The Annapurna community farm

The past, today, and anticipating the future

Like so many Auroville projects, Annapurna farm started with a simple keet-roofed hut, no money to speak of, not many expectations but with high aspirations. That was at the end of 1980s.  Annapurna was to become Auroville’s largest food producing farm. With its 135 acres and heavy clayey soil, cultivating field crops such as rice, millets and pulses was the option of choice as these were not being produced by any other Auroville farm. 

The farm set up a windmill, a biogas unit, and used animal traction and solar energy. But over the years, Annapurna’s managers realised that rigidly adhering to these environmentally-friendly values would mean that the farm would produce very little food and Auroville would have to buy more conventionally grown rice, millets and dairy products from the open market. A shift of focus became necessary, and in the late 1990s Annapurna went ‘less green’ to become more productive. “Our products were not as environmentally-friendly as we wished but still ‘greener’ than conventional produce from the markets in Pondicherry,” recalls Tomas, who has been managing Annapurna since the early days.

Life was intense and in certain ways rather lonely. “Since Annapurna is approximately 10 kilometres away from Auroville, we were often on our own because Auroville services focused on the Auroville area. This made us pretty individualistic and a bit less connected to the larger community life,” says Tomas. He recalls that outsiders sometimes criticised Annapurna’s managers as being proprietors, not under-standing how incredibly intense stewarding Auroville land is, especially when taking care of isolated plots which otherwise would have been encroached upon and lost to Auroville. “Sometimes, people said we are acting as if Annapurna is our personal place. Working group members fail to understand that having stewarded this land for over 30 years and having seen all those working groups, such as the Funds and Assets Management Committee and the Land Board coming and going, all with different policies, ideas, and guidelines, we tend to ignore them a bit because the reality on the land is usually quite different and challenging. We are often not understood and our suggestions are ignored. All this makes us look like small land lords in the eyes of some Auroville bureaucrats. Of course, we are human and have our attachments as well.”

Lack of funds

The lack of funds prevented a speedy take off. Apart from providing a maintenance to the farmers, the community was not otherwise involved and the farm largely relied on its own day-to-day financing. Sometimes, the Auroville Farm Group would be able to secure a little capital for infrastructural developments, but mostly the steward would be on his own to find the investments to build the farm. “That hasn’t changed much,” says Tomas. “Even today, Auroville’s governing bodies do not understand how much money is required to run an organic farm the size of Annapurna. Huge investments are needed to make it productive and even more if Auroville wants healthy food produced in a sustainable way.” He compares the organic to the conventional farm. “A conventional farm purchases all its inputs from outside; it externalizes its needs and so puts the burden on the outside world. An organic farm strives to produce these inputs on the farm itself and create an entire ecosystem to support it.”

Over the years, the farm slowly shaped itself, depending on the people involved, finances available and factors such as the increasing cost of hired labour from the surrounding villages and the changing monsoon rains. It took many years before Annapurna was able to stand on its own feet. “That turning point came when we started adding value to our products,” says Tomas. Annapurna began milling its own grains and the grains produced by other Auroville farms, as well as organic millets bought from the bioregion which were no longer grown at Annapurna. The farm also started producing its own cheese, fruit jams and sesame products, and growing fodder for its animals and biomass for composting and mulch material. 

Challenges

Annapurna is a rich ecological farm. It has forest areas and live fences, water bodies and land that provides biomass. “But if I compare Annapurna to organic farms elsewhere, I realise that it is not enough. We have to move towards more sustainable practices. The farm will stand or fall depending on how successful we will be in transforming Annapurna into a more sustainable place,” says Tomas. But there are many challenges.

A major one is that the farm needs to develop more acres. This is a slow process and depends mainly on the availability of water. Today, the farm cultivates around 20 acres of seasonal rice, two acres of fruit trees, a few acres of sesame and an acre of bananas. The water requirements are met from harvested rainwater. Annapurna has three large rainwater catchment ponds, and is in the process of building a fourth ‘uphill’ which will be fed from the lower ponds, for which solar pumps are planned to be used. These ponds hold sufficient water to farm the present acreage for most of the year, but in long dry periods water drawn from the underground aquifers is required. “More acres need to be developed: but to achieve this water has to be secured, irrigation systems must be installed, and more fertiliser material has to be grown,” says Tomas. 

Another challenge is to grow more fodder for the dairy. “We have a wonderful cow herd but we still feed the animals substantial amounts of grains which are actually fit for human consumption. Our vision is to slowly move away from these grains and grow more fodder throughout the year. This will require more water and labour and may reduce the milk production. Since the dairy is the financial engine of the farm, we must tread very carefully here,” says Tomas.

A  third challenge is caused by the increase of wild life. “It’s beautiful to see deer in the rice fields, but it makes crop cultivation very challenging,” says Tomas. This could partly be remedied with a proper fence around the farm, but this is a big investment as Annapurna has a periphery of approximately seven kilometres. For the time being, only small plots are fenced. “We are preparing a new banana plantation and we have put up an electric fence to protect the plants from the wild pigs, deer, and the village cows that wander in from time to time. Once fruiting starts, we have to keep a few humans at bay as well,” comments Tomas dryly. 

A fourth challenge is improving its grain processing. “The Solar Kitchen is complaining about our rice quality. This has partly to do with the fact that our machines are outdated and consumers are used to higher standards than in the past,” says Tomas. “We need to purchase a state-of-the-art grain processing unit which will cost a lot but is essential if we want to supply organic and unpolluted grains to Auroville.”

Then there are the ever-increasing costs of labour. The farm will need to mechanise more but this will also increase its energy consumption. “I’m not happy about this,” says Tomas. “We prefer to work as green as possible, but we have to be pragmatic and the needs of the crops and animals come first. Yet, I am appalled by the diesel/petrol/electricity guzzling machines we operate. But to reduce our energy-usage or to move to solar will be very challenging, and we will need both human resources and financial support to improve on that front.”.

Lastly, there is the issue of succession. Annapurna today is managed by two Aurovilians, both of whom are in their sixties, and a Newcomer. They need new people, but getting them is not easy. “We have not been good at this in the Auroville farms; when the first steward wants to hand over to someone else it is not easy to find a successor who is willing and capable. Also, people often prefer to start their own farm project instead of picking up the heavy load of someone else,” says Tomas.

The support group

A few years ago Annapurna invited a few interested Aurovilians to be part of a support group, a sounding board to help plan the future of the farm. “Members are all involved in other aspects of Auroville and in this way we get a wide range of inputs,” says Tomas. “The group helps us to stay connected to the needs of the community.” He hopes that the support group will make the farm more of a community project where  stewards can participate, act, then move on, leaving behind a farm richer, more beautiful and more productive for generations to come.