- The Intention
- The Ingredients
- The Ritual
- The Diaspora Story
Surya Salt is sun-crafted mineral magic: bright, grounding, and alive with the spirit of the land it comes from. Harvested by the Agariya community of Gujarat, India - salt workers with generations of deep, ancestral knowledge - this inland salt is drawn from underground desert aquifers using solar-powered pumps and slowly filtered through the earth itself. Its high-mineral content is lovingly preserved, then hand-pounded to the perfect texture by a local women's self-help group. A gift of sun, soil, and tradition, Surya Salt carries the essence of earth’s elemental wisdom...rich in flavor, rooted in reverence, and ready to nourish every meal with purpose.
3.17oz
Salt
Add into dishes and recipes as desired. A little goes a long way.
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
Surya Salt is sun-crafted mineral magic: bright, grounding, and alive with the spirit of the land it comes from. Harvested by the Agariya community of Gujarat, India - salt workers with generations of deep, ancestral knowledge - this inland salt is drawn from underground desert aquifers using solar-powered pumps and slowly filtered through the earth itself. Its high-mineral content is lovingly preserved, then hand-pounded to the perfect texture by a local women's self-help group. A gift of sun, soil, and tradition, Surya Salt carries the essence of earth’s elemental wisdom...rich in flavor, rooted in reverence, and ready to nourish every meal with purpose.
3.17oz
The Ingredients
Salt
The Ritual
Add into dishes and recipes as desired. A little goes a long way.
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.