The Tale of Two Life Forms: What My Father's Childhood and Modern Agriculture Have in Common

My father was born in 1938, the seventh of eight children born to my grandmother Rama. In a bustling joint family, a mother's attention was a scarce resource, divided mathematically among so many children and relatives. My father rarely saw his mother during ordinary moments. She appeared when there was an emergency: when he fell, when he got hurt, when he was crying. He knew she was in the kitchen making food. He knew she was preparing medicines that his grandmother would later apply to his wounds. He was well taken care of, but he never got enough of his mother's and father's time.

In spite of her being available for only a couple of minutes each day, he learned to cherish every one of those moments. Even if he got only fifteen minutes with his mother, he understood its value completely. He loved her immensely and cherished the little personal time she could offer him. When she passed away, he gave up tea, a beverage they both loved and which they had shared as a family on numerous occasions. It has been almost fifty years since her death, and he has not touched tea. Rama really couldn't spend a lot of time with her son, but the time she spent was valued by him as so very precious that it nourishes him to this day. That is what scarcity teaches you: gratitude.

But there is another part to my father's childhood story. The fruits, the vegetables, the tubers, the beans, the grains he consumed were of pristine, extraordinary quality. This was before the Green Revolution had kicked in. Back then, farmers focused on growing plants in the best possible way and hoped nature would provide a bountiful yield. And nature did provide, but on its own terms, driven by the laws of the environment.

A mango tree would give only as many mangoes as it could handle. A banana plant would produce only as many bananas, of the size and shape it could manage, based on the nutrients available in the soil. Each mango, each banana, each leaf of spinach received the best of the macronutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) and the best of the micronutrients (manganese, zinc, iron, cobalt, chromium, selenium). There was balance in the soil. There was no disturbance. The plant could take exactly what it needed, and there was no pressure to produce more.

When you look at a fruit, there are two components. The macro components build up the structure. The micro components are like the nuts and bolts that make the fruit functional and add value not just to the fruit itself, but to the life forms that consume it. Those micronutrients are profoundly important. And as the focus shifts more and more toward the macro, toward building bulk, the micro starts to get ignored.

This is exactly what began to happen later on.

Fast forward to my generation and the next. There were just one or two of us. We got abundant mother's time, abundant father's time. So much so that we never really understood its value. I can say I grew up entitled. I did not recognize the precious gift of my parents' time. I was seeking many more things beyond what I had, unaware of what I already possessed. The extra time I received was above the optimal level. When there is too much supply and too little demand, the laws of commerce tell us, value starts to fall. And so the value of their time became invisible to me in a way it never was to my father.

But the second thing happened simultaneously: the Green Revolution had arrived.

With the Green Revolution came the ability to deliver more and more of the macro elements, especially nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. The structural elements, not the tiny nuts and bolts, not the micronutrients. Plants were now forced to produce more and more progeny. In the first case, it was humans having many progeny. Now it was plants having many progeny.

The problem with this approach was not about the attention each fruit received directly. When it came to the macro structure, the plant gave its best to every fruit. The fruit was big. The fruit looked luscious, healthy, wonderful because all the macronutrients were in place. But the challenge came when the plant had to share the micronutrients.

Think of it this way. In my father's case, when it came to attention from his mother, it was optimal. Every child received proper care, and none felt neglected. But when it came to the finer resources, the property, the belongings the parents could share, those were divided by eight. Had my father been alone, he might have owned ten acres of land. Instead, the land was distributed so that each child received a much smaller share. From a human perspective, that is more than okay. But the problem emerges when we look at it from the plant's perspective.

What is the property that the plant shares? The micronutrients. Just as in life, money is not the most important resource. The most important resource is a mother's love, the care, the attention, the nurturing. That comes first. The property, the land, comes secondary. It adds a little value once you grow and want to handle things on your own. Similarly, for the plant, zinc, iron, chromium, cobalt, selenium, all of these micronutrients add value not just for the fruit, but for how the fruit is received by life forms that consume it.

