farmers, the movement slowly spread to the neighboring village and gradually it reached 70,000 farmers! The dry goods like lentils and spices are collected from the different farmers and brought to our facility, packaged and then distributed across the stores. {Do read the entire process involved in Dubai Eye’s blog} No middlemen or intermediaries? No, not at all. The farmers give their produce to the Morarka Foundation and that comes directly to all the Down To Earth stores across the globe. Some of these farmers are associated with the foundation for the last 15 years. Organic spices are sourced from India. But what about the organic Pastas? As a commercial company, we realised that to increase the viability of production we have to produce everything ourselves. Initially, we were sourcing these from Italy but they proved to be very expensive. So we worked back the recipe of Pasta, and started manufacturing Pasta ourselves. Everything that is being sold is sourced in India. For example, tea. Adjoining the famous Kaziranga National Park, there is a beautiful tea estate called the Hathikuli Tea Estate and our tea grows wildly in this estate which is very regularly frequented by elephants, rhinoceros.
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How is Baker & Spice special? B&S understands what we are doing. Most commercial operation would probably use organic products if they were offered a decent price. The very agenda of going organic or the choice that B&S makes while choosing its ingredients – proximity to the source of produce – is very important. Spices don’t grow in this region and hence one of the closest sources would naturally be India. They make an effort in doing that. For the rest, we have to go and convince them. It’s just not being ‘organic’ but they are also very conscious of ‘fair trade’ and ensure that we pay the farmers the prices that they deserve. So, conceptually we are at the same plane. While every business needs to be commercially viable, everyone who’s starting an organic business knows that it’s
going to take a long time to make it sustainable. Behind this, there has to be a passion to ‘believe’ in the concept of ‘going organic’. Yes, it’s good for the environment but also the main focus is the ‘farmer’. The final question that is probably the most important. Being conscious is one thing, but as a consumer, am I paying more when I make a choice of going organic? Yes, but not very much. We are unable to communicate to the consumers that the
purity of the spices is the biggest challenge when it comes to spices. For most brands, the adulteration is at the source itself. In India, where a trader who owns hectares and hectares of land, if there is an adulteration at the source of even 10%, it is a turnover of crores of Rupees. Until and unless, they are whole spices, the chances of adulteration are very high.