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Food Gentrification

I ate breadfruit for the first time on a company offsite at Panaji, Goa. Absolutely loved how it was cooked and it was decades before I found a place where I could buy it. A local grocery store carries multi-ethnic fare and breadfruit is often on the produce isle. I have iterated through the recipe as I remember it from that long ago Goa trip before I was happy with the results. 

Reading this news about Patagonia getting into the business of making breadfruit commonly available in the country makes me wary. I am sure the marketing machinery will go into overdrive mode to tout breadfruit flour as manna from heaven that will fix just about everything that ails us. The poor farmers will over-cultivate breadfruit to make money and the local eco-system, the interdependencies between producers and consumers of food will fall apart - it will be all around bad news like acai berries has been for Brazilian farmers. 

In Igarape-Miri, an Amazon village 1,100 miles north of Brasilia, Francisca Neves, who sells manioc flour to neighbors and restaurants, says the bitter pulp she used to eat twice a day is now a luxury.

"Our granddaughter is turning 3 and we're going to have family coming to our house," said Ms. Neves, 68, as she paid 20 reais ($9.40), or about 7 percent of her monthly household income, for 2 liters (2 quarts) of the thick mush at a local street market.

I grew up in a Bengali household so stories about the indigo revolt were very much part of my childhood. This who business of ethnic food gentrification is exactly the same thing.

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