Written for the Good Food Movement as part of my monthly column ‘The Plate and the Planet’. Published in July 2025. Header image credit: Alia Sinha for the Good Food Movement. Every morning, as India’s cities slowly come to life, crates of vegetables and fruits—some harvested just hours earlier in fields nearby—are unloaded in wholesale […]
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Written for the Good Food Movement as part of my monthly column ‘The Plate and the Planet’. Published in July 2025. Header image credit: Prabhakaran S for Good Food Movement. What makes Darjeeling tea truly Darjeeling? How much of its fiery strength does the Guntur Sannam chilli owe to the growers who know just when to […]
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Written for the Good Food Movement as part of my monthly column ‘The Plate and the Planet’. Published in June 2025. Header image credit: Kaushani Mufti for the Good Food Movement. Across India, it is not uncommon to find people relying on nature and its signs to determine the course of their own actions, from […]
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Written for the Good Food Movement as part of my monthly column ‘The Plate and the Planet’. Published in May 2025. Header image credit: Good Food Movement. Can a rapidly expanding industry feed a nation without compromising its ecosystems or its people’s health? Aquaculture—which involves farming fish, shellfish, and aquatic plants—has become central to this […]
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Published open access in Food Policy in November 2024. The research presented in this paper was supported by the EU Horizon project FUSILLI under grant agreement No. 101000717. View full text here. Title Small wins in practice: Learnings from 16 European initiatives working towards the transformation of urban food systems Abstract In this study, we […]
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From 16th – 18th October 2024, Wageningen Centre of Sustainability Governance organised a conference entitled ‘Governing Sustainable Transformations’. The central theme of the conference centred around the questions: Can sustainability transformation be governed? And if so by whom, what and how? As part of the thematic session ‘Evaluating Sustainable Transformations’, I presented the outcomes of […]
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Written for eufic.org. Published in August 2024. In Europe and around the world, the safety and regulatory status of glyphosate, a commonly employed herbicide, remain subjects of ongoing debate. Despite its effectiveness in weed control and utility in modern agriculture, concerns persist about its presence in food and potential health risks. While conflicting conclusions emerge […]
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Originally published on foodunfolded.com in June 2023. Bibimbap, Biryani, Jollof Rice, Nasi Lemak, Paella, Risotto, Sushi – the list of delicious rice dishes from around the world is truly endless. But how did this humble grain come to be a ubiquitous, universally loved food? Let’s take a look at the origins of rice and scientific […]
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Written for and originally published on aeon.co on 19 June 2023 Having lived nowhere other than the western coast of India for the first 21 years of my life, seafood was an indispensable part of my diet growing up. When the family business was prospering, we’d feast on plump pomfrets and juicy tiger prawns. When it wasn’t, […]
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Originally published on foodunfolded.com on 31/05/2023 Sin maíz no hay país – without maize, there is no country – is a popular slogan from a Mexican campaign that seeks to preserve the country’s native maize seeds, varieties and smallholder farmers’ rights. In Mexico and many other countries, where millions depend on maize for their sustenance […]
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Madhura Rao 