S5, E49: Sana Javeri Kadri’s Regenerative Spice Farming Revolution

The spices in your cabinet are probably five to seven years old—and that’s not an accident.

On this episode of Unpacked, host Aislyn Greene sits down with Sana Javeri Kadri, founder of Diaspora Spice Co., who spent nine years dismantling a 500-year-old system and replacing it with something radically different: direct relationships with regenerative spice farming partners across India and Sri Lanka. What starts as a question about how old the spices in your cabinet really are unfolds into a conversation about colonialism, cultural erasure, and what it actually takes to trace a turmeric root back to the family who grew it.

Sana Javeri Kadri on Decolonizing the Global Spice Trade

Most spices sitting in a US grocery store have already been in their jars for 5 to 7 years by the time they reach your kitchen—a fact that Diaspora Co. founder Sana set out to change in 2017. On this episode of Unpacked, host Aislyn Greene talks with Kadri about building a direct-trade spice company that pays South Asian farmers up to 4 times the commodity price for turmeric, cardamom, black pepper, and cinnamon, and about the annual sourcing trips across India and Sri Lanka that shaped both her business and The Diaspora Spice Co. Cookbook, her debut book built entirely around the farm families behind her spices.

Topics discussed in this episode

• How 500 years of colonization reshaped the spice trade, and why most grocery-store spices are 5 to 7 years old by the time they reach your kitchen
• Why oil content, not kernel size, is what actually determines a spice’s quality and flavor
• What an annual sourcing trip across India and Sri Lanka’s spice farms actually looks like
• The origin story of Pragati turmeric and the Kasaraneni family farm that started Diaspora Co.
• Inside a Sri Lankan cinnamon and clove processing facility, and why true cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum) differs from the cassia most Americans grow up cooking with
• Writing The Diaspora Spice Co. Cookbook: 5 years spent gathering heirloom recipes from farm families across South Asia

Frequently asked questions

What is Diaspora Co.?

Diaspora Co. (also known as Diaspora Spice Co.) is a direct-trade spice company founded by Sana Javeri Kadri in 2017. It works with 140 regenerative farmers across India and Sri Lanka, paying them an average of 4 times the commodity price.

Why are grocery store spices so old?

Most spices sold in conventional grocery stores have been sitting in warehouses, ships, or on shelves for 5 to 7 years by the time they reach a home kitchen, which significantly dulls their flavor.

What is Pragati turmeric?

Pragati is a turmeric variety developed by the Indian Institute of Spices Research from an original wild variety in eastern India, prized for its high curcumin content. It was the first spice Diaspora Co. sourced, from farmer Prabhu Kasaraneni’s family farm in Andhra Pradesh.

What’s the difference between true cinnamon and cassia cinnamon?

True cinnamon, or Cinnamomum verum, is indigenous to Sri Lanka. Most cinnamon sold in the US is actually cassia, a different tree grown mainly in China and Vietnam that’s spicier but less nuanced, and can cause liver damage in large doses.

Where can I buy Diaspora Co. spices?

Diaspora Co.’s spices and blends are sold directly at diasporaco.com.

People, places, and resources in this episode

• Diaspora Co.—Sana’s direct-trade spice company
• The Diaspora Spice Co. Cookbook—by Sana and Asha Loupy
• Follow Diaspora Co.: Instagram
• Indian Institute of Spices Research—developer of Pragati turmeric
• Guntur Sannam chilies, grown by the Narne family—read Diaspora’s chili primer
• Ekoland—the Kandy, Sri Lanka cooperative behind Diaspora’s cinnamon and cloves; read more
• Bi-Rite, San Francisco—where Sana first asked where the spices came from
• Full Belly Farm—Sana’s CSA in Northern California

Full transcript

Aislyn Greene: Okay, I want you to picture your spice cabinet or your spice rack or your spice drawer, whatever it is. Wherever you keep your spices, I want you to think about how old those spices are, not when you purchase them, but how long they had been in those jars before they made it to your house, because the answer might shock you. If you guess that they’ve been in those jars for about 5 to 7 years before they ever made it into your home, you’re probably right. Maybe you’ve never before thought about spices as having an age, let alone a life before they made it into your home, that they came from a farm, that a family harvested them, that each spice contains a travel story that’s as old as time itself.

