\n<\/p>\n
In 2016, turmeric lattes were all the rage, but Sana Javeri Kadri thought the ones in San Francisco, where she lives, tasted nothing like the fresh spices she grew up with in India.<\/p>\n
A former line cook who was doing marketing for a Bay Area grocer, Javeri Kadri \u201cknew [her] way around spices\u201d, but was new to the industry. Still, she booked a ticket home to Mumbai, hoping that she could get richer flavors into US pantries.<\/p>\n
After reaching out to a number of growers, she met an organic turmeric farmer and, using her tax refund and a loan from her parents, bought a batch of the crop. It became the foundation of Diaspora Co, which Javeri Kadri launched the following year at just 23.<\/p>\n
From the outset, Javeri Kadri aimed to bypass industrial spice farms, whose products she found bland, and instead source from farmers using regenerative practices. This meant working directly with the producers and paying them a living wage.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy rough math, I probably reached out to around 2,500 farmers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
After two years of growing a US market for her turmeric, Javeri Kadri added black pepper to the mix. For a while after that, it was an \u201cexponential growth curve\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n
Today Diaspora Co has 24 employees and sells around 40 different spices and blends, sourced from 140 different farms in India and Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Diaspora Co spice products on display at in the spice aisle at Gjusta Grocer.<\/span> Photograph: Jonathan Alcorn\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Diaspora Co is part of a wave of new spice companies, including Burlap & Barrel and Spicewalla, that center sourcing from sustainable farms, paying producers a living wage, building a more transparent (and streamlined) supply chain \u2013 steps they say allow them to put noticeably fresher spices on the market.<\/p>\n Javeri Kadri said it was common knowledge in the industry that because of the long supply chains, it can take years for spices to reach consumers, meaning they are \u201cexpired before they even get to you\u201d.<\/p>\n She said Diaspora Co farmers rotate their crops, maintain plant diversity and use water-retention systems \u2013 regenerative practices that not only minimize the farms\u2019 carbon footprint, but also make them more resilient to climate shocks.<\/p>\n That meant when extreme flooding struck Tamil Nadu, India, last year, Diaspora\u2019s cardamom farm \u201chad such great aerated soil and such good irrigation, they were only in standing water for a few hours before the soil and the property was able to flush itself clean\u201d, minimizing losses, she said.<\/p>\n Javeri Kadri stressed that her partners were already practicing sustainable agriculture before she arrived on the scene, but she connects them with each other. \u201cIf you get them talking, they problem-solve themselves,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re all experts.\u201d<\/p>\n Diaspora Co enjoys low worker turnover and lasting partnerships, something Javeri Kadri attributes to the company\u2019s commitment to fair wages. \u201cOnce we build a relationship with them, it never goes anywhere,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n In 2022, Diaspora Co launched a fund for farm workers, offering financial literacy workshops and providing seed money to open bank accounts, among other things. At a cardamom farm, workers asked for a community room and kitchen, which Javeri Kadri admitted wasn\u2019t what she expected. But \u201cit\u2019s what they need, not what we think sitting in America that they need,\u201d she said. \u201cReally the point of it is that we listen to the workers directly.\u201d<\/p>\n Franco Fubini, a Diaspora Co board member and founder and CEO of sustainable food sourcing platform Natoora, said Javeri Kadri wasn\u2019t just \u201ctrading spices\u201d, she was building a unique supply chain and helping to catalyze demand for products that \u201care created in harmony with nature\u201d.<\/p>\n He added: \u201cWhenever you have a company that is creating a market by stimulating demand, buying the right product, paying the right price for it, and creating a healthy farming ecosystem \u2013 that is what revolutionizing the food system is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n Diaspora\u2019s efforts to, as Javeri Kadri puts it, \u201cdecolonize the spice trade\u201d have also proven profitable. She\u2019s raised about $2.5m from angel investors in the last few years, and though she declined to share revenue numbers, she said the company had grown twentyfold over the past five years. Its spices are now sold in 400 US stores, and last year, with help from Natoora, Diaspora Co expanded into the UK.<\/p>\n <\/span>Sana Javeri Kadri adjusts her company\u2019s spice products on display at Gjusta Grocer.<\/span> Photograph: Jonathan Alcorn\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Rather than pressuring existing partners to produce more and more, which could tax the land (and workers), Javeri Kadri said she plans to keep adding new farm partners in order to continue to boost production.<\/p>\n Javeri Kadri has other projects on the horizon, including a new Masala Chai tea blend, another blend developed with the former Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi, and a cookbook featuring recipes from partner farms. \u201cA lot of people tell me, \u2018Oh, Indian food is intimidating or heavy or complicated,\u2019 and the whole premise of the book is, how do we make it as bright and fresh and accessible as possible?\u201d Javeri Kadri said.<\/p>\n She plans to roll out these projects while managing an altogether new challenge: This month, Donald Trump said he would raise tariffs on Indian products to 50%, a move that Javeri Kadri predicts will cost her company between $100,000 and $200,000 by the end of the year, leaving her no choice but to eventually raise prices. (She said they had already paid about $20,000 in tariffs since April, when the US imposed its initial levies.)<\/p>\n Javeri Kadri\u2019s entire business model is built on sourcing spices from the areas they are indigenous to in south Asia, which means she couldn\u2019t pivot her supply chain even if she wanted to.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople will say, \u2018Well, we don\u2019t need those exotic ingredients anyway,\u2019\u201d she said. But, she added, \u201cthere\u2019s nothing as American as apple pie. And apple pie relies on cinnamon. An American classic is vanilla ice cream; we don\u2019t grow vanilla. A lot of these ingredients are inherently not exotic, but they come from elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n Tariffs could have an especially devastating effect on mission-driven companies like Diaspora, which operate on small margins even as they prioritize single-source farms and fair labor, said David Ortega, the Noel W Stuckman chair in food economics and policy at Michigan State University. \u201cThese tariff price increases can really jeopardize those priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n With the higher tariffs \u2013 and the economic uncertainty surrounding trade policy \u2013 Javeri Kadri acknowledges that it may be hard to grow in the US market over the coming years. Her approach?<\/p>\n \u201cWe grow elsewhere. We go where we\u2019re not penalized for doing business,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s very simple.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2016, turmeric lattes were all the rage, but Sana Javeri Kadri thought the ones in San Francisco, where she lives, tasted nothing like the fresh spices she grew up with in India. A former line cook who was doing marketing for a Bay Area grocer, Javeri Kadri \u201cknew [her] way around spices\u201d, but was<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[303,9507,8244,620,7054,9508,72,430,71],"class_list":{"0":"post-16070","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-modernize","10":"tag-navigating","11":"tag-set","12":"tag-shes","13":"tag-spice","14":"tag-tariffs","15":"tag-trade","16":"tag-trumps"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}