- 7 months ago
Turmeric has been cooked into staple dishes and used in herbal medicine for thousands of years in India. But in the last decade, the spice has taken on new life in the West, encapsulated into tablets and pressed into juice shots. That’s all thanks to America’s newest obsession: curcumin. The healthy compound is found only in turmeric and is responsible for the spice’s anti-inflammatory and antioxidant powers. Health companies in the US and Europe are willing to pay big bucks to get turmeric with a curcumin level above 5%. But Indian farmers, who grow most of the world’s supply, can’t cash in. What they produce isn’t that high in curcumin — only about 2%. Meanwhile, other countries, like Fiji, are creeping in, growing more turmeric with higher levels of the compound for Western markets. So what does it take to make a healthier, more valuable turmeric? And is there a way for farmers in India to cash in on Western demand?
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00:00India produces 80% of the world's turmeric.
00:06The spice has been used as medicine, food, and cosmetics for thousands of years across South Asia.
00:12In the last decade, demand for supplements made with it has soared in the U.S.
00:17because of a compound called curcumin, only found in turmeric.
00:22It's known for its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties.
00:26But Indian farmers haven't been able to cash in, partially because most of what they grow isn't that high in curcumin.
00:33And their supply chain is so convoluted, criminals can sneak in fake turmeric that devalues these crops.
00:39When you buy turmeric at the supermarket, you have no idea where it came from.
00:43It's changed hands so many times, it's probably a couple of years old.
00:46Now, other countries like Fiji are ramping up production, creating a race to grow turmeric with higher levels of curcumin that could be worth more.
00:54So what does it take to make a healthier, more valuable turmeric?
00:58And is there a way for farmers in India to cash in on Western demand?
01:05Turmeric is related to ginger.
01:07The part of the plant we use is the rhizome, or the underground stem.
01:11And it's really good for you because of that curcumin.
01:15And especially if you're cooking with some fat and some black pepper, that combination in particular seems to be really, really powerful.
01:23Indians have known this for a long time.
01:25The spice has been used as medicine here for at least 4,500 years.
01:30It's said to help with loads of health issues, including congestion, joint pain, respiratory problems, and even chickenpox.
01:37In Sanskrit, turmeric has 53 different names, including mahagni, or killer of fat, and jayanti, meaning victorious over diseases.
01:48It was also mixed into perfume, used in wedding ceremonies to symbolize blessings, cooked into staple dishes across the subcontinent, given as an offering to deities in Hindu rituals, and thrown during holy celebrations.
02:01Ashok Rezu runs this two-acre farm in Telangana, one of the top five turmeric-producing states in India.
02:16Using pickaxes, workers unearth the crop for up to eight hours a day.
02:22Because harvesting is so tough, Ashok's had a hard time in recent years finding workers.
02:35He's had to increase wages by 50% to attract enough help.
02:41After harvesting, Ashok rents this machine to boil the turmeric, a necessary step if he wants to sell it for powdering.
02:49It costs him $140 to rent, which, in a bad year, could be more than a tenth of his profit.
03:02If he wants to sell it, he's going to sell it.
03:06The next morning, workers spread out the roots to dry in the sun.
03:21They'll leave the turmeric here for up to 15 days, turning it twice a day so it dries evenly.
03:27Two people stay with the rootstocks and watch out for rain.
03:30Once the turmeric is thoroughly dry, it shrivels up and gets really hard, like a piece of wood.
03:45Workers then rake it into bowls and dump those into these rotating drums.
03:49The drums remove the skin and any dirt and stones left over from the fields.
04:09They also make the turmeric pieces smoother and softer as they tumble.
04:13Ashok can't sell the roots unless they're polished like this.
04:17And it's not just these polishing machines that cost him.
04:22Last year, floods and excessive rainfall pummeled close to half a million acres of turmeric and other crops across Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
04:30Things like fertilizer have also gotten pricier.
04:33Ashok sinks twice as much money into his land than he did a decade ago.
04:37These rising costs have left some farmers like Ashok facing losses of hundreds of dollars each season, sometimes 20% of their investment.
04:47That happened to Ashok a few years ago.
04:49He managed to stay in business by downsizing his turmeric production while prices were low, and growing other crops instead.
05:04It doesn't help that he's not growing a very valuable kind of turmeric.
05:17He produces edagunduru, which is low in curcumin content.
05:22Of the more than 30 varieties of turmeric grown in India, most only have 2% curcumin.
05:29But the wellness markets in the West are willing to pay big bucks for at least 5%.
