Special Indian menu for Indian astronauts travelling to space. Sounds interesting. After all, like all of us travelling abroad and craving for Indian food, the Indian astronauts in future too will like to satiate their craving for Indian food, while in space. Let’s get ready.

Indian astronaut Subhanshu Shukla’s experiment with cultivating green gram (moong) and fenugreek (methi) in microgravity during the mission to International Space Station (ISS) marks the initial steps to prepare for longer missions for Indian astronauts. Food being an essential requirement, even travelers to space in future will prefer salads that satiate the Indian taste bud.

To see Subhanshu Shukla donning the role of a space farmer in the ISS therefore is exciting. “I am so proud that ISRO has been able to collaborate with national institutions all over the country and come up with some fantastic research which I am doing on the state for all the scientists and researchers. It is exciting and a joy to do this,” says a visibly thrilled Shukla. He was speaking to the Axiom Space Chief Scientist, as quoted in the media.

I can gauge the excitement that the Indian astronaut is coming out with. Although the experiment he has undertaken in space is part of the India-centric space research aimed at developing food vegetable salads that meets the taste and nutrition requirements of the Indian aeronauts in future, the seed samples will eventually returned to India and go in for long-term research to examine changes in their genetics, microbial ecosystem, and nutrition profile, says an Axiom press release.

In another experiment, Shukla also laid out experiments with microalgae to know of their potential to ‘produce food, oxygen and even biofuels. Their resilience and versatility make them ideal for supporting human life on long-duration missions.”

“Right from doing stem cell research and looking at the effect of microgravity on seeds, evaluating the cognitive load on astronauts while they are interacting with screens on board the station. It has been fantastic. I feel proud to be this kind of bridge between the researchers and the station and do the research on behalf of them, said a beaming Shukla abroad the station. He certainly has every reason to be proud of what he has done abroad the space station.

While Shukla has all the reasons to be proud of his accomplishments as a farmer in space, he is left with no worries if he was to be told that cultivating crops in space or on Earth is relatively easy, but the real problem only begins when the crop is harvested and taken to mandis. Indian vegetable farmers often face unexpected price fall during marketing of their crops. A sudden price crash in the market pushes many vegetable farmers into a severe distress. Nor do I expect the astronaut, during his return back home, to unnecessarily start worrying about the market price slump that farmers face once the harvest of vegetables and fruits is complete.

Of course, it is none of his job to care about the price crash that farmers are often faced with forcing many of them to throw their produce, but somehow, I feel it will great if he can take out time and visit the mandis upon his return, and see for himself the plight and suffering that farmers undergo. His words about what he sees may help draw the nation to the human sufferings on the farm. A celebrity status helps being a voice for where the attention is lacking. The media will go agog with his visit to mandis and his words in sympathy will become talking points.

Nevertheless, National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA) is known to have established a Space Food System Laboratory at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston. It was in 2006 that an official newsletter ‘NASA Facts’ explained the reasons behind setting up a space food laboratory. The newsletter is very revealing. For any student, it should come as an eye-opener. For instance, it says: “John Glenn, America’s first man to eat anything in near-weightlessness environment of Earth Orbit, found the task of eating fairly easy, but the menu limited.” Most astronauts who followed, found the food served in space, to be unappetizing and quite bland. Subsequently, when Skylab came, which obviously had more storage capacity, an elaborate 72 different kinds of different food items were served.

At present, astronauts abroad the space station are served 200 different kinds of food items. I am not sure how sumptuous is the food spread for astronauts in space, but it is quite an elaborate menu from which the astronauts can pick depending on their personal preferences and liking. Since water has to be squeezed out while packing the foods in a shuttle, it can be added just prior to consumption. Most processed foods are kept freeze dried and also dry keeping the limitation of adequate storage in space stations. But over the past few years, space stations have begun to grow vegetables in what is called ‘veggie gardens’ for ensuring fresh supply of greens. Some experts believe that as the world begins to prepare for the Mars Mission, besides the salad crops, research will move to growing potatoes, sweet potatoes, wheat and soybean.

This brings me to the issue of genetically modified crops. Now, before you say what is the correlation between GM crops and space foods, I must explain that during the time when the debate over the risks associated with GM crops was at its peak, that was sometime in the mid-2000s, I received an interesting email. This was in connection with sustainable livelihoods and food sovereignty that many of us were very vocal about.

The email I received went something like this. Why are you opposed to GM crops, the sender asked me. What is wrong if food is produced by GM technology without the use of land or farmers? He then elaborated on the possibility of depending on GM foods for global food supplies in the years to come. And then after putting it all down, he introduced himself. “I am leading the work in NASA on producing food in space for astronauts. If we can do it in space, we can also do it on Earth.”

Eventually, he signed off the email, saying: “We can request World Bank to subsidise food farming in space.”

Well, I had to explain to how important it was to sustain farm livelihoods. And why it was important to let farmers produce food for the millennia. Perhaps it is the same kind of thinking that the film The Martian is based on. “The Martian movie and book conveyed a lot of issues regarding growing food surviving on a planet far from Earth,” said NASA plant physiologist Ray Wheeler, who works at the Kennedy Research Centre. Very true, but the catch word is growing food on a planet far from Earth.

But just because we can grow food in space or on Mars does not mean we have to do it on Earth. Let’s continue with the romance of cultivating food and consuming what we grow here, on the Earth itself.

(The author is a noted food policy analyst and an expert on issues related to the agriculture sector. He writes on food, agriculture and hunger)