Recently, Bhavani Shankar (MINI co-PI) wrote an article for The Geographical magazine recounting his memories from our first team trip to a Bihari fruit and vegetable market and discussing the importance of such food environments for regional livelihoods, food security and food safety. Here Greg Cooper shares his experiences from the same memorable day.
Although it was about two years ago now - I remember the day like it was yesterday. I alongside my MINI team colleagues Bhavani, Alam, Suneetha and Karl, had landed in Patna just a few nights before, from where we had just kicked off the MINI project in Dhaka. After a two-day inception meeting with our colleagues at Digital Green, we headed two hours to the south of Patna for our first couple of days in the field.
The night before our first field day, we all agreed that we'd need to wake up early to catch the process of Loop aggregation in a nearby village. The aggregation of fruit and vegetables in farming villages generally takes place at sunrise, in order to allow the aggregators to reach the market and sell their load before the larger regional farmers and traders arrive. I remember not getting much sleep that night, kept awake mainly by the bass of a nearby 'shaadi' (wedding), and also partly by the excitement of being back in India for the first time since my PhD fieldwork in Odisha in Spring 2016.
After observing the aggregation, we headed a few kilometres along the main Patna-Rajgir highway to Bihar Sharif market. Bihar Sharif is the main horticultural hub in Nalanda district and one of the major wholesale markets in the state of Bihar, with traders exporting hundreds of tonnes of fruits and vegetable to towns and cities across the neighbouring states of Jharkhand, West Bengal and eastern Uttar Pradesh.
We reached the market whilst the sun was still low in the sky, but being mid-April, the temperature was already above 30 degrees C. The entrance is a single dirt path, that crosses a narrow drainage ditch, before running in front of a series of storage units on the way in to the market. The level of activity was incredible, with men and women of all ages (including children) transporting baskets and bags of fruits and vegetables by hand, bicycle and motorbike. I remember the haste of the farmers being really striking, with everyone rushing and almost tripping over themselves along this narrow dirt path. I quickly learned the importance of time and punctuality on the price farmers expect to receive, with for example, large inter-state exporters needing to leave the market in the early morning to reach their destination by market-close.
The (lack of) air quality struck us soon after. It would not be hyperbole to say that the mixture of burning crops (unsold from the day before) and burning plastic waste created truly suffocating conditions. I'm sad to say that I had to dispose of my favourite blue baseball cap after failing to wash out the smell of burnt plastic. Whilst I'm happy to say that I haven't found conditions quite as bad in any of the other 20 or so markets I've visited since, the loss of my favourite blue cap pales into insignificance when I think about the health implications of the pollution for the farmers and traders that depend upon visiting Bihar Sharif market everyday to continue making a living.
I think we all left Bihar Sharif that day with our eyes wide open. I remember wondering at the time whether all wholesale markets in Bihar are just as dynamic (and polluted): a question that I'd get to answer over the following months by chasing the fruit and vegetable value chain across Bihar state to Buxar, Muzaffarpur and Bhojpur (more to come on this soon!).
Visit our 'About' page to learn more about the MINI team.
Visit our 'Research outputs' page to read more about our initial research findings, including the key headlines from our rapid value chain analysis which followed this initial visit to Bihar Sharif.
Comments