Abstract

The looming ecological crisis demands an urgent rethinking of possibilities within our surroundings. This article examines the practice of bamboo-shoot fermentation in India's North-Eastern Region (NER) and explores its connections to sustainability, food sovereignty, and the pressures of capitalist intervention. It traces how fermented foodways, while rooted in cultural knowledge, become entangled with globalised capitalist logics and emergent 'glocal' market spaces. Despite these legal and commercial mazes, the cultural teachings embedded in fermentation continue to offer vital pathways toward more sustainable futures.

Keywords: Food Sovereignty, Fermentation, Identity, Modernity, Tradition, Sustainability

How to Cite:

Dutta, A., (2025) “Green gold for the "future": Fermented foodways, possibilities and doubts”, Journal of Political Ecology 32(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5762