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    Salt Tales: Exploring the hidden costs behind our essential seasoning

    Synopsis

    In the exploration of salt production, particularly in Goa, India, sociologist Reyna Sequeira and food writer Naomi Duguid shed light on the multifaceted impact of this essential substance. Sequeira's research reveals the tensions within salt-making communities, stemming from fears of exploitation and land acquisition. Duguid highlights the historical and contemporary dynamics of salt as a commodity, emphasizing its control and commercialization by corporations.

    The Costs of SaltiStock
    The Costs of Salt
    When sociologist Reyna Sequeira researched Goa’s salt-making communities she was occasionally greeted with hostility. “Are you going to tax me for the salt that we produce?” one man asked her angrily. Others had different apprehensions, for example, of builders grabbing their salt pan lands to build seaside hotels.

    Naomi Duguid is unsurprised by these reactions. The food writer is famous for books which combine travels to places beyond usual tourist destinations – regional Burma, western China, the parts of the old Persian empire beyond Iran – with deep dives into basic foods, like the varieties of flatbreads and rice cooked in these places. Her latest book, The Miracle of Salt, combines both strands with the food substance basic for human survival which is harvested from marginal lands around the world.

    Speaking with me recently at the Goa Art and Literature Festival, Duguid said that what this means is that salt becomes a form of control. Throughout history traders have tried to manage supplies and governments have taxed salt in the knowledge that people will have to buy. Today, corporates market industrially made salt as ultra-pure, implicitly downgrading the work of salt-makers who have made local salts for centuries. “Salt is a very costly thing which for now,. these days, we pay very little,” she said.

    The fears of Goa’s salt makers are paralleled around the world, as those who expend arduous and painful labour, under the hot sun or in salt mines, with salt searing their flesh, then see others reaping the benefits. Duguid describes the diverse places from where salt has been harvested, like India’s Rann of Kutch, Ethiopia’s Danakil depression, Senegal’s Lac Rose, salt mines in Morocco and Pakistan, and their produce can now be bought at high prices in gourmet shops around the world. But those who harvest the salt rarely share the profits.

    High prices being paid for exotic salts is relatively new. In the past local communities just used them as what was locally available. And while these salts have very different tastes, these really don’t make much difference when it comes to the few pinches we use in actual cooking. Yet, we value them because they are, literally, the taste of the land from which they come. Handling and tasting them reminds us that food isn’t something we just empty from a packet, but the product of a particular place, brought to us by the efforts of particular people.

    Sequeira’s book As Dear As Salt, based on her Goa research, details this both by chronicling the customs of the communities that make salt (Mithgaudas, Bhandaris and Agris), but also through how the salts of Goa differ: “Salt produced in Agarvaddo is brownish grey, while the salt produced in Arpora is of reddish colour with muddy texture and Batim produces brownish-black salt with the texture of clay loam.” I sourced some Agarvaddo salt for Duguid’s talk and it cost Rs80 for a kilo of grainy, grey, distinctly marine tasting salt. Online ‘Arabian sea salt’ sells for double, while imported “Celtic salt” from France is Rs973 for 100 grams!

    A few weeks later, on Galgibaga beach in south Goa, I found another kind of local salt. The dunes had patches of a bright green succulent plant known as beach samphire or sea purslane. The juicy leaves have a delicious salty taste, like some kind of vegetable namkeen. In Mumbai it is sold as moras-bhaji and is bought by young women in some communities who observe salt-free fasts in the hope of getting good husbands. Snacking on these salty leaves becomes their cheat – which will hopefully not result in cheating spouses!

    Marine conservation scientist Aaron Savio Lobo warns me that these plants suck up pollutants along with salt, so must be harvested from safe locations. But Galgibaga’s beaches, where turtles nest, seemed safe enough to savour all the ways in which lands and customs come together in salt.

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