Known as “the tuber man of Kerala”, Shaji NM has traveled throughout India over the past two decades, sometimes inspecting bushes in tribal villages, at other times studying the ground of forests closer to home among the green hills of Wayanad in Kerala. His de el one purpose de el, and what earned him his title de el, is to collect rare indigenous varieties of tuber crops.
“People call me crazy, but it’s for the love of tubers that I do what I do,” says Shaji. “I have developed an emotional relationship with the tuber. When we did not have anything to eat, we had tubers.”
Shaji’s 8,000 sq meter (2 acre) farm boasts a wide array of tubers, some on the verge of extinction and some that produce record-sized fruits. Better-known varieties such as yams, sweet potato, cassava, taro and Chinese potato also thrive there. Like many Keralites, Shaji’s personal favorite is the Dioscorea – he grows about 60 varieties on his farm – and he particularly loves white yams.
At times, word of mouth helps him locate rare tubers, with Facebook and WhatsApp groups also updating him on potential discoveries. When he finds a new variety, he says: “I consult the elders and farmers of the various tribal villages, and we try to name the tuber something closest to the tribal name.”
As well as earning him his nickname, Shaji’s work in conserving and popularizing the tuber has been recognized with a number of awards at state and national level, including an India biodiversity award for the conservation of domesticated species in 2021.
His love of tubers, which are used extensively in Indian cooking, began at a young age. While he was growing up, food was often scarce. “Staples like wheat or rice were hard to get,” says Shaji. “And the only thing that provided us with a constant supply of food was tubers, because they are locally available and grow easily.”
When Shaji’s grandparents moved from the low-lying area of Ernakulam in Kerala to the highlands of Wayanad in 1952, feasting on traditionally grown tubers was a way of life which Shaji continued.
Shaji thinks tubers are not only essential as a food but also for their medicinal properties. “We used to eat food as our medicine – now we eat medicine as our food,” he says. “It must be the tubers that have kept my grandparents healthy even now at the age of 110.”
Today, Shaji’s prized collection consists of more than 200 varieties of wild and indigenous tuber crops. The day we spoke, he had just finished giving a tour of his farm to 50 students from Bengaluru. To him, knowledge should be easily accessible. “I grow these crops on my land and then give the seeds to farmers and to anyone who wants them. In return, I encourage them to multiply the crops and to include them in their diet,” says Shaji, who calls himself a “cultivator” rather than a farmer.
But conserving some of the rarer tubers is not so easy as the climate heats up. Kerala is losing biodiversity as incessant and unseasonal rains wash away fertile fields. When, in 2018, Kerala received one of the heaviest recorded rainfalls in its history, Shaji’s farm was under water for 15 days.
“The scientists told me that everything would be rotten, and I believed them. I thought it’s OK to lose everything and start from the beginning as I did once,” he says.
But to his – and the village’s – surprise, “everything started to sprout back after a month or so,” says Shaji. “I have never used any chemical on my soil, ever. Maybe it’s because my soil is so good that nature does not devastate my farm.”
Researchers noted in a paper in 2018 that tuber crops “are resilient to climate change due to their capacity to arise over the adverse conditions by becoming dormant and resuming tuber growth during favorable conditions, thereby bringing down the chances of crop failures”.
This ability to tolerate changing climate conditions, say the researchers, makes the tuber “very important for the food security and income of people in this region as well as in many parts of the country”.
For Shaji though, farming is much more than just providing food. “Agriculture should start first in our hearts and not in the earth,” he says. “And then we know how to take care of it just by looking at it.”
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism