The spices in your cabinet are probably five to seven years old—and that's not an accident.
On this episode of Unpacked, host Aislyn Greene sits down with Sana Javeri Kadri, founder of Diaspora Spice Co., who spent nine years dismantling a 500-year-old system and replacing it with something radically different: direct relationships with regenerative spice farming partners across India and Sri Lanka. What starts as a question about how old the spices in your cabinet really are unfolds into a conversation about colonialism, cultural erasure, and what it actually takes to trace a turmeric root back to the family who grew it.
THIS WEEK'S GUEST
Sana Javeri Kadri founded Diaspora Spice Co. in 2017 at age 23, after discovering that the global spice trade—largely unchanged since European colonization took hold roughly 500 years ago—left farmers earning almost nothing while spices sat in warehouses for five to seven years before reaching store shelves.
Sana built the company around regenerative spice farming partnerships, working directly with 140 farmers across India and Sri Lanka to source turmeric, cardamom, cinnamon, black pepper, and more, paying farm partners an average of 4x commodity price. Sana splits time between Mumbai and the Bay Area and is the author of The Diaspora Spice Co. Cookbook, a book five years in the making and built entirely around the farm families behind the spices.
IN THIS EPISODE
How Sana Javeri Kadri traced the spice trade's roots back 4,000 years—and how colonization, not commerce, is what broke it roughly 500 years ago
Why regenerative spice farming partnerships let Diaspora Spice Co. pay farmers well above commodity price, and what that income jump has meant for farming families year over year
The 14-month search for pesticide-free cardamom, and what it actually takes to find a handful of true regenerative spice farming partners out of dozens of samples collected
Inside Eko Land's cinnamon and clove processing facility in Kandy, Sri Lanka, where quality control means tasting bark from individual trees—and why true cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum) is almost impossible to find in the US
What 9 years of relationship-building with Pragati Turmeric farm partner Prabhu Kasereni has looked like, from a 23-year-old showing up unannounced to writing a cookbook credited entirely to the farmers themselves
CHAPTERS
00:00:00 The Age of Your Spice Cabinet
00:03:00 The 500-Year-Old Trade Problem
00:10:00 Building Diaspora and Regenerative Farming
00:18:00 The Search for Cardamom and Pepper
00:26:00 Pragati Turmeric in Andhra Pradesh
00:34:00 Cinnamon and Cloves in Kandy
00:42:00 Nine Years, One Family's Story
00:48:00 The Cookbook and What Comes Next
INKS & RESOURCES
Diaspora Co.
The Diaspora Spice Co. Cookbook
Pragati Turmeric
Guntur Sannam Chilli
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