What is your name? If you’re part of an organisation: What is your function and what is the organisation’s activity?
My Name is Lopamudra Sahu, I look at our clients farms in Odisha and West Bengal.
Organization Activity: Here is the link to our site: https://edibleroutes.com/
At Edible Routes we foresee a world where our food is grown locally, near us & by people known to us. Edible Routes Organic Farms & Permaculture Consultancy Services aim at regenerating unused/vacant land in urban areas into vibrant and self-sustaining organic farms using natural and sustainable methods. In order to encourage people in the urban areas to grow their 100% natural greens, vegetables and herbs, we rent out our community farms for our urban growers.
How is your work or organisation related to legumes? (you can present a project in particular)
In our farmlet projects, legumes are a key component as they are easily grown such as the peas, lima beans and require very little maintenance. The beans help in enriching the nitrogen content of our soils. In the landscapes legumes forms important part of our crops designing as they help to recharge the soil, increase the nitrogen content naturally.
What fact(s) about legumes do you find most compelling for their promotion? Which are the biggest challenges a) for producers and b) for consumers?
In fact, a lot of compelling factors! Legumes are the largest source of plant proteins both for human and animal consumption and not to deny the various health impacts it has. Legumes contribute to an increased diversity of soil flora and fauna lending a greater stability to the total life of the soil. So they are integral for the regeneration of nutrient-deficient soils and are always an inseparable part of our permaculture designs.
Challenges! Our main challenges as a producer is storage and the low yields at times. I don’t think as consumers there are any as legumes are consumed widely in every section of the society in India
Would you like to share a specific information with the Global Bean club?
Yes surely. We have our events coming up time to time which are mentioned in our sites and social media. Our instagram link is https://instagram.com/edibleroutes?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y
How did you fall in love with legumes? Why are they so fascinating?
As a vegetarian, my favourite food since childhood was and is till date is Rice and dal (the Mung dal as we call it here in India) with veggies in it. And traditionally it is made into numerous mouth smothering recipes. My maternal grandfather was a farmer. He used to grow green gram (Mung dal) after harvesting the rice. It was a lovely sight to accompany him to the fields and see him farming. Every year it was a ritual to receive some green grams from him and I would love to have them in various forms-the sprouts, khicdi, soups, sweet dishes.
In the Eastern part of the country, it is very common to grow the green grams after the rice by the traditional farmers. And most importantly this crop required little or no maintenance and above all no fertilizers or insecticides and little irrigation. I am fascinated with the little pods that are so tiny yet so full of nutritive value!