05:34However, only a few turmeric in all of India hit that threshold, and Ashok isn't in the right area to grow them.
05:41He trucks his harvest to Nizalmabad, home to one of the biggest turmeric markets in the country.
05:52Over 880,000 pounds of turmeric are sold here daily, except farmers don't sell their spice themselves.
06:02A commission agent acts as a middleman, representing lots of farmers at a turmeric auction.
06:07Those buyers, known as traders, bid on tons of turmeric, and sell it to big processors.
06:14Next, factories turn the rootstocks into things like turmeric powder, and packagers box it up.
06:20Export companies get the spice approved for shipment out of India, and an American import company gets it cleared through customs.
06:27Then another stateside business might repackage it, while yet another handles distribution to grocery stores.
06:32Along the way, everyone takes a cut of the profits, leaving the farmers, who did most of the work, with the smallest share.
06:41Commission agents stacked the roots up in a pile called a lot, and then put it up for auction.
06:47These auctions used to happen in person, with traders shouting out their bids.
06:51But the market modernized the process in 2016, taking it entirely online through a program called E-NAM.
07:00The market is a lot number.
07:05Pavan Nagla is a trader and processor. He bids at the online auctions, but he still checks the turmeric quality in person.
07:14Pavan Nagla is a trader and processor. He bids at the online auctions, but he still checks the turmeric quality in person.
07:18And, according to the polish, it is a lot more than the moisture.
07:22And, according to the moisture, we feel the price here.
07:29Bids are now kept secret until the auction ends, to prevent traders from forming cartels and colluding to keep bids low.
07:36But, in this case, everything is open.
07:39What price is bringing the winner's list?
07:41After the winner's list, we know that.
07:44Farmers have no idea what they'll get for their turmeric, or where their turmeric will end up.
07:59The fragmented industry is one of the reasons there can be huge swings,
08:03and how much farmers get paid for their crop.
08:06It's more volatile than rice or corn.
08:11In a good year, Ashok can take home nearly $3,000.
08:15But, in a bad one, he might make only about a third of that.
08:20Some farmers couldn't hold on during the down years.
08:22In the early 2000s, the Indian government started farmer producer organizations.
08:40These farmer-owned cooperatives could negotiate better prices, and cut out the middlemen.
08:44The problem is, these groups don't pay farmers until they find a buyer for the turmeric,
08:50which can take weeks, even months.
08:53Middlemen, on the other hand, pay right away.
08:56Which is why most farmers still go through agents, even if it means making less.
09:00If it means making less.
09:06Although farmers do much of the work to process it,
09:11middlemen keep most of the profit.
09:14The traders sell it to processors like the Neil Kant Corporation,
09:19which turn it into export-ready turmeric powder.
09:21Pavan, who also manages this factory, dries the turmeric in the sun a second time,
09:36because sometimes there's some moisture left in the root stalks.
09:40The sticks help workers flip over the turmeric to prevent fungus from growing.
09:45This factory can dry 2,000 bags of turmeric at once.
09:48Then these workers saw through piles of dried root stalks by hand,
09:51removing impurities like stones.
09:52The bigger the pieces, the more Pavan can sell them for.
10:02The bigger the pieces, the more Pavan can sell them for.
10:05The highest quality is usually exported, as they can sell it for 10% more.
10:24But the inferior ones will still be ground up into powder.
10:28Pavan will polish the turmeric yet again in these drums,
10:30which increases its value by brightening the color.
10:36On average, the factory can polish 35 tons a day.
10:40It's a final product.
10:42After that, you have to go to the bulk farm,
10:43you have to go to the bulk farm.
10:45If you have to go to the powder, you have to go to the powder.
10:47With the cost of all of these steps,
10:49Pavan says his company makes slim profit margins.
10:51These days, Pavan is grinding more turmeric into powder than ever before,
11:01because it's selling better than unpowdered.
11:04The factory now processes 13,000 tons of turmeric a year.
11:08But when it comes to powdered, factories are facing steep competition from counterfeiters,
11:14sometimes smaller processors in less regulated areas of India.
11:19In the 1980s, processors across South Asia began using an industrial paint called lead chromate
11:33to make their turmeric more yellow.
11:36People will add a lead-based dye to turmeric.
11:38Sometimes it seems like they don't even realize that it's dangerous.
11:41They're just trying to make their product look better.
11:44It's led to millions of lead poisoning cases across the globe,
11:48even reaching as far as New York City.