I’m Aislyn Greene, and this is Unpacked by Afar, and today’s guest thinks about spices constantly. Sana found, Diaspora, the spice co. in 2017 to take a hard look at the spice trade, and what she found was a system that hadn’t really changed in like 500 years. So she built something totally new. Direct relationships with farmers across India and Sri Lanka who grow spices like turmeric, cardamom and cinnamon. And she set up a retail business so that the rest of us can actually taste the difference and know exactly whose hands grew what sitting in our cabinet. Today she tells us that story, plus what she learned writing her first book, The Diaspora Spice Co. Cookbook, which was 5 years in the making and built entirely around the farm families behind her spices.

Well, Sana, welcome to unpacked. It’s so nice to meet you.

Sana Javeri Kadri: It’s very exciting to be here.

Aislyn: So you founded Diaspora in 2017 to revolutionize the spice industry. Can you set the scene for us? What was the state of the spice trade at that point in time?

Sana: So first of all, like I didn’t go in knowing what the state was. It was very exploratory where I was like, what is the state? And what I found was that essentially, you know, the spice trade has existed for thousands of years. It goes all the way back 4,000 years. On paper, likely more than that. So basically, the west coast of India in ancient Rome and Egypt have been like hanging out and sharing recipes and sharing ingredients for 4,000 years. And as far as we know, that was an equitable trade. There wasn’t anything amiss. Yeah. Like the Romans were paying good money or good gold, and they were getting lots of good black pepper. It only was about 400 to now, 500 years ago, where the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the French were like, we would like control of this trade. Right. So it went from being a trade to being colonization, where they were showing up in India, in Indonesia, in Sri Lanka, and taking over the island or region and saying everything you grow and everything that leaves this port belongs to us. As a result, they were able to buy from farmers or get from farmers at very, very low prices. And then all of the traders and middle people off the East India Company or the Dutch India Company were making tons of money. And then the British or you know Dutch consumer was getting something. Um, how good it was. And like when it where it came from.

Aislyn: Yeah. Yeah.

Sana: So what I found basically 9 years ago was that the trade had not changed in 500 years. So, you know, the British left India in 1947. But traders and kind of capitalism just took over where colonialism left off. And so the spice trade that I found in 2017 was the spices in your grocery store shelf are 5 to 7 years old, just ancient.

Aislyn: Yes.

Sana: That was problem number one. Two farmers were making no money for growing spices. And then customers were actually paying quite a bit. Like, I went to Safeway the other day and I saw that the Morton and Bassett like glass jars are between $8 to $13, which is not cheap. You know, like that actually makes, Diaspora like the company I run, like price competitive.

Aislyn: Yeah.

Sana: So yeah, basically I found that the industry was stale and old and nobody was making money. And in all of my like 23-year-old, like, I can do anything. I’m a genius. I was like, I’m gonna change it.

Aislyn: And fast forward to where you are today. What do you do? Kind of in a nutshell.

Aislyn: Yeah.

Aislyn: And I know it takes generations to affect change, but what would you say that you have done since then?

Aislyn: Yeah.

Sana: So we work with 140 regenerative farmers across India and Sri Lanka, and we’ve been able to pay those farmers an average of 4x above the commodity price and that, you know, that sounds like a good number, but I think the two numbers that I really like is that we’ve been able to pay our farmers about $4 million total since 2020.

Aislyn: Wow.

Sana: 6 years. And, um, so the average South Asian farmer makes about $2,000 per year. Okay. That is like the average income of a 3-to-4-acre farmer in South Asia, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan. We are able to pay our farm partners $26,000 a year on average.

Aislyn: Wow.

Sana: So it’s it’s a big jump.

