The challenges of farming in Auroville

Is farming in Auroville different from farming in the rest of the bioregion?

The obvious difference is that we are organic, which immediately sets us apart from many of our neighbours who use pesticides etc. as a matter of course.

In this area, the traditional crops were millets, peanuts and some rain-fed rice. In the early days, our farmers grew what they could. This included millets like ragi, cumbu, tennai and red rice. Few of our farmers had any previous farming experience, so they learned from the local farmers and by trial and error.

The millets are grown much less in Auroville now, partly because the rains seem less reliable and partly because there is no market for them. Many of our farmers grow vegetables or fruit instead, although it is only in the past 10 – 15 years that our farmers have grown vegetables the whole year round. Here the local farmers could not advise us as there is no tradition in this area of vegetable or fruit growing on a commercial scale. Consequently, in our early days of vegetable and fruit growing, there were many failed experiments.

Are there limiting factors to what we can grow here?

Yes. One issue is that after April all the ‘European’ vegetables, like carrots, beans etc. won’t grow here as it is too hot and dry.  Regarding soil, the Irumbai region of Auroville is a good rice growing area, but much of the area to the north of Auroville does not have such good farming soil. 

So when people say that Auroville should be self-sufficient in terms of food they are not taking into account what can be grown here?  

No. Also, they don’t take into account the land available. While working on the Farm Group’s Auroville Sustainable Agriculture Plan [see box] in 2011, we worked out how many acres we would need to feed our population. We discovered that even for our present population we would need a much larger area devoted to farming than we have now. 

We produce something like 15% of the food required but this is a confusing statistic because much of the produce cannot be grown for 9-10 months of the year.  In the summer, we can grow cucumbers, papayas, ladies fingers, aubergines, snake gourds etc. but our farmers restrain themselves from growing this kind of thing because of problems getting rid of them.  At the moment, Tomas from Annapurna Farm has a large stock of rice which he cannot get rid of because it looks and tastes different from the processed rice that people in this area are used to eating nowadays. 

So people’s food tastes are also a factor in what we choose to grow.

What are the solutions?

One solution is to try to change people’s eating habits to get them to eat more local foods. Krishna is doing a good job at his Solitude Café of presenting local foods in a fresh, tasty way and we would like to do the same in the new FoodLink café that we hope to open soon. We are also looking at food processing to give an extended life to fruit and vegetables that can only be grown a few months of the year. 

Regarding the lack of good farmland in Auroville, I think we should try to grow as much as we can here but also explore tie-ups with local farmers willing to grow organic food for us. We could also have land in the hills where we grow the food that many of us like but which cannot be grown locally. 

Do you think our farmers are looked upon as just providers and the Aurovilian consumers get frustrated when they can’t get what they want, when they want it?

Very much so. Take eggs. Recently, people complained that not enough Auroville eggs were available but this was because the Auro-Orchard chickens were sick. In fact, chicken farming is a whole scene. Chickens often get sick, you have to inoculate them and treat them for worms all the time, and there is always the danger that a mongoose will get into the chicken coop and eat a lot of them. That’s why we stopped keeping chickens at Discipline Farm.

So education is a big thing here. I think farm tours, like the ones organized by Lisbeth in the last guest season, could help Aurovilians understand better the challenges our farmers are facing.

At the same time, could the Auroville farms be more efficient?

Yes. As we pointed out in our Sustainable Agriculture Plan, there is scope for cultivation and productivity enhancement on our farms. The kind of farming we are asking people to do in Auroville is fairly specialized, and many of our farmers today were born in the local area and don’t have a background in fruit and vegetable growing. They have learned a lot but their skills are definitely not sufficient and more training is needed.

To have a more efficient farm you need to develop things like an organized process of making compost and an effective irrigation and water catchment system. Most of our farmers use micro-sprinklers now, but other developments that we would like to see are often missing. Some of our farms remain shoestring affairs; they are not optimizing their potential because the farmers are not used to thinking in that way and they prefer to remain small.

We have discussed devoting more resources to those farms that are more geared to big production, but there is no agreement in the Farm Group on taking this direction.

To what extent are the Auroville farms held back by lack of resources?

The difficulty of getting farm labour is definitely an issue. Of course, nowadays volunteering on farms is quite popular. In Discipline Farm we have volunteers who come for 12 months and they bring a nice energy.  But regarding regular farm labour, over the last 10 years fewer men want to work on the land. They prefer to work in the construction industry and many of their children are more educated and want office jobs etc. A few years ago, you couldn’t get any male farm labour except the old men and the alcoholics. The cyclone pushed up the wages of farm labour so a few more men are coming forward these days, but not many.

In our farm, about half the workforce is women. It is a very good option, they do solid work, but they can’t do everything and if it’s still difficult to get labour in the future we will be pushed in the direction of mechanization. At present, the Auