From harvesting honey to growing indigenous vegetables, unpredictable rainfall severely impacts the food we eat. In the face of such varying weather patterns, farmers and producers, including The Locavore’s partners, often have to contend with challenges such as landslides, logistical hurdles, and even changes in local diets.
The monsoon season in India typically lasts from June to September, and when not erratic, it supports over 50 percent of the country’s farmland. This year, wetter, more precarious rainfall caught regions across the country off-guard. According to experts and news reports, India experienced almost double or 85.7 percent more rainfall than usual in the month of May. Prolonged wet spells were accompanied by thunderstorms, lightning, gusty winds, and dust storms over parts of northwest, central, and eastern India. These unseasonal patterns also led
to massive crop losses in states such as Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Telangana, and Gujarat.
Fluctuating weather conditions often give rise to landslides, flash floods, and biodiversity loss which become particularly difficult to navigate in steep, hilly regions. We gather perspectives from Tenacious Bee Collective, Himalayan Haat, Hill Wild, and Last Forest—four of The Locavore’s producer partners based in mountainous regions in India—to understand some of these challenges, and how they deal with them. Read on.
“Our job is to make sure that no moisture gets into the honey we’ve already harvested”
Tenacious Bee Collective, Kangra, Himachal Pradesh
Given the unpredictability of the rains, harvesting honey in the mountains of Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh today has become harder than ever. Typically, there are three harvest seasons in a year—in March and April as spring blooms; around June, before the monsoon arrives; and in September and October after the monsoon. These bees (Apis mellifera and Apis cerana) are either unable to gather nectar due to bouts of heavy, unseasonal rainfall or flowers simply do not produce enough nectar during periods of extremely dry weather with no rainfall at all. Bee populations are also dwindling due to unpredictable weather patterns owing to the climate crisis.
“One of the beekeepers [that we work closely with] lost around 250 hives [because of the floods], and incurred a loss of about rupees 14 lakhs,” says Kunal Singh, co-founder of Tenacious Bee Collective. Given how dire the situation is, many beekeepers are leaving the profession, or relying on beekeeping as only one part of their income. They take up farming or jobs like plumbing.
“During the monsoon, our job is to make sure that no moisture gets into the honey we’ve already harvested,” explains co-founder Malini Kochupillai. “In the past, we’ve lost inventory of boxes to fungus because of chronic rain and lack of sunlight.” Given the prolonged monsoon season this year, they haven’t been able to harvest one of their bestsellers, the Hadsar forest honey. “Monsoon in the area arrived at least four weeks earlier than usual,” says Kunal.
So, how does one prepare for such uncertainty? “We try to mitigate these challenges by preparing in advance,” explains Kunal. Last year, the rain arrived in June. Keeping this timeline in mind, Tenacious Bee Collective planned their trips from Kangra in Himachal Pradesh to beekeepers in Anantag in Kashmir in early June. Currently, after much hardship, they’ve harvested 300 kilograms of Acacia honey: “It took at least eight extra hours to reach us because it had to come via the villages instead of directly from the Kullu-Manali highway.” They are also hoping to harvest Lahual forest honey from Lahaul and Spiti sometime in late August.
“A lot rests on each season, especially in the hills, because your time is quite limited”
Himalayan Haat, Pauri Garhwal, Uttarakhand
Monsoon in southeastern parts of Uttarakhand typically arrives in July, but this year, because of the climate crisis, the region received heavy rainfall in May. This inadvertently impacted the harvest of summer fruits like strawberries, blackberries, and plums, as well as herbs such as chamomile. “Many of these crops are harvested only once a year,” explains Divya Chowfin, co-founder of Himalayan Haat. “There’s a lot that rests on each season, especially in the hills, because your time is quite limited.”
This year, the team at Himalayan Haat picked a fair bit of chamomile, a crucial ingredient in their herbal teas and infusions. However, because the rains arrived earlier than usual, the flowers didn’t dry properly and became discoloured, rendering them unusable.
Himalayan Haat has been dealing with adverse effects of the climate crisis for quite some time now. “We had this one bout of unseasonal rain in June, maybe four years ago, and we lost the courtyard of our farmhouse [where they operated out of at that time] to a landslide,” says Divya. “We’re still, to this date, trying to rebuild.”