Aislyn: That’s a big jump. That is a really big jump. What has that meant for some of your farmers in terms of how their lives have changed?

Sana: I would say, it’s really year one. They’ll get a smartphone.

Aislyn: Yeah.

Sana: Um, year 2 they will send their kids to better schools and start being able to take care of different family members and health needs. And then year 3, they will look into expansion and their ambitions will grow. And kind of from year 4, they want to grow with us. You know, we now have about 25 spices and 15 blends. So we have a pretty big portfolio of blends and spices that we offer people. And people always ask me like, okay, well, what’s next? Why do you want to grow? And it’s actually not my ambition that we’re growing for. It’s our farm partner’s ambition. Like.

Aislyn: Interesting.

Sana: They want to do more. They want to take on more. They want to provide better for their families. And so we grow.

Aislyn: It’s so not the capitalist mentality. Well, congratulations for all that you’ve done. Was there anything in particular that sparked that back when you were 23? Like, were you looking at a bottle of, you know, turmeric at a Safeway and wondering what, where this came from?

Sana: So, you know. I would describe Safeway as like, you know, your, your run of the mill grocery store. But back then I was working at Bi-Rite in San Francisco, which I love.

Aislyn: The best, the best.

Sana: And I was asking like, hey, where do you guys spices come from. And they didn’t know, you know, they were bringing in spices from like, Spicely. So they were bringing in the most beautiful fruit and produce and, you know, fish and meat in the world. But when it came to things from like spices from the global South, there at that point wasn’t an awareness of where that should come from. And so finding that, like the best grocery stores in the world were sourcing like really bad spices, was alarming.

Aislyn: Yes, alarming and shocking. And why, why do you think we haven’t thought about spices in this way? Like, what is it about it that left it exempt from that kind of critical thinking?

Sana: The basics of what colonialism did is it robs us of money and capital, right? Like so the number of I didn’t know that India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are what you would consider. South Asia used to be the richest region in the world. Pre-colonization and the value of what was stolen from those regions, you could include, you know, Nepal, Myanmar, etc. was about $50 trillion in today’s money. So like the amount is sort of unfathomable, right? And I had to like fact check that number so many times because I was like, guys, that’s a really big number. So we know of like the financial theft from South Asia, but I don’t think what we what we miss is the cultural theft, right?

So when black pepper stopped being traded freely, um, and started being controlled, any understanding of black where black pepper came from was actually willfully erased from the archive because the traders made more money if people didn’t know the source. And then if you don’t know the source, how do you educate yourself on how is it most delicious? How is it most fresh? How do you process it so that it has the most aroma? So then all the like intellectual knowledge of how to kind of determine quality was like subject to rumor and myth making that helped the British in this case, like make a lot more money. So their idea of like the best black pepper was the largest kernels of black pepper. They just based it on size, which has nothing to do with what creates the best black pepper.

Aislyn: Really, what makes the best black pepper?

Sana: Oil Content Like if so, with all spices, fat is flavor. If you have a higher oil content, you have more flavor on your palate. But the British didn’t like, want you to know that because then they would or I would should just blame all the colonizers equally. Let’s not just blame one. But if you knew that as the consumer, you would start demanding a fresher product, which they didn’t have because it had been living in a warehouse or a ship for years. Like actually the not knowing where to get better quality spices or how to look for better quality spices was something that was like obfuscated on purpose by the system.

Aislyn: Yeah.

Sana: And then that has continued because like, you know, the four large spice companies that run the industry today, they also benefit from my mother in law not knowing that her cinnamon is seven years old. Um, it allows them to make a lot more money.

Aislyn: Yes, yes, that makes so much sense. And it’s such an interesting thing to think about because I do feel like, and I know this is part of, you know, what you’ve done to educate people, but it’s such a common experience for Western travelers to go someplace. Like, for example, when I went to Bali and I was like, oh, that’s vanilla. Like, you know, just thank

Sana: Exactly.

Aislyn: You’re like, why did I never think about it as a plant with an origin story and people who are working. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you are helping bridge that gap and bring that cultural legacy back into the conversation.

