Back to the roots

Over 200 tribal villages in Madhya Pradesh are turning to forests to restore food security, breaking free from years of market dependence

- BHAGIRATH, MANDLA, MADHYA PRADESH

WHEN THE pandemic disrupted markets in 2020, Poona Yadav of Barkheda village in Madhya Pradesh's Mandla district faced a dilemma. The 42-year-old, like most households in her village, had come to depend entirely on the market for vegetables and greens. But with prices soaring and access shrinking during lockdowns, she turned towards a source long forgotten: the forest.

"Until 2020, I spent about ₹500 every week on vegetables," she says. "When the markets closed and prices soared, I returned to the forest to forage for fruits and vegetables. Now I spend only ₹50-100 a week on vegetables and that too only when the forest does not have enough." She adds that "the food is more nourishing than what I used to buy".

Yadav's experience reflects a broader shift in Mandla's tribal villages, where many families are consciously returning to ancestral foods and forest produce after years of drifting towards market rice and packaged goods. Across the district, women walk into the forests with baskets and return with seasonal vegetables. The forests offer a year-round bounty— pakri (Ficus virens), bhilwa (Semecarpus anacardium) and dozens of other nourishing options (see 'Forest feast', p48).

The change is not merely gustatory. For many households, it is economic and health-promoting. Yadav estimates the change saves her family nearly ₹25,000 a year. Falling expenditure on vegetables and grocery items is common across families in the village. For poor families, particularly those headed by women, forest produce is an affordable, nutrient-dense buffer against food insecurity. Women's control over the gathering and processing of forest produce has also brought more cash into household coffers.

CULTURAL RENAISSANCE

In Gadiya village, home to some 116 Baiga families, the renewal has taken on a cultural urgency.