As my generation grew and the Green Revolution became more efficient at producing more and more fruit, the quantity soared. But the true property the plant shares with its progeny, the micronutrients, started to decline. Why? Because the plant has a limitation on how much it can absorb per day. There is a finite amount of capability. When the demand is much higher, when there is a lot more fruit, the plant shifts its absorption from trying to absorb the finer elements toward more nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus so it can grow the structural elements.

This comes at a cost. When you skew the balance, the microelements are minimized. If you put a lot more water, the water dilutes the dissolved micronutrients, and the amount taken up becomes much less. It is all about percentages. At any given point, there is only a fixed amount of water the plant can take up. What dissolves in that water depends on which nutrients are dominating. If the major macronutrients dominate, more of them will be taken, and the micronutrients will not be able to get in.

Even assuming the plant absorbs the same amount of micronutrients, there is another problem. Earlier, if the plant had a hundred units of micronutrients to share among a hundred fruits, every fruit received one unit. Today, thanks to the Green Revolution, the plant can produce a thousand fruits. Now each fruit gets only a fraction. The brinjals are much bigger, the potatoes much larger, the tomatoes enormous. But when the plant has to share resources among so much more tissue, the micronutrient density falls.

As a result, when we consume these fruits, we do not get what my father used to get. The fruits and vegetables of earlier times were more nutrition dense. And this is impacting us now. Whether we take the most healthy diet, raw or steamed vegetables, trying to get the best of the best, what we are receiving is quantity, not quality. That is the sad part.

So the way things backfired from the previous generation, where there were many children and less attention, is that my father developed deep value for his parents' time. It was a win-win. He cherished every moment. Fast forward to my generation, and mother's time did not hold the same value because we had so much of it. That is where we tend to lose.

The second thing we started losing was the nutrition we got from our fruits and vegetables. As the family structure changed, and more importantly, as the family structure of plants changed, plants were no longer free to decide how many fruits to yield. They were forced with hormones, growth regulators, and chemical fertilizers to produce more and more. As a result, plants began giving a lot more in terms of yield, but a lot less in terms of quality.

This is where we need to start asking ourselves: do we really need these unsustainable agricultural practices?

Why do I call it unsustainable? Because humans can only consume so much. During my father's time, one or two mangoes would provide all the macro and micronutrients he needed. Today, it would take me about ten to fifteen mangoes to get the same micronutrients. But can I consume ten to fifteen mangoes? With them comes all the macronutrients as well: more sugar, much more carbohydrates, overloading my body. First, it is not feasible to consume that many. Second, I am losing out on nutrition.

So what can I do? I could resort to taking supplements. I could start taking zinc and manganese and chromium. But how do I know how much to take? That is the biggest challenge. If we can get our nutrients directly from the foods we eat, everything becomes so much easier. We would not have to depend on synthetic forms of nutrition, supplementation, because the plants would be providing them in the best possible format that our bodies are designed to use.

What can we do now? We need to look at quality, not quantity. When I buy tomatoes today, when I look at mangoes or apples, the problem is I focus on quantity. I ask how many I will get per hundred rupees or what the cost per kilogram is. But I never ask what the quality per kilogram is. I never ask how these have been grown. Have they been grown in a natural environment where the plant did not yield a lot of fruit but yielded excellent quality fruit? That is something we do not know how to ask.

The key is not to change agriculture first, but to change demand. Can we demand the right thing? Can I ask for the right kind of spinach, the right kind of drumsticks, the right kind of mangoes? To do that, I need to be educated on what the right kind of fruit, vegetable, root, or tuber looks like. The right kind is the one grown in the wild or in an environment that simulates the wild. It is the kind of vegetable, fruit, or plant product that is not manipulated by chemicals, hormones, or growth regulators, but where the plant is allowed to grow on its own. It is the kind of fruit and vegetable that has around it the right kind of company. If it is a monoculture, only mangoes all around, then the mango plant is missing out on countless things. There should be no pesticides, no insecticides used, because these chemicals impact the entire ecosystem, from the roots of the plant to the uptake of minerals, to the quality of the food itself, apart from leaving behind pesticide residues, insecticide residues, fungicide and antibiotic residues.

