Feb. 25th, 2014: Adivasi Food Festival, Bissam Cuttack, Odisha

We are organizing an adivasi food festival where both cultivated as well as uncultivated
and / or forest foods that the adivasis depend on will be displayed on
25th February at Bisamcuttack, Rayagada. This is a unique event where
people from a dozen tribes who live in the villages of Odisha,
Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh  and Maharashtra will gather
with their local produce to tell us how and why they prefer their
traditional food. Members from  the  Kondh, Koya, Didai, Santhal,
Juanga, Baiga, Bhil, Pahari Korva, Paudi Bhuiyan and Birhor from more
than 300 villages spread across the tribal heartland of India.

The idea behind this adivasi food festival is to show that traditional
food culture of these people, based on their age-old agriculture
practices, have provided food and nutritional security for them down
the ages. If such practices are nurtured and improved upon, it would
provide far better food security than the current public distribution
system does and also help the communities and the forests in
protecting each other.

It will be a colourful event with singing and story-telling in an
unusual mingling of tribal cultures. Adivasi and Dalit children from
nearby villages and schools will also participate in this festival
which will showcase the richness of their food diversity and local
cultures. We will also be putting together more than 400 recipes for
dishes made from locally cultivated crops and uncultivated and /
forest produce – a rich storehouse of knowledge that needs to be
preserved and respected.

The food festival on 25th February will be followed by a discussion
the next day on ways to increase such linkages through collective
efforts to protect tribal practices and thus ensure the harmonious
relation between people and forests.

We look forward to meeting you on the 25th February at Bisamcuttack, Rayagada.
Debjeet 9938582616
Pradeep 9556825614
Bichitra 9438468474

LIVING FARMS, BHUBANESWAR