We live in a world where we are disconnected from the food on our plates
and the stories they have to tell
As a consumer we have so many choices
but do we understand the impact
we can have with the decisions we make?
I'm a filmmaker living in the International township of Auroville in Tamil nadu, South india.
Here surrounded by acres of cashew trees,
i was curious about this delicious nut's life story
as importers here in Europe continue to demand lower prices
and greater quantities to meet skyrocketing demand
groups are calling on supermarkets to ensure fair trade practices,
and calling on shoppers to seek out Fairtrade nuts
because at the other end of the supply chain
because at the other end of the supply chain it's these women who bear the consequences it's these women who bear the consequences
You and me, you know ordinary people
wouldn't know how to get the nut out of the (shell)
You know, I mean, we just don't know how to do it,
and even if we did we probably wouldn't want to do it you know
it's not like having walnuts or almonds or something like that
where you can just crack the nut and take the nut out.
You can't do that with cashews
So it has this whole processing thing
and you know that's where people make money
Steffen is a processor of cashews in Auroville
selling local, organic, hand processed cashews.
He wants to create a fair trade model
where his workers are paid a decent salary
with holiday and sick pay
this is very different from the rest of the industry
where workers are generally paid
very poor seasonal contract wages
per kilogram of cashews produced
We give the cashews to the breaking lady
who is doing this with a traditional way
really hard work, on a stone.
With the stone in the hand, she puts the cashew in the shell on the stone
and boom boom boom! and then she turns it around, boom, boom, boom.
Then the shellis broken and the shell falls apart,
and then hopefully the nut is easily falling out.
Sometimes it's stuck and then she needs to peel it out
usually the nut is breaking in this moment or already before.
Then we have the nut shell
it has still a red skin, they call it 'testa'.
The next step would be to peel the testa off
and then to dry the nut and then to long-term storage
or to package and give it to the shops.
The cashew shell contains oil and an acid.
The acid is very strong it's really harmful for the skin
it creates also allergies.
People who break the cashews in this way deal with it
that you take ash
with your fingers, and while opening
the fingers are always covered with ash
and the ash is neutralizing the acid.
This is the traditional way
and it gives a very high quality product I would say
but it costs unfortunately very much.
It's a different product from a cashew
which has been processed in an industrial way
There are big machines,
first the cashews in shell they get steamed
so the shell gets soft and also the nut gets soft.
It has two advantages: the shell can be cut easily with machines
and then the nut because softened
it sticks and it's not falling apart
so it remains a whole nut.
That's a big advantage for industrially processed cashews
but often the taste is not that good
But the new generations, it's getting lost a lot,
people now understand
"hey, what our grandparents and the many generations before did,
it had only reason because it was more healthy
Alok who was a big part of the Auroville cashew processing story
visited various processors around India and he shares with us his insights.
The organic exporters in India they were not 100 percent organic,
so what they did is they processed the non organic on certain days
and organic on certain days.
Those companies are really very large processors
and for them the only reason they got into organic was there was a export need.
Because it was not a philosophy they are doing 90 percent non-organic.
We still have some of the best processing centres in India
and it's still cheaper than other places,
so what might happen is we are gonna get cashews from other places
that come in here and get processed and then sent out again.
The cashews come to me through knowing people.
For me it's very important to know the people.
I don't take cashews from somebody who comes and says
"Hey I have organic cashews."
I have no trust.
Testing is incredibly expensive
and that's a big, big problem for organic in general.
If you buy from somebody you never know
really if it's organic
so it can be only your trust
it can be your inner feeling
and experience that how the food looks
how the seller looks,
if there are perhaps sometimes signs of insects
signs of fungus
which might be sometimes a good sign.
I wanted to experience cashew harvesting myself
fortunately I have access in my backyard
from April to June the cashew trees are covered in red and yellow fruits
with a little cashew nut hanging at the bottom
the cashews are ready to be picked
the fruit is deliciously tart and edible
but, it has a very thin skin and perishes very fast.
If left for a day, flies and maggots flourish
making separating the cashews from the fruit hard.
Left too long on the tree they fall to the ground and can get stolen.
In peak summer I harvested for 3 back-breaking hours every day.
I started to appreciate the efforts of picking this nut.
I quickly realized why traditionally cashew harvesting is a community job
After processing, only one-fifth of what is collected will make it into the final edible cashew nut.
