An invitation to the conscious consumer!
We started reStore in 2008, as a group of consumers, willing to stand with Indian farmers, and take more control of the supply chain in food. Our motivation stemmed from several sources of disquiet:
on the one side, we had read about the unviable economy of farming, leading to extreme distress and an alarming rate of suicides amongst farmers.
health concerns amongst consumers like ourselves, arising from pesticide residues, toxins in the environment and declining nutritional index of staples in the market.
increasing pollution, loss of biodiversity, and climate change – all of which have been linked to human consumption patterns.
a disconnect of our lives from nature, with the sources of our food, and those who grow it.
Our quest was to restructure our consumption, and to walk along with members of our community who were similarly inclined to be “conscious consumers”.
In this article we explore some of the fundamental ideas related to this.
TRACEABILITY
Our concerns led to some questions, the first of which is: Can we get some sense of traceability in our food? That is, know who grows it, develop relationships, and pay them a fair price?
Most of us in our group of friends were upper-middle class Indian consumers. In a generation or two, we had gone from having a direct or one-step removed connection with the land (being from a farming, landholding or rural family), to almost nil idea where ANY of our food came from, and of the nature of the supply chain from production to our tables.
INTERCONNECTION
The process of asking these questions led to an insight that perhaps the term “consumer” doesn’t fully capture that we are part of an interconnected ecosystem which includes: nature – farming – farmers – traders/retailers – and finally consumers.
The farmer, by her toil, produces the fundamental needs of our sustenance, nourishment, enjoyment, and eventually growth. Interconnectedness implies that our own well-being is linked directly with that of other parts of this ecosystem. Any other way of consumption – which contributes to degradation of nature, or unviable livelihood for farmers, would in fact, be exploitation.
PATRONS
Conscious consumers are patrons who support the ecosystem, just as a concert-goer is not a passive consumer of the music, but by her appreciation, evocation, applause and ticket-buying, is an active patron of the arts.
What are some of the challenges in knowing where our food comes from? We now eat a vast range of foods compared to our ancestors of just a hundred years ago. While every effort to eat local is worthwhile and commendable, this remains an idealistic goal. In a very simple instance, people in Tamil Nadu now eat a variety of wheat-based foods, which is a grain not grown in or near our state. Several trading intermediaries are involved before the food reaches us. The range of foods and the no. of links in the supply chain are key factors in the difficulty of knowing the producers.
As we can see from this simple example, being conscious consumers as individuals or families is rather impractical. Communities of like-minded people, can however come together in this quest.
COLLECTIVE
reStore thus, is a collective of folks who find themselves on this path. In much the same way as a sabha (music and arts society) represents all its members who are patrons of the arts, we at reStore represent conscious consumers – as patrons of organic farmers! Their best interest, and in turn that of the earth, becomes ours too.