Sana: When I started the company at 23, I was, um, a like, like punk baby gay. I had just come out, I had just graduated college, I was living in San Francisco. And my biggest thing was that I, I didn’t just want to find the most beautiful turmeric. I also wanted anybody who was cooking with that turmeric to know what the plant looks like, to know which variety of the plant it was. What’s its indigenous name? Who grew the plant? What does the family that grew the plant cook with the plant? Right. Like, why do we not know what like an Andhra turmeric farmer does with a beautiful turmeric, that they are some of the only people in the world to be preserving this, like really special heirloom variety that they grow really valuable. And like we, we love knowing that information for strawberries and peaches. You know, I get a full Belly Farm CSA here every week, and I love knowing what the family does that grows those vegetables does with it. I wanted to do the same. And I think the magic of building Diaspora has been that we’ve been able to find a community of home cooks and professional chefs who do want to know and who do care.

Aislyn: Well, since this is Travel Tales, I wanted to kind of focus on these annual trips that you take. Since you do seem do you still split your time between Mumbai and I do. Okay, cool. So you take a three month annual trip to kind of visit the farms that you work with and the farmers that you work with. So can you tell me first about why did you start doing that? Was that about sourcing and kind of building those relationships?

Sana: Yeah, I think the beginning was that I had no roadmap and no, um, existing supply chain to bank on and no manual for, you know, how does one tell what the best pepper is? Nobody was telling me. I was like blindly googling and trying to figure it out. So the first few trips was saying, okay, I found a farmer who grows beautiful turmeric. I’ve met his family. It’s the Kasaraneni family. They’re selling to us now. Life is good. But now I would like some cardamom. Where do I find beautiful pesticide free cardamom that is really aromatic and delicious? And I thought that that would be a very easy process.

Aislyn: That was not.

Sana: True. It took about 14 months of collecting samples from across southern India, which is like the primary cardamom growing regions. There’s actually a hill range in Kerala called the Cardamom Hills. And so I was collecting samples from everywhere, and I was discovering that all of the samples I was getting, they were using pesticides. And it’s because it’s such a cash crop that the risk to not use pesticides and then get hit by some kind of pest attack is so scary and such a huge risk. And so I think that first, um, sourcing trip in 2018, after turmeric was about 6 weeks just to find a regenerative cardamom source. And this was after months of, you know, research sitting in the US. And then the second trip was like, okay, well, now what about black pepper?

Aislyn: And where did you go to find black pepper?

Sana: So I, you know, Kerala is the birthplace of cardamom and black pepper. But I was just finding that Kerala had become sort of touristified to the point where you were going to these farms that were almost for show. And it was very hard initially for me to access the farms that were like growing as their main vocation and not like with the tourism, like angle attached or like as like landed generational wealth where they happen to have some land that they were farming on. Um, I was like, where are the real farmers? And it took a lot of visits to find them. So each, basically each trip was me looking for new spices and trying to build out our supply chain. And now if you go on our website or you look in our cookbook, you’ll see a map and you know, we’ve kind of filled out 11 states across India and Sri Lanka. But for every single farmer that I end up working with and partnering with, we probably visit 10 others and we collect samples from maybe 40 others. Um, so it’s sort of an insane process of collection before we make our final decision.

Aislyn: And relationship building. It sounds like.

Sana: Tremendously.

Aislyn: I mean, to even know where to look. Like you would have to just talk to people. I would think you talk to a lot of people.

Sana: We talk to a lot of people. I mean, I would join random WhatsApp group chats and like Command-F different words to be like, do you have coriander? Do you have fennel? Maybe in three languages.

Aislyn: Oh my gosh. That is wild. How would you say that you changed as kind of a person, as a traveler, as you’re going back and going through these experiences over the years?