Sustaining a forest farm in face of unpredictability is hard, especially because farming is a slow process wherein all the preparation happens a year in advance. But Himalayan Haat has learned to adapt and pivot by maximising the value of their produce, and focusing on making products out of ingredients that are readily available. This year, for instance, while they had a dearth of strawberries and other summer fruit, peaches grew in abundance, which they use to make their Peach Cooler. While a lot of their produce is grown on their own farm, they also collaborate with other local farmers in the region. This means they can rely on surplus produce from their network of farmers to craft their products.
A silver lining of extreme rainfall has been the abundance of mushrooms
Hill Wild, Ukhrul, Manipur
“There’s always been rainfall. It’s such a rainy place. But over the years, rainfall is delayed, and often harsh, leading to landslides around new development spaces,” shares Zeinorin Angkang, co-founder of Hill Wild, on monsoon in villages of Manipur and Nagaland where they exclusively source indigenous produce from.
During this period, many local farmers from Ukhrul—where Hill Wild is based—and the surrounding villages started delaying the planting of fruit trees, including chillies. But for crops like the Sirarakhong chilli, saplings need to be planted in April, during the first rain, for them to come to fruition by September. “There is so much rain that it forms small streams [on plantations] that erode everything,” she explains. To avoid rotting of the produce and control the water flow, farmers are now making trenches as well as relying more and more on irrigation. Chilli saplings are also grown in greenhouses so they have a better chance of survival.
The heavy rain also brings hail storms, resulting in a shortage of vegetables typically grown on hill slopes such as cabbage and mustard leaves that are a staple for the locals. More and more people are hence resorting to growing non-native vegetables like bok choy and broccoli.
In Ukhrul, unpredictable, heavier than usual rainfall has resulted in a slight silver lining—an abundance of mushrooms such as wild shitakes and termite mushrooms. “Wild mushrooms are very expensive even in our state [Manipur],” Zeinorin says. “There is a lot of demand locally, especially in Imphal… ” Given this bounty of produce—and opportunity—a lot of people are encouraged to forage in the forests, along with the usual seasonal cultivation, to maintain an equilibrium in the agricultural ecosystem.
“We haven’t been able to get a continued supply of honey from gatherers”
Last Forest, the Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu
Honey collection in the Nilgiris is entirely seasonal, with the first phase from April till around June, and the second from around October until the middle of January. It is only between these time periods that gatherers go into the forest in search of honey, because once the monsoon arrives, rock bees (Apis dorsata) usually migrate to lower altitudes. Erratic rainfall in the region then proves to be a hurdle for enterprises like Last Forest that support traditional livelihoods—including honey hunting and millet farming—among Indigenous communities like the Kurumbas, Irulas, Todas, and Badagas.
“We haven’t been able to get a continued supply of honey from [our community of] gatherers,” says Madhu, Communications Lead at Last Forest. “Because there aren’t a lot of bees who make honey in the forest during this [periods of erratic rainfall] season.” Many honey gatherers are now moving downhill to towns in search for more sustainable means of daily wages. They rely on farming or other non-timber forest produce such as wild amla, spices like pepper and cinnamon, and hardier millets. Many also take up jobs working at tea and coffee plantations.
Another challenge that arises is at the stages of the production and storage of honey. Wild honey retains a lot of water, even when stored in food-grade containers. Typically, Last Forest stored their honey in large blue, food-grade drums at their production unit in Kotagiri, where the refiltration and packaging also takes place. However, the lack of sunlight along with strong winds and continuous rainfall left behind more than average water content in the honey. As a result, Last Forest has moved its storage facilities to Annur in the Coimbatore district, closer to the sea level, where it is easier to monitor and maintain the water content. While better monitoring systems in Annur are a solution, the best way, logistically, to ensure the water content is not too high is to harvest the honey at the right time.
“The climate is not what it used to be even a few years ago, the changes are quite drastic now,” says Madhu. “That’s a bit of a challenge which, I think, people are adapting to, but still, it’s a big shift in what we have been used to doing.”
Yashvi Shah is the Partnerships Copywriter at The Locavore. In her free time, she likes creating playlists for her friends, and going on runs.
Learn more about The Locavore’s growing community of food producers here.
