By focusing on farmers, queer-owned, BIPOC-led Diaspora Co. is changing the spice industry for the better.
The use of turmeric dates back 4,000 years, older than the Great Wall of China. The Compendium of Suśruta, one of the key texts of Ayurveda, Indian traditional medicine, recommends it to help relieve the effects of poisonous food. Its English word, turmeric, is derived from the Latin terra merita (meritorious earth); its Spanish word, curcuma, can be traced back to the Arabic word kurkum, which does not mean turmeric but saffron, which turmeric is sometimes said to resemble.
In India, which produces nearly 80 percent of the world’s turmeric—as well as consumes 80 percent of it—turmeric is “haldi” in Hindi and “manjal” in Tamil. Sanskrit, the root of many Indian languages, has more than 50 names for it, including hridayavilasini (gives delight to heart, charming), varavarnini (which gives fair complexion), tamasini (beautiful as night), patwaluka (perfumed powder), laxmi (prosperity), and shobhna (brilliant color). Turmeric has incredible range, nuance, and variety; India alone has more than 30 different types. Known for its warming, earthy flavor, turmeric—which ranges in color from sunburst yellow to Kraft mac and cheese orange—is used for cooking and in beauty rituals and is considered auspicious in Hindu culture.
Sana Javeri Kadri is Diaspora Co.’s CEO. She founded the company when she was 23. Courtesy of Diaspora Co.
Yet when Sana Javeri Kadri encountered turmeric in California, where she’d moved for college in 2012 from her native Mumbai, turmeric was flat, dusty, and chalky, a far cry from this Indian saffron. In 2016, the turmeric latte craze swept the nation (so gold it was “a drink for Midas”). Javeri Kadri, who had studied visual arts and food studies, had by then just graduated and was working as a marketing assistant at Bi-Rite market in San Francisco. She started asking around: Where is all this turmeric coming from? Better yet: Where in India is it coming from?
Javeri Kadri, who is also a photographer, flew back to Mumbai in 2016 on a one-way ticket, intent on reporting a story about turmeric and spice sourcing across India. She visited 19 farms around the country and reached out to the Indian Institute of Spices Research in Kozhikode, Kerala, where Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama landed in 1498. There, she discovered bright, aromatic varieties of turmeric high in curcumen—the ingredient that lends the spice its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. But these varieties weren’t being sold publicly. Instead, the intricacies of turmeric had been smoothed over, and it was mainly being mass produced in India, sold to wholesalers and corporations, with little benefit to farmers. Surely there is a better way to do things, she thought. So she decided to do something about it. With $3,000, Javeri Kadri started working directly with Indian farmers, eliminating the middle man, sourcing ethically farmed turmeric, founding a company she would come to call Diaspora Co. in 2017. She was 23.
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