From the beginning of our adventure
we set ourselves the goal of being self-sufficient in food needs.
Of course there was no question of our using pesticides
or any type of chemical fertilizers.
Our researchers are consciously oriented towards organic agriculture.
However, Auroville is not isolated from its neighbours.
In Auroville's bioregion,
cashews are a highly valued seasonal cash crop.
Cashy trees were introduced 30 years ago
when it was discovered, they were much less labor-intensive
than traditional crops
and grew well in the harsh soil conditions of this land
over time monoculture of cashews has emerged
leading to a certain times of the year when many people fall sick
Why is this? I wanted to find out.
While on one side we made the land green by planting trees
it seems on the other side
the village fields became all cashew topes, cashew fields.
And they started spraying chemical pesticides on the cashew fields.
That was a huge controversy, conflict.
And then here carry yellamma my PO che
there's a general mindset
more or less all over the globe, not only in India, not only here in our region
that pest control, pesticides are needed for productive successful farming.
I think it is it's basically a mindset,
I don't think there are many good arguments for it.
The local farmer would always argue "I have to guarantee my yield"
so for them it is like the more pesticide the more yield
which of course is already wrong. It is not even promised by any
pesticide producing industry
but they always believe there are pests...
And the pests will take over if you do not spray pesticides.
Jasmin lives in a local farm in Auroville.
She helped initiate the healthy Cashew Network
a group aiming to help with Auorville's cashew story.
One step was to understand what was happening in the community
during the spraying months through a survey
Not this year, the previous year,
when there was an unprecedented height of pesticide spraying
everybody was saying
like people living in the Greenbelt having cashews themselves and neighbours,
they said never before had they seen so much,
so consistent and regular spraying of pesticides
like in some fields daily.
And we were wondering why.
That's where this notion of,
is endosulfan banned or about to be banned?
Is that why they dump it in the market.
Why is it that so much pesticide is being sprayed
I really still don't know the answer
just know that the effect it had on Auroville was really serious,
I mean it is always a serious effect but it was extreme
People were getting sick and many for weeks
for example, organophosphate is the most common type of poison
that is used for spraying for agriculture
and it's impact is generally it produces a neuro muscular paralysis
for insects and as well as humans
It is the number one cause of death in young people other than accidents
in many parts of the agricultural community.
Shridar is one of the among many victims of the use of Endosulfan
for two decades in the 80s and the 90s
He was directly exposed to the harmful chemical
when it was sprayed aerially over the cashew nut crop.
Badhusha can't run, he can't play like other children.
Permanently bedridden, this twelve-yearold is symbolic of what many alleged
are the effects of endosulfan,
pesticide used by farmers in India.
In spraying pesticides, the target pest gets less than 1%.
They figured out something like 0.01% of the pesticide.
So 99.9% of pesticides are wasted elsewhere
and kill everything that shouldn't be killed.
For particular pests many pests have become resistant
we have developed new pests.
There is not a single original pest which has completely disappeared,
but the larger damage is also environmentally that
killing a pest means killing more than a pest
So you kill many insects, many beneficial insects
you put a toxin into the food chain
which affects the birds and predators
and is there in the environment.
The ambition of the pesticide industry was to develop pesticides
with a shorter half-life in nature that break down faster than the old pesticides
DDT has an awfully long half-life, it was banned because of that.
But the pesticides are not less toxic
then there used to be, the early ones,
but they just have usually shorter half-lives.
Pests and pesticides are one part but who has the power to make the change one
One of the problems is that the people who own the trees
are not the people who do the spraying
and who want the spray
Because the people who own the trees put the picking out to contract
and then it's up to the people who do have the contract to do the spraying
then to do the picking.
Now the people who have it on contract
are the people who need the money, so their kids can go to school
and they have been told
by the government on the radio
that it's quite safe and they should spray this stuff.
Poor people, workers, did the spraying of course,
and for them the economical situation had priority over health
and people did I admit," yes, a cow drank from the bucket
where we had mixed pesticides and it died
and, but what to do?" and there is this kind of "what to do
this is life".
It's difficult to point fingers and say here is the full responsibility
and why do they and they should know better,
when you see that very often
okay some knowledge is there but these people they just work under contract
and they do what they're told to do
and often they pay a really big price.
