Biscuits, cakes are now routine
As progressive a farmer as Bore Gowda may be, his household is perhaps among the few in his village to resist change. Bore Gowda?s organic farm in Shivalli village in Mandya district, about 100 km west of Bangalore city and off the highway to Mysore, gets constant visitors who want to buy seeds or study his farming methods. He?s even setting up a one-room museum of sorts atop his house to showcase over 80 endemic varieties of paddy he has collected from different regions. In his kitchen, women of the house rely on traditional methods of making masala for sambhar, using home-grown vegetables, something, he says, is gradually becoming less fashionable as more village folk are making the shift to buying masalas and, to an extent, ready-to-eat food. ?Now, everybody has gone to fast food,? says Bore Gowda. ?Even six-seven years ago, if we had to make a vegetable sambhar, we put together our own ingredients.?
These days, the more convenient way would be to buy them from the salesman who visits the village every week on his cycle. Meanwhile, television cookery shows are teaching rural women novel ways to use them.
In villages around Mandya in Karnataka?s sugar and paddy belt, the staple food still remains ragi, but people?s food habits are changing slowly and the expenditure on food increasing. ?There was no question of purchasing earlier,? says Sunanda Jayaram, a women?s wing leader of the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha, a farmers? political organisation. From vegetables to fried snacks and sometimes even ready-to-cook noodles, it?s all being bought now, she says. The idli vendor on her street at Gejjalagere village draws more customers since he began offering panipuri, she adds.
Even in Bore Gowda?s conservative household, idlis and dosas?food normally reserved for festivals or special occasions?now make an appearance at breakfast time because the children want to emulate their peers in school.
As incomes increase, coarse staples are being replaced by refined ones such as polished rice, while more money is being spent on processed food, particularly snacks and baked products such as biscuits, buns and cakes, says Jamuna Prakash, head of the department of food science and nutrition at Mysore University.
?There has been a change in the earning capacity of villagers also in the recent past and this has certainly reflected in a transition in purchasing pattern,? she says, adding, ?However, there is a section of population who may be much below poverty line and may not afford a full meal. In such cases, we do not find much of a change.?
Mayamma, a labourer from Basaralu village, who sticks to the staple ragi, rice and vegetables, says her monthly expenditure on food adds up to Rs 500 a month. ?I live alone, and grow my own vegetables,? she says during her meal of ragi mudde (ragi rolled into balls).
Monthly per capita expenditure on food in rural Karnataka had gone up 70% from Rs 167 in 1993-94 to Rs 283 in 2004-05, according to an analysis by BS Pavithra of the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, published in its Karnataka Journal of Agricultural Sciences in 2009. The per capita expenditure in urban areas had increased to Rs 447 from Rs 236 in the same period. The study noted that spending on cereals accounted for 25-36% of the total food expenditure and that the expenditure on edible oil, meat, fish and egg had increased between the two periods.
?They used to spend very little on oils. Now, they are purchasing refined oil,? said H Basavaraja, head of the department of agricultural economics at the College of Agriculture, Dharwad, who co-authored the analysis.
Part of the reason for the shift in consumption patterns is due to imitation of urban lifestyles, a growing trend of smaller families, income from sale of land and migration to cities.
?Earlier, in our villages only those who owned land in rain-fed areas migrated to towns for work. But these days, even those with irrigated lands move because the non-availability of labour has made agriculture unviable,? says K Boraiah, a farmer leader of Gopalapura village.
Villages in Mandya with extensive irrigation facilities and proximity to cities like Bangalore and Mysore may be better off than Karnataka?s northern districts. But with farmers in those rain-fed regions preferring cash crops such as maize than take a bet on food crops, their food consumption patterns too are changing.
?The earlier attitude of growing food and eating has now changed,? says Rama Devi, director of the College of Rural Home Science, Dharwad. Also new is the entry of bakery products into the home, she says. ?Earlier bakeries were not there. Now, biscuits simply have gone into the kitchen.?