11:51And these fraudsters can sell the laced turmeric for cheap,
11:55undercutting producers of the real stuff.
11:56In response, the Indian government set a lead limit of 10 micrograms per gram of turmeric
12:11and increased testing across multiple states.
12:14But still, turmeric has been found with more lead than the legal limit.
12:18In 2024, the FDA rejected four shipments of Indian turmeric
12:22for illegal color additives like lead chromate.
12:24But Ethan Frisch, who runs the spice company Burlap & Barrel,
12:29is worried U.S. agencies no longer have the workforce to check imported goods.
12:33To check for lead, there's no government oversight at all.
12:36We, as the company, importing it, take responsibility for it.
12:40Ethan works directly with an organic turmeric farmer in India,
12:44paying him over four times the fair trade price.
12:47It's very rare for a U.S. company to buy directly from farmers in any spices, especially turmeric.
12:52Mostly American companies will buy through an importer who has bought from an exporter,
12:59who has bought from a consolidator, you know, like 10 steps back before you get to the farm.
13:03But even though Ethan knows exactly where his turmeric comes from, he still checks it for lead.
13:08You know, we test everything in India and on arrival for lead and other heavy metals,
13:12for pathogens, E. coli, salmonella, but none of that is required.
13:17I think the government should be much more aggressive because companies do take advantage of these loopholes and consumers are the ones who suffer.
13:26And it's not just lead that Indian turmeric has been laced with.
13:29It's been found to contain high levels of pesticides.
13:31The other problem is when the turmeric is used in the mixed spice.
13:36So if you buy a mixed spice where turmeric is there, again, you don't know which spice has the problem.
13:41And it gets mixed up.
13:43Singapore, Nepal and Hong Kong have placed bans on two companies' mixed spices from India.
13:48India is such a huge exporter of spices that any ripple in the spice world can affect the Indian economy.
13:53India has long traded its turmeric across the globe.
13:57Around 700 AD, traders moved the spice along the Silk Road.
14:02Its golden hue made it useful for dyeing fabric, and it soon became synonymous with luxury.
14:08Marco Polo wrote of its color and taste during his journeys east,
14:12and the Dutch and British East India companies shipped loads of turmeric to Europe for its medical uses.
14:18The British spread it to their colonies across the globe.
14:20So turmeric is nothing new to the West.
14:23But in the last two decades, U.S. imports have jumped a thousand percent.
14:28The states brought in $50 million worth of the spice in 2023.
14:33So what prompted the renewed boom?
14:36Compared to a lot of other spices, turmeric has really great medical research around it.
14:41There was such a body of research and tradition and history in India, it didn't come from nowhere.
14:45Studies by European and American scientists eventually proved what India had known all along.
14:52Turmeric is really good for you.
14:54You know, you see it in tablet form in Costco.
14:57You know, it's not surprising that it's popular in the U.S., but what is surprising is, I guess, the speed with which it sort of appeared on the market.
15:03Celebrities and health influencers hopped on the trend.
15:05Americans released health books and cookbooks.
15:09Soon, coffee shops were serving up golden lattes, a riff on the traditional Indian home remedy called Haldi Dude.
15:15And turmeric wellness shots took off.
15:18COVID created a mass market for these products.
15:21Previously, it was more of a niche market.
15:23During the pandemic, people began experimenting more at cooking at home and were drawn to bright-colored turmeric dishes on social media.
15:30The color of turmeric, that gold, orange, really pops.
15:35Big, multinational companies even swapped out synthetic dyes for the spice.
15:39In 2016, Kraft replaced the chemical yellow dye in its mac and cheese with turmeric.
15:44That same year, General Mills replaced some of the synthetic colorants in Trix cereal with the spice.
15:48But after uproar from consumers over the less vibrant colors, the company reintroduced the chemically colored version.
15:57An extract of turmeric even gives sweet tart ropes their hue.
16:01But despite all this rising demand, Indian turmeric farmers still aren't guaranteed a good price.
16:07Because what they grow isn't high enough in valuable curcumin for U.S. and European pharmaceutical markets.
16:13Because those are the traditional processes, curcumin was not a number that was measured.
16:19A longer growing cycle contributes to more curcumin.
16:22In India, they're not letting it sit in the soil for long periods of time.
16:25So that will just by nature mean it has lower curcumin content.
16:30Plus, the hot water farmers boil it in also likely lowers the content of the compound.
16:34We are not able to meet more than the 10% of the global demand for high curcumin content.