Dr. Lucas trained as a GP and practiced at Auroville Health Center in the 70s
This path has lead him to change his focus from creating victims to preventive action.
On his experimental farm he is testing
and refining the use of natural pesticides for cashew trees
Having worked with farmers and researched the cashew story,
he feels that for any impactful change the power lies beyond the farmer
For us who live next to the cashew plantations, the cashew forests,
it is an irritation a few days a year.
It's not a big health risk,
some people suffer more, some less, it's a nuisance.
The big health risk is for the guys who do the spraying,
on many plantations every year, for many years,
it means for weeks they are living in these clouds of pesticides
inhaled on their skin, swallowed.
If anybody gets trouble, serious trouble, it is them.
We really must think about occupationalhazard of the person who sprays.
Very often they are very poorly protected
as part of it, the acute poisoning is essentially people develop breathlessness
and they start getting water filling up in the lung as part of fluid
accumulating in the lung
and they come emergency into the hospital as part of poisoning,
but there is a more chronic poisoning.
In persistent people, who are continuing to use this over a long time
at much lower doses develop neuro paralytic issues,
with very classical findings such as sweating, salivation and breathing difficulty.
They require the artificial ventilation
for at least two to three, four days before they recover,
but protection will prevent it.
Make sure that you wear goggles and put protective covers and masks
so that breathing this toxic air and toxic droplets are avoided.
In Maharashtra Yavatmal district exposure to
toxic pesticides in fact had killed 34 farmers
and sent over 175 people from that district to the hospital.
This event also exposed the horrific condition
that this agriculture district has in fact
where farmers are forced to work without protective gear
and are supplied with untested toxic pesticides.
Endosulfan, after the hue and cry in Kerala,
there it got banned.
And the aerial spraying got banned,
I don't know why it is banned in Europe
it's not the worst of them
there are four labels, it has yellow mark.
Everything needs to have this hue and cry and movement,
and there is a half-hearted ban,
but still it is available daily.
Protests been held in more than 40 countries
against the US food giant Monsanto
and its genetically modified foods and pesticides.
From Mexico City to Burkina Faso
demonstrators made their anger felt at
at what they say is the threat to biodiversity in ecosystems
Similar fears in Argentina
have seen doctors sign a petition to get one herbicide
which is created by Monsanto banned
If a woman gets pregnant during the period of crop fertilization
the risk is very high she will have a disabled baby.
The issue is, without pesticides
the current agricultural system does not seem to work,
and unfortunately
the insects are sharper and faster
growing resistant to these pesticides
and it harms both human and the agriculturalists
at the end both people suffer.
So if it's not the people who spray
can it be the landowners who make the decisions to shift practices?
We are talking a lot about people who are spraying
and more spraying often out of lack of education
I don't know let's put a little bit more than recommended so we on the secure side
but on the other side, I must say they say huge huge movement in India
of people who are not who do not like to go this way.
So two extreme polarities, basically
of one part people who don't care on
and on the other part, hundreds of thousands of farmers in the meantime
of people who go the organic way
and who really don't want to go the conventional
unfortunately normal way today
and if you get to know the people
if you really get in touch with them and you talk
you learn about their past, about what they do
they show you around
so if you get a personal contact and you learn about the person
sometimes you really understand
that's not a person who would send you something
different from what he claims
and that's the way I want to go parallel to certified organic raw materials.
Rita has been part of the Auroville cashew story
for the past thirty years with her late husband
they tried to experiment, inform and educate
the bioregional farmers about organic alternatives to pesticides.
We asked Auroville for a piece of land
where we could demonstrate organic cashew growing
and we received a plot
very close to the solar kitchen
and we worked on this plot for 12 years.
It was a one acre plot, the first year, we just harvested as it was
and we got 160 kilos of the harvest
And then we worked on the plot, we pruned the dead branches
and we produced compost,
natural compost, with the twigs, leaves, cow dung
and then we gave this compost to the trees, spread it around
already the next year, the yield went up.
And the yield gradually went up We were successful
some people converted, they used neem oil
or they understood that actually, the spraying had no effect
they only spent money
they got what cashews they would get anyway
so they stopped spraying also
Priya is an Aurovilian farmer
who shares with us a holistic way of farming and pest management.
We don't do any spraying here, we don't believe in it.