Sana: I grew up a, um, Mumbai like, privileged South Bombay kid. Um, sure. My parents like tried to expose me to lots of things, but I had a pretty sheltered childhood. And suddenly at age 23, I again was given the privilege to travel solo to the rural most parts of India and Sri Lanka, and meet incredible agricultural families who were really choosing to do things differently, you know, and push the envelope on what sustainability and growing for flavor could look like. It was very, very lucky. And I would say now travel is so embedded into who I am. My partner jokes that he’s been on more flights since he met me than ever in the 36 years of his life before that.

Aislyn: Does he join you on on all of your trips?

Sana: We have 2 young daughters, so not so much. I very much go and do my job and then come back. But he does come to India frequently. I try to have the India trips be the joy ones and not the like. Mama’s visiting 14 farms in 1 week kind of thing.

Aislyn: Where it becomes a grind.

Sana: Exactly.

Aislyn: Tell me about this most recent trip, and maybe the joy part of your recent trip to India, and highlight some of the kind of experiences that stood out to you, or the memories that you made that you still think about now?

Sana: I got to visit Andhra Pradesh, which is where our very first farm partners, the Kasanin family, who grew our turmeric, are. And it wasn’t turmeric harvest time yet, but it was even more special because I got to see the turmeric fields at almost full maturity right before harvest. They are dense. So it’s a crop that like kind of reaches to my shoulders and it’s long green, like lime green leaves. And it’s super aromatic in terms of like that earthy, almost lemony smell of turmeric. And if you smell the leaves, you get the smell too. It’s not just the root. The leaves are so beautiful because they have oil in them as well. Right?

Aislyn: Can you do anything with the leaves?

Sana: In the monsoon, people harvest small amounts of the leaves and use them to steam things like similar to banana leaves. But the thing is, if you are growing for the root, you actually wait until the leaves die for when you harvest the root. So you don’t want to pull too many of the leaves because you’re going to impact the final product of your turmeric root.

Aislyn: Wow. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Just picturing standing in this field and smelling that.

Sana: It’s beautiful. And Prabhu actually has marigolds on the border of the farm because they’re great for pest control. And actually the aroma of the marigolds keep pests away from the turmeric.

Aislyn: Okay.

Sana: And then he has this ginormous two mango trees that were not yet fruiting, alas. But every time I look up longingly and I look at the parrots, like snacking on the green mangoes, being like, I’m getting what you can’t. So I started with turmeric. Then about an hour drive, we went to the Narne family farm who grow these iconic chilies called Guntur Sannam chilies. They’re really savory. And I think, you know, Prabhu is an expert at growing turmeric, or the Kasaraneni family.

But the Narne’s do something very different where they are a highly diversified farm. So yes, they’re growing chilies, which is what we buy from them. But on like in one row, I will also see millets and peanuts and bottle gourd and cucumber, really delicious, like wild cherry tomatoes. It’s a really dense companion planting setup and it’s a very dry region. So the turmeric farm just one hour away is is river fed and much more humid and wet, whereas the chili farm is like bone dry, real hot. And so by actually planting everything close, close, close, close, close together in this arid landscape, the roots hold more water because everything’s close together rather than the water evaporating. Yeah, it’s really it’s really nerdy and cool.

Aislyn: It’s so nerdy and cool. What are you doing when you’re there? Like I imagine, you know, you’re spending time with the farmers and catching up on their lives, but like, are you also tasting? Are you smelling? Are you learning about new things that you could bring to your customers?

Sana: I will say, the biggest part of the job is we’re eating and we’re like competitively eating because as the guests and the buyers, we are being hosted, right? And there’s this like very strong hospitality spirit in India and I would say in Sri Lanka too. And so our partners are usually like stuffing us. It’s like three breakfasts minimum on any given farm visit. We’re over there.

Aislyn: Please no more. I’m supposed to do my job. Can’t eat this much

Sana: So there’s a lot of eating while we eat. We try to sneak in the work, which is like, how’s the harvest going? You know, do you have all the components you need? What about the milling? And then usually, like right now, because we’ve been sourcing from our partners for so long, it’s really refining and improving. So for example, with the Kasaraneni family, they have been now selling us turmeric for 8 years, which is tremendous. Um, but they’ve only been giving us one crop. So there’s a risk factor associated with that work. Because if they lose that crop for any reason, what do we do? And so a lot of this trip was us trying to figure out a second crop that we could work with them on.