16:41Which is actually used by the pharmaceutical and nitrocytical industry.
16:45All of these challenges have left some farmers like Ashok earning just 50 cents a pound for their roots.
16:51That same turmeric might sell for $15 at a New York City Whole Foods.
16:56Indian turmeric is also facing growing competition from other countries.
17:00Countries that did not produce turmeric before are now coming up with production, like Fiji is now coming up with production.
17:08About a decade ago, Fiji grew just 4% of the turmeric the U.S. imported.
17:13Now, it makes up to 25%.
17:15Over the same period, India's export share dropped by more than 8%.
17:19Unlike in India, where it's cultivated on farms, in Fiji, the turmeric grows wild.
17:24We have been collecting our turmeric from villages up in the foothills of Fiji.
17:32So they're fairly remote and they don't really have any other source of income.
17:36Tahu Hikoroa and his friend founded Island Magic Fiji to help locals make money off of the abundant turmeric.
17:43Because it's wild, villagers don't treat it with pesticides or fertilizers.
17:47You can't use fertilizers and pesticides in Fiji. They're too expensive to start with.
17:54The lack of additives is likely one reason this turmeric has higher curcumin levels than in India.
17:59The turmeric was bought here over 100 years ago and it's been sitting in the soil just regenerating year on year on year on year.
18:07That has naturally just allowed those curcuminoids to just grow in strength.
18:11Plus, the company doesn't boil or polish its rootstocks, which can also lower curcumin levels.
18:18Because we're exporting fresh, there's no real processing involved at all.
18:22The team just washes it in these tubs to remove any dirt and gives it a quality control check.
18:28Then they dry it out on mesh racks for up to 7 hours.
18:31The high curcumin levels of Island Magic's turmeric may have helped Fiji gobble up more market share in the West.
18:36Now, Fiji exports over a third of the value of turmeric to the U.S. as India, despite having less than 1% of the area.
18:45And it's given the Pacific Island nation a leg up.
18:49Most of the land in Fiji is native land. The soils are untouched, whereas the farmed arable land in India has been really worked for a long time.
19:0197% of Island Magic's 1.1 million pounds of turmeric end up stateside.
19:08There, it'll be juiced, freeze dried or dehydrated.
19:11The more we ship out, the more villages we can bring into our network.
19:16South American countries are also hopping on the trend, like here in Colombia or here in Peru, where exports have surged 70% from 2024 to 2025.
19:24Ethan has worked with a farmer in Costa Rica, growing turmeric to replant a mountainside that was once deforested for cattle.
19:32I visited some turmeric farms in Nicaragua at one point that were being grown at a huge scale at a coffee plantation that produces for Starbucks.
19:41Individual farmers in India, now they're often being priced out by larger scale producers in other countries.
19:45The 26% tariff the Trump administration has threatened to put on Indian imports could impact turmeric farmers too.
19:53We don't know the impact, but the fact remain is overall tariff in India is lower than many other countries from which they are sourcing their money.
20:01While tariffs could spell opportunity for India to earn back market share, producers here will have to contend with their own tariff increases first.
20:09It's going to affect the most vulnerable people first, and often that's people who have been excluded from global supply chains who don't have direct access themselves.
20:18So what can be done to help the turmeric farmers?
20:22You need to actually move up into the curcumin content level of the turmeric, which is now more important than the turmeric in itself.
20:30In January 2025, the Indian government launched a new National Turmeric Board.
20:37Farmers hoped it would help develop more curcumin rich varieties and help them negotiate better prices.
20:43But there are already regulatory organizations controlling turmeric production in India.
20:48Logically speaking, you need a single agency to look after the product.
20:52That hasn't happened.
20:53Supporters hope the board will help get more of India's 30 turmeric varieties GI tags or geographical indications.
21:01These labels guarantee a product's authenticity, which could help increase profits and help deter counterfeits.
21:07But can the board actually follow these promises?
21:21You are asking me a million-dollar question, which nobody in India knows.
21:25But Arpita believes India has the ability to do more with its turmeric than just polish and export it.
21:42Producers could make turmeric extract, she says, or turn it into value-added products like turmeric milk, supplements and snacks that can fetch higher prices globally.
21:52I'm not worried about farmers have stopped producing turmeric.
21:57I'm more worried about how can a farmer move up the value chain.
22:00Because farmers are the most important piece of this billion-dollar, ancient, and for many, sacred spice.
22:09One that locals here hope will bring them prosperity and protection, spread across their doorstep.
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