What we try and do in Buddha garden is to replicate nature
and if you look at nature one of the things
that really gets you about nature is the diversity
so we try and make that diversity
What that does is it brings in more insect species
and the more insect species you have the fewer pests you have
A healthy plant in a healthy soil is how you eradicate pests
but that takes time
to be financially sustainable is to have a variety of different things
that come at different times of the year so you've always got something and also
if something fails as things do from time to time
you've got something else
The people here, they are not so far away from their
natural lives and agriculture
So how did they do earlier?
They used organic compost to feed their crops and neem oil.
Neem oil has been known since ages
and the local people knew it
the memory was not so far away.
Neem is not the only natural pesticide
I met with Gowri who makes his own bio-nutrient and insect repellent
So the main ingredient of this liquid is made from
Callatropis plant (Erukkam Pu in Tamil)
which is also mixed with five more different plants
to make sure that it has the full effect
because every plant does a different job
and of course these are alkaloids extracted from these plants
and which helps which is enough for the insects to ripple the insects
Basically when we apply this on our plants
it prevents other insects to come and eat the leaves.
It works with termites and it works with
the root borer for the bananas and root borers for the cashews
which is the main issue what the farmers have
even with the very high toxic chemicals they are not able to kill these insects
the presence of alkaloids in this liquid
also helps to boost the immunites of the plants
and it increases the yield also
So if these pesticides
are so bad for the environment, the farmers budget, and health
why are they still so widely used?
Pesticides are really not efficient
and it's a largely a myth and there's a lot of
what I would call brainwashing involved
and of course a huge Lobby behind
You're up against a very powerful lobby
which is the government who say it's okay
and who actually encourage farmers to use it
and the manufacturers,
who of course want to sell as much as they can
and obviously in cahoots with the government.
And on the larger scale, on the governmental scale, it is
food security or productivity.
Productivity means of course, revenue, which means income and
cashew is a one of the biggest foreign revenue,
foreign currency earners of India.
But you know how it is when certain things are established by lobbyists,
by profit-making people
common sense people
they don't really have much of a chance to easily undo
what is established
and this fight is going on everywhere, also in Europe.
An anti chemicals movement that began in the countryside
and has spread to the city
Lille, Nantes, Grenoble and Clermont-ferrand
joined Paris in implementing a ban on pesticides
within their city boundaries.
We have to plan it for like the next ten years and say – okay
if we want this whole area to be pesticide free
how do we do that? And I think one of the ways to do it
is to build relationships with the farmers
You can't ask somebody to convert
if you don't know who they are
The only way out would be a clear statement
from the agricultural ministry
from the KVK, the centers
which give advice to local farmers
to reduce or to stop the pesticides.
That would have a meaning
because that is the voice of authority
And that will be accepted
Farmers said it from the 90s to me,
"if the government will advise differently, we will do it differently"
The research shows that
the number of insect species is going down
we're losing our diversity
It's not sustainable ecologically
because you know
what's happening is we're destroying the nature,
we're destroying the earth
on which we all depend
For me it's clear to take care of me
and take care of my environment
Every crop is being sprayed with pesticides
in all food items we have pesticides
in allenvironment we have pesticides and
not just on some cashew plantations
The environment will tolerate it
biosphere will take it, life is extremely resilient and adaptive
but we are overdoing it.
It's a warfare with pesticides all over the globe it is impossible
it's a warfare with pesticides all over the globe it is impossible It should not be tolerated It should not be tolerated
You know, you can tell them to convert and not spray pesticides
but somebody has to come along and buy it at a higher price.
Of course we can have a conscious consumer behavior
It's a smart idea to only buy organic cashews
to ask in the shop where the cashews are from
cashew market is driven by demand
and we as consumers have some power
to affect change in the global cashew industry
through our choices.
Can we be aware of our role in this story?
It's something when you grow up perhaps in Europe, like me,
and you know cashews only from the pouch you open and you eat
you have no clue of what it is really
and suddenly you come to a place where they grow and are processed
it's just to get the touch with the food you know since childhood
it's so nice know, it's something special
In the globalized industrial world
we increasingly have little understanding of the food we eat
Within the cashew story, there are many stories.
From processing to growing
the cashew nut has passed through many hands
Each hand has a role to play
a story to tell
a choice to make.
Are you ready to help change the ending of this cashew story?