will pay for.

None of this is about the food itself. The produce is good. It is everything around it.

Where it might go

One direction I keep coming back to is making the origin visible. Food that says where it was grown and by whom, sold as directly from the source as possible. It is one thread among several, and I am not tying myself to it yet.

Next

  • Visit a fish farmers' producer company and a honey seller in the village.
  • Look into the wild Himalayan pear, a fruit that grows here and has barely been studied.
  • Find products that are either made in large quantities or worth a lot per kilo.