- The Intention
- The Ingredients
- The Ritual
- The Diaspora Story
Jaggery, an unrefined sugar made from sugarcane juice with a high molasses content (aka the nutritious brown goodness usually pulled out of sugar during the refining process), offers a deep, rich flavor...and is the original, precolonial sweetener of South Asia. Grown in the historic rain-fed, sugarcane-growing Daund region of India, Diaspora's jaggery is grown and processed by Kantilal Randive, a well-known soil health expert. Intercropped with chickpeas and wheat for soil health, this jaggery is brought to life using traditional methods: incorporating wild okra to remove impurities - for a clean, nutty, authentic jaggery powder. What started as a lil pick-me-up of so many childhoods is now the preferred addition to cups of chai, daily tonics, and baked goods.
2.12oz
Madhur jaggery
Use jaggery to sweeten tonics, cups of chai, or baked goods. Given that jaggery has a high molasses content, expect a deep rich flavor when you're subbing it for other sugars.
The original intent of colonial conquest of the Indian subcontinent was a desire for domination of the spice trade. 400ish years later, as a young woman born and raised in postcolonial Mumbai, working at the intersection of food and culture, Sana Javeri Kadri was slowly discovering that not much about that system had changed. Farmers made no money, spices changed hands upwards of 10 times before reaching the consumer, and the final spice on your shelf was usually an old, dusty shadow of what it once was.
So in 2016, Sana booked a one way ticket home to Mumbai and signed herself up for 7 months of highly unpaid market research, 40+ farm visits, endless un-answered phone calls, a squishy motorbike ride through rice paddy, and one life-changing meeting with the good folks at the Indian Institute of Spices Research.
A lot of processing of doubts and fears later, 23 year old Sana founded Diaspora Co. in the fall of 2017 with just one spice - Pragati Turmeric - sourced from an equally young and idealistic farm partner - a now dear friend Mr. Prabhu Kasaraneni. But from their very first day, the big, audacious dream was to grow a radically new, decidedly delicious and truly equitable spice trade, to push a broken system into an equal exchange, and to have a lot of fun doing it.
Today, the Diaspora team sources 30 single-origin spices from 150 farms across India and Sri Lanka. They're proud to pay their farm partners an average of 6x above the commodity price. In a system where fair trade is a mere 15% premium, they pay what they believe to be a living wage - an investment in the kind of leadership and land stewardship that will build climate resilience and more delicious food systems.
The Intention
Jaggery, an unrefined sugar made from sugarcane juice with a high molasses content (aka the nutritious brown goodness usually pulled out of sugar during the refining process), offers a deep, rich flavor...and is the original, precolonial sweetener of South Asia. Grown in the historic rain-fed, sugarcane-growing Daund region of India, Diaspora's jaggery is grown and processed by Kantilal Randive, a well-known soil health expert. Intercropped with chickpeas and wheat for soil health, this jaggery is brought to life using traditional methods: incorporating wild okra to remove impurities - for a clean, nutty, authentic jaggery powder. What started as a lil pick-me-up of so many childhoods is now the preferred addition to cups of chai, daily tonics, and baked goods.
2.12oz
The Ingredients
Madhur jaggery
The Ritual
Use jaggery to sweeten tonics, cups of chai, or baked goods. Given that jaggery has a high molasses content, expect a deep rich flavor when you're subbing it for other sugars.
The Diaspora Story
The original intent of colonial conquest of the Indian subcontinent was a desire for domination of the spice trade. 400ish years later, as a young woman born and raised in postcolonial Mumbai, working at the intersection of food and culture, Sana Javeri Kadri was slowly discovering that not much about that system had changed. Farmers made no money, spices changed hands upwards of 10 times before reaching the consumer, and the final spice on your shelf was usually an old, dusty shadow of what it once was.
So in 2016, Sana booked a one way ticket home to Mumbai and signed herself up for 7 months of highly unpaid market research, 40+ farm visits, endless un-answered phone calls, a squishy motorbike ride through rice paddy, and one life-changing meeting with the good folks at the Indian Institute of Spices Research.
A lot of processing of doubts and fears later, 23 year old Sana founded Diaspora Co. in the fall of 2017 with just one spice - Pragati Turmeric - sourced from an equally young and idealistic farm partner - a now dear friend Mr. Prabhu Kasaraneni. But from their very first day, the big, audacious dream was to grow a radically new, decidedly delicious and truly equitable spice trade, to push a broken system into an equal exchange, and to have a lot of fun doing it.
Today, the Diaspora team sources 30 single-origin spices from 150 farms across India and Sri Lanka. They're proud to pay their farm partners an average of 6x above the commodity price. In a system where fair trade is a mere 15% premium, they pay what they believe to be a living wage - an investment in the kind of leadership and land stewardship that will build climate resilience and more delicious food systems.