Aislyn: Cool.

Sana: A fun one that we’re thinking of is a variety of green chili that will freeze dry before it turns red. So while it’s still green, which makes it like spicy, but still, it has a lot of like lemony, citrusy notes. So it’s very sharp. It’s almost like a Meyer lemon, a cilantro and jalapeno had a baby.

Aislyn: I love that.

Sana: I know, it’s exciting.

Aislyn: I know, inspiring. To think about what you could do with that in the kitchen.

Sana: Exactly. So we’ve been like prototyping that. And then with our chili farmers, you know, they’re already growing so many other crops that it’s more just figuring out like, is there a way that your soil could be healthier to increase your yield? And I now do less of that, like really nerdy agricultural work. Our farm partner manager, Neha, who comes from an agricultural background, she’ll sit there and like collect soil samples and measure their rainfall and do those kinds of things to really get nerdy. And that data is also really valuable to share with our other farm partners. And so if somebody is having a problem, we can be like, oh, we have this farmer in another state or another country who actually had the same problem. Y’all should chat with each other. And so we’re able to like create a network, basically.

Aislyn: Amazing. That’s what I was going to ask is as you have built this company, are you becoming known to farmers within India and Sri Lanka? Like, oh, I want to work with Diaspora and this is what I would need to do.

Sana: I mean, I think we’re very lucky in that. Yeah, we have never not paid in advance and on time, and we’ve never lost a farm partner in 9 years of being in business. So I think we are mutually great partners. And so we get a lot of inbound inquiries and a lot of samples to our office and blowing up our phones usually like, oh, there’s 7 kilograms of turmeric just got delivered to the office. Anybody know why? I don’t know why.

Aislyn: That sounds like a good problem to have, perhaps. Well, we’re going to take a quick break, and when we get back, we’re gonna play a few voice memos that you collected from your most recent trip.

Okay, so let’s start with this one in Sri Lanka. You were at a farm that grows cinnamon and cloves.

Sana: In Kandy, Sri Lanka, we work with a cooperative that is essentially sourcing really high specialty grade cinnamon. And then we’re also sourcing cloves. And I always love visiting and spending time with the women that run the processing facility because they are so competent, they are so fierce. Um, they really, um, will champion a standard once it’s been set.

Aislyn: So now that we’ve heard this, can you tell me more about this farm and these women? Because they sound amazing.

Sana: They are amazing. So we work with an organization called Ekoland in Sri Lanka, and they essentially bring cinnamon and cloves from about 40 farms around them to their processing facility. And when you say processing facility, it sounds like a cool factory. It’s very much like a beautiful structure in the forest where using wood burnings, like forest wood burning stoves, we are like slow drying cinnamon and cloves. And then they have 10 women who work on the estate and are in charge of sorting and processing.

The thing is, cinnamon is incredibly complicated in that every tree harvested could be a different variety and therefore have completely different flavor profiles. And so quality controlling for like the grade of sweetness and spiciness that we want is very hard and requires the women to basically like, often taste every single tree or batch. It is so labor intensive. And that is often why the cinnamon that is available here in the US is Cassia, which is a completely different tree and not Cinnamomum verum, and Cassia is fine. Like it’s spicy. It’s delicious. It comes mostly from China and Vietnam. Um, but it in large doses causes liver damage. Casual. Um, where and you know, not and not to be fear mongering about it. Like if you’re putting a little bit in your cooking, like you’re totally fine. Um, but if you’re looking to your cinnamon for health benefits, you’re getting the wrong tree.

