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We begin the month of August with godd-chun, a tradition of eating chun or grated coconut mixed with godd (jaggery), originally made of coconut neero, or unfermented phloem sap. It may be just that or with a paste of rice flour in the form of patoleo, dhone, muttli, shirvoyo, etc.
Currently, jaggery is predominantly made of sugarcane juice and its caramelised version is the bootleg ‘coconut’ jaggery pyramids that one buys in the market.
After many twists and turns, the coconut palm is not grass but, rather, the ‘State Tree of Goa’ since December, 2017.
Hope for the revival of the authentic coconut jaggery production comes from an unlikely ‘toddy tapper’ in the form of the young, athletic and lithesome Shweta Gaonkar.
She is the antithesis of a wisened and old, male toddy tapper image that we conjure. A Goa University graduate in Agriculture, she is inspiring the youth to return to traditional professions.
Liza Pinheiro, the winner of GCCI’s ‘Business Diva 2022’, is a year junior to Shweta Gaonkar in Goa’s first college of agriculture, then at Sulcorna. On her birthday today, Liza has a lot to celebrate.
She graduated during the Covid-19 pandemic with a degree that makes her ineligible for appointment as an Assistant Agriculture Officer because the Goa University degrees are not accredited to ICAR even to this day.
Undeterred, she created her own startup that was recognised as the best in Goa in 2022. Currently, she does trainings, demonstrations, consultancy, and sets up vegetable and fruit gardens on a turnkey basis besides doing landscaping.
Liza has been the fulcrum of the Konkan Fruit Fest for the last three years and added value to the 31st annual Festival of Plants & Flowers at the SFX School complex, Siolim, last year. The 32nd edition will be held from the 24th to 26th of this month.
The oft quoted poem, entitled Otthra Jun in ‘amchi bhas’ Konkani, dedicated to the Goa Revolution Day, 18 June, by Dr Manohar Rai Sardesai poignantly raises the pertinent question that calls for a response from us, “Kitle oxe aile, ghele otthra Jun? Ambea-mullant kudd’kuddta Gavddeacho por ozun!” meaning “How many times has 18 June come and gone? The ST boy is still trembling beneath the mango tree.”
The affirmative response has been slow in coming during the sixty years since Liberation and eighty years since Goa Revolution Day. It has now dawned and sunrise cannot be far.
Goa had to be self-sufficient in food crops between 1954 and 1961 due to the ‘Economic Blockade’ of the ‘Estado da India Portuguesa’ (EIP) territories of Goa, Daman & Diu.
The ‘economic blockade’ taught the people of Goa how to cultivate crops even on marginal lands just to survive and outlive the blockade till Liberation.
With widespread cancer in Goa, where no cases of cancer were reported till the 1960s, people have begun thinking of pesticide-free food, whether organic or naturally grown.
Even before she graduated in agriculture, young Dhannika Dias operated the mechanised paddy seedling transplanters alongside Fr George Quadros sdb at Curtorim in 2022, while another agriculture graduate, Joyd Simoes, operates a tractor professionally in the khazans of Chinchinim for Agnelo Furtado and other components of the comunidade.
The homegrown agriculture graduates are powering this revolution into the next generation in Goa.
(The author is the former Chairman of the GCCI Agriculture Committee, CEO of Planter's Choice Pvt Ltd, Additional Director of OFAI and Garden Superintendent of Goa University, and has edited 18 books for Goa & Konkan)