Why 'Perfect' Food Is Costing Us Native Crops

Dec 26, 2025

Most of us have been conditioned to believe that good food should look perfect — uniform size, bright colour, no blemishes, no insect marks. Anything that looks irregular is quickly dismissed as inferior.

What is rarely spoken about is this uncomfortable truth:
our demand for perfect-looking food is one of the strongest forces behind the disappearance of India’s native crops.

To meet cosmetic expectations, farming has steadily shifted away from diversity and ecology toward uniformity and chemical control. In that shift, India has lost a significant portion of its indigenous crop varieties — not just vegetables, but rice, millets, pulses, oilseeds, fruits, fodder, and more.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that around 75% of global crop genetic diversity has been lost since the early 1900s, largely due to industrial agriculture replacing local varieties with uniform commercial seeds¹. India, one of the world’s richest centres of agricultural biodiversity, has been deeply affected.

What remains today is a narrow and fragile food base — visually appealing, short-term productive, and long-term vulnerable.

This Is Not Just About Vegetables

Vegetables make this crisis visible because we encounter them daily. But the erosion runs far deeper.

Historically, Indian farmers cultivated:

Multiple Indian studies document severe genetic erosion following the Green Revolution, with many landraces disappearing from farms and surviving only in gene banks — if at all².

This is not a gradual decline.
This is extinction.

Once a native variety disappears from cultivation, its unique adaptation to soil, climate, pests, nutrition, and flavour disappears with it. No modern breeding programme can recreate centuries of ecological intelligence.

The Green Revolution: Yield First, Everything Else Later

The Green Revolution helped India overcome hunger. But it also introduced a farming model built on:

While yields increased, long-term ecological costs were ignored. Research shows that the push for high-yield varieties displaced indigenous crops and accelerated biodiversity loss³.

It also created a vicious input-driven cycle:

Each season, more inputs are needed just to maintain yields.

This system aligned neatly with capitalist incentives — seeds sold every season, chemicals sold every crop, and solutions sold for problems those very inputs create.

Farmers became customers.
Seeds became products.
Soil became a medium — not a living system.

Chemical Farming Destroys Life in the Soil

Soil is not dirt. Soil is alive.

Healthy soil contains billions of microorganisms that:

Scientific studies consistently show that excessive use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides reduces soil microbial diversity, disrupts nutrient cycles, and degrades soil structure⁴.

Once soil life collapses:

Native varieties — evolved to work with living soil — fail under such conditions and are gradually replaced by chemical-tolerant commercial crops.

Hybrids and GMOs: Crops Built for Industry

Hybrid and GMO crops are designed for:

They are not designed for biodiversity, seed saving, or ecological resilience.

Indian agricultural research shows that a very small number of varieties now dominate large areas, replacing thousands of locally adapted landraces². This genetic uniformity increases vulnerability to pests, diseases, and climate extremes⁵.

Uniformity is efficient for industry.
It is dangerous for food security.

The Consumer Factor Nobody Talks About

Native crops are not cosmetically perfect.

They:

This is normal in living systems.

But market standards reward appearance over integrity. FAO reports clearly state that consumer demand for uniform, blemish-free produce directly contributes to the loss of on-farm diversity¹.

Simply put:

What consumers reject disappears from farms.

Perfect-looking food often signals:

Imperfect food often signals:

In nature, uniformity is artificial.

The Cost We Are All Paying

Whoever controls the seeds controls the food. Whoever controls the food controls the future.

Protecting native seeds is not nostalgia.
It is food security.

The Way Forward Is Cultural, Not Technological

Reviving native crops is not about going backward. It is about survival.

It requires:

Research increasingly shows that diversified, low-input farming systems are more resilient under climate stress than industrial monocultures⁶.

A Hard Truth — And a Hard Choice

If we continue to demand perfect-looking food, we will inherit:

Every purchase is a signal.
Every rejection is a vote.

At Prakruthi Dhara, we choose native seeds, living soil, and natural farming — even when produce looks different from supermarket standards. Because food that respects ecology will never look industrial. As we grow, we aim to actively support native seed conservation so these crops do not disappear forever.

If you want real food, accept real farming.
If you want biodiversity, support it with your choices.
If you want a future with options, stop demanding perfection.

The change does not start in fields.
It starts on your plate.

Citations

  1. FAO — State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
  2. Journal of Ethnic Foods — Genetic erosion of indigenous crops in India
  3. GRAIN — Reviving diversity in Indian agriculture
  4. FAO / MDPI — Impact of agrochemicals on soil microbial diversity
  5. World Economic Forum — Why food biodiversity matters
  6. FAO / IPBES — Biodiversity, resilience, and sustainable agriculture

Good reads

  1. An Indian farming biodiversity success story
  2. The impact of the Green Revolution on indigenous crops of India
  3. GRAIN | REVIVING DIVERSITY IN INDIA’S AGRICULTURE