It’s called Cinnamomum verum, or true cinnamon and it, it is indigenous to Sri Lanka. It now grows in some other parts of the world, but it is from Sri Lanka. But it is a very finicky tree. And the Dutch, you know, just completely cut down so many trees during their colonization. So finding old growth highly flavorful trees is tough. What we’ve learned is that the sweetness in cinnamon comes from young trees in some varieties, and the spiciness comes from old trees. So our blends are actually 50% young growth, 50% old growth. So we’re sitting there like literally taste testing different tree barks to be like, yes, this blend tastes right. Totally. Yeah, it was madness. But it’s also so gratifying and fun.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so you’re getting a tree. You’re getting like a cut down log. And somehow that’s going to turn into the cinnamon powder that gets put on my kid’s oatmeal. First you are soaking the tree or the giant log in water to soften the bark and separate the outer layer of the bark. Then there’s extremely skilled peelers, and peeling of cinnamon bark is a dying art. Um, I tried and I failed miserably because you only want to peel off the, like, thinnest first layer. It’s similar to like a plastic surgeon, like trying to peel off only one layer of skin. Because if you go deeper than that, you get bitter tree and not delicious bark. In our case, the peeler, who’s been working with Ecoland, has been with them for years, and he’s delicately taking off the outer bark.

Then we’re deciding, okay, did it get peeled off in a nice enough peel that it can become a quill? Or like, did it break half way through? And it needs to become powder. You know, when you peel an orange and it’s like all one one strip. That’s the level of cinnamon bark that becomes quills. And then if you break it along the way, we make it into powder, not because it’s bad, but just because it broke. And then the other thing we do is the cinnamon quill will usually have the thicker old growth spicy bark on the outside because it will basically hold its oil content better because it’s thicker and denser. And then we’ll put the soft, thin new growth barks, which become like are more like shavings. They’re not as like hard and woody. We will put fill those inside the quill and then roll it like a joint, to be honest. Like that’s what cinnamon rolling is. Rolling little bark joints.

Exactly. I’m in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh at our Pragati Turmeric Farm Partners field. I’m actually actively walking in the fields right now. Um, and I think what I’m just so struck by is the journey that the Kasaraneni family and I have been on, um, in the 9 years that we’ve been working together, they have had deaths, marriages, new babies, a beautiful new baby, um, ups and downs. I started, you know, I first met them when I was 23 and I’m now 32. Um, so in so many ways, I think I can, I can think about the past decade, um, with my visits to them for this turmeric harvest as like milestones and check ins. Yeah.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Sana: So I was searching for a turmeric farmer, and I had no leads. Even though I was liberal arts college educated and good at research. I just couldn’t find a regenerative farm growing, you know, in coordination with the land in a sustainable way, growing an heirloom variety that was also very delicious. No matter who I WhatsApped and who I called. So I was connected with the Indian Institute of Spices Research.

There is an Indian Institute of Spices Research, and they gave me this real primer on all the different varieties of turmeric, including a variety that they had been domesticating and developing for a long time called Pragati turmeric. And what they loved about it was that it was originally a wild variety from the eastern part of India, and it held its curcumin content really well. Curcumin is like the anti-inflammatory good stuff, and it is a short duration crop. So you could grow two other crops through the rest of the year and not waste so much time. Right. So I was like, okay, well, thanks for telling me about turmeric, who’s growing it. And they introduced me to this farmer called Mr. Prabhu Kasaraneni. He was in a small town outside of a big city, about a 3-hour flight away from me. I had never been to Andhra Pradesh to state that he’s based in before, and I got into a little propeller airplane and went to go see him. Now there’s like big direct planes directly there. But nine years ago twas not, I think he was really expecting a much older woman, poor guy. Because, you know, I was saying like, oh, I’ve worked in this industry and now I want to do this. And I don’t know, maybe I like sounded more grown up where I was like, pretending to me more grown up. but he was very shocked at like the 23-year-old who showed up at his doorstep. And I spent, I think, 3 days with his family. I stayed at a hotel nearby and he was really sweet to come get me and drop me off every day.