So what is it we need to do? We need to start encouraging people to grow things the way they were grown in nature, and then purchase based on quality rather than quantity.

What is the true quality of good spinach? Is it spinach where the leaves are big, green, shiny, and glossy? Or is the true quality found in leaves with a few holes bored by insects, where certain leaves might be slightly yellowish, fighting for survival? When you look at nature, leaves are never perfect. When I go foraging in the forest or into the wilderness, I realize that rarely do you find plants that are perfect, where the leaves are flawless, where the fruits are unblemished. There are deformities. There are problems. That is the thing with nature.

And these deformities and problems, what do they indicate? They indicate that the plant has fought. The plant has prepared itself for the onslaught that happens in nature. This phenomenon is called hormesis. As a result, these fruits, these vegetables are far more potent. They contain the antibiotic compounds to protect themselves. They contain the resistance molecules that shield them from predators. That is a key thing. When you buy such fruit, such vegetables grown in the wild or under wild-like conditions, you will find they have much more quality. They have much more personality than those grown in a system where it is many children in one standardized class.

Why do wealthy people prefer personal tutoring for their children? Because personal tutoring works on the personality, whereas mass tutoring does not. Mass tutoring makes you into a mass product where you lack your own distinct personality. That is precisely the problem with fruits and vegetables grown today.

In closing, one thing I have observed is that as times have changed, things have flipped. My father's generation grew up in an environment where there was not much of a lot of things. Time was a rare commodity. They had to struggle for their survival. They did not get enough time from their parents. They did not get resources from the government the way we do today. Education was hard to come by. My father could not finish his tenth grade because there were no funds. But in spite of all that, they had gratitude. They were satisfied. They were satiated.

And the second thing is that because technology was not there, whatever you got was without excessive human intervention. The fruits were just the way they were supposed to be in nature. The vegetables were the way they were supposed to be in nature. If there was an insect attack, the vegetables were affected. If there was an attack of some pathogen, the fruits were affected. The plants were affected, and whatever little farmers could salvage, they would salvage and share and sell in the market. But that fruit had quality. That fruit had personality.

Today, with the extra time, we are getting a lot more of our parents' time, but we have stopped valuing it. We are getting a lot more resources, but we do not value them because we are entitled. We want more and more and more. So much so that even when we have plenty of resources, we remain frugal only when it comes to food. When it comes to buying an iPad, I do not think twice. But when it comes to buying coriander or green chilies or fruit, I would not mind haggling with the vendor. I go by quantity. I never even think about quality. I want the cheapest of the cheap when it comes to fruits and vegetables because I think it is a waste of resources to spend more on them. Better to invest in an iPad.

As a result, we are becoming more and more digitally advanced, but the analog mechanisms within us, the life mechanisms, the non-digital mechanisms, are getting affected. Our brains do not have sufficient nutrition. Our bodies, our hearts do not have the right resources to function properly. Our vasculature, our veins and arteries lack the right amount of magnesium, selenium, and other antioxidants. There is more plaque. There are more problems. We do not get enough magnesium from the foods we eat, so we face calcium overload. We do not get calcium the way we need it, so we take supplements.

But rarely do we know how to balance supplements. How much magnesium to take? How much calcium? Do we really need to take them? What kind of activity must we do if we take calcium, without which the calcium can actually poison you, without which the magnesium probably will not work for you? We do not know the forms. We do not know how it is to be done. We are just satisfied with labels. As long as the mango costs forty rupees a kilogram and the magnesium tablet is available at a low cost, we think: yes, I have got the magnesium. I have got the zinc. I have got the iron. I have got the mango.

But unfortunately, we have none of it.

That is the tragedy of this modern way of living. We are entitled. We have lost the value for everything. And in losing that value, we have not realized that by giving more importance to quantity rather than quality, we have lost the value of the most important thing of all: nutrition.