Digging for Roots

The turmeric field is in the back of the farm, behind the storage shed. We dig out the roots with a simple tool designed to chop at the dirt to easily dig into it, tear off the leaves, place a small shoot of the root back into the ground, dump the roots into a water bucket to rinse them, and take them up to the roof of the storage building to dry. The next day, some people will cut the roots into smaller pieces, and they will continue to dry. After the turmeric dries, Navdanya will send it to a mill to be ground and then use it in the kitchen sell it in the stores.

Working in the turmeric fields at Navdanya, I feel like I am reaching out to the foundations of agriculture. We work our way through the fields, digging up the turmeric roots, pinching off a piece and replanting it in the soil, and taking the larger part to wash, cut, and dry for processing.

The Agricultural Revolution was not so much a revolution as a slow transition from foraging to permanent agriculture. Some societies even tried agriculture and returned to foraging for their food sustenance. As the women were foraging, they noticed that they could replant portions of whatever it was they were taking and return later that same year or the following year to harvest the produce again.

Root vegetables were an easy way to use this practice. The women began to notice that if they left a potato or a piece of turmeric or ginger in the ground, it would grow a new plant, so they began to intentionally leave behind root pieces for this purpose. Slowly, many societies became more sedentary and used these processes along with others to produce their own food in a single location. Although the process was a little more complicated than this, the general move happened somewhat in this fashion.

In many communities, this move toward sedentary lifestyles through the Agricultural Revolution began the process of social stratification and the growth of societies into larger units as labor became freed up for other pursuits such as the development of writing and intellectual pursuits. This formed the foundation of our modern societies.

Yet today, so many educated people are returning to the land, returning to the very process of root harvesting that started the whole thing. As Nikola, an intern from Greece, said, it is precisely because he has two degrees that he wants to get into farming and work with his hands.