We visited all the farms. They fed me a lot of food, so their family was at that time was growing rice, bananas and turmeric. And I was most interested in the turmeric. But I mean, I also like bananas and I also like rice. So we toured all the farms. And one of the first things he ever said to me was, you know, ma’am, if you don’t care about how I’m taking care of the soil and this like natural farming method that I am employing, I don’t need to sell to you. And I think that was so incredible to hear that this man, who was not that much older than me at the time, had such principles and was taking his family farm and in completely turning it around. You know?

I will be honest and say Prabhu is an amazing turmeric farmer and does not cook at all. He is very lucky to have a mother and an aunt who are incredible cooks. So his aunt makes a turmeric milk every morning for the whole family. Firstly, using like fresh cream top milk from their cows. Um. Never have I ever had a more delicious milk. And then they add like a little drop of ki also using, you know, homemade. And then they do turmeric, a little bit of cardamom. And it’s sweetened with jaggery that he trades with a nearby farmer for. So it’s so delicious. Um. No ma’am. We tried in the book there’s a recipe, but it’s not as good.

Yeah, it’s been a tiring 6 years, I would say from like pandemic to more pandemic to inflation to politicking to now tariffs. We spent most of last year paying 50% tariffs, which was devastating. And we had to increase our prices, which was also really tough. We were still waiting on a refund from the American government, per the Supreme Court judgment. So if anybody knows anybody, please get me a refund. And I think that, you know, we now have this whole slew of spices from across India and Sri Lanka with most of the greatest hits. Like, I think we have the best fennel that I’ve ever had in the world. We have a beautiful black pepper. My kids are obsessed with our garlic powder. and then we made a book, which has been wild, but I think now I’ve always been pro going deep rather than wide. So I think we will continue to focus on sourcing from South Asia because there’s so much to be gained from it.

Our main office and our main team actually sit in Mumbai in India, which is where I’m from and I grew up. I love that most of my team speaks most of the languages that our foreign partners speak, and we’re able to do impact work. You know, we’re just able to do the work at a very deep level, which if I were to like show up in Taiwan or show up in Vietnam, sure, it would be really cool. But like, what do I actually know about that? Like, I don’t know that I have the audacity, you know, and neither should I. Like, I think there’s a Taiwanese person who could do a much better job than me, and likely a Vietnamese person who could do a much better job than me. And I hope they do. So I think we’ll keep going deep.

I do think it’s funny that we’ve spent 9 years selling spices on the internet where you can’t taste or smell them. So I think we’re gonna do some things this year in the name of opening some stores. Yeah. And they’re small. I won’t tell you where, but from where you live, you will be able to access it quite easily. You can’t make a guess because I can’t confirm or deny. Exactly. Yeah. So we spent 5 years writing this book called The Diaspora Spice Co Cookbook. And a lot of times when I say that name, people are like, oh, so you came up with some recipes to like pair with your spices. That would have been easier for sure, but we did not take the easy route, unfortunately. So we basically spent 5 years researching how our farm partners cook with the spices that they grow and how they cook in their homes. And so we wrote a book that is inspired by the farm kitchens that we source from, and it’s their heirloom recipes. They’re credited for every recipe they were paid us recipe development rates for each recipe. And also, I think, you know, there’s this assumption that South Asian food is somehow like greasy or complicated or just butter chicken and non and dal makhani and saag paneer. And I think the book really complicates that because the recipes are fresh and seasonal and really quite straightforward. It’s been a labor of love and it’s been really exciting to see it out in the world.

Aislyn: And I know you said that this was the harder route versus the easy route, but it sounds like it really honors the spirit of what your work is in this world. So, you know, I commend you for taking the harder route. It sounds like it was worth it.

Sana: It was.

Aislyn: The Diaspora Spice Co. Cookbook is out now wherever you get your cookbooks, and you can find all of Sana’s spices at diasporaco.com. That link is in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening to Unpacked. We’ll see you next week.

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This has been Unpacked a production of Afar Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Greene and Nikki Galteland. Music from Chris Colin and Epidemic Sound. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. Visit airwavemedia.com to listen and subscribe to their other fine shows like Culture Kids and The Explorers Podcast.