ABSTRACT
This essay will study how the bioregional food system is practiced in the coffee plantations of Kodagu (the indigenous name of Coorg), located in the state of Karnataka in India, in response to the Anthropocene in the Global South. To counter the colonial establishment of the coffee plantations, towards the end of the twentieth century, the Kodava people started growing native crops on the coffee plantations. Reading Kaveri Nambisan’s The Scent of Pepper (1996) and Sarita Mandanna’s Tiger Hills (2010), this essay will demonstrate how bioregional eating in Kodagu determines the culture of the place and provides a bioregional identity to the Kodava people. In doing so, this essay will discuss some of the essential native species of the bioregional food system of Kodagu and explain how they inform traditional practices and have gradually evolved as significant ecological and social markers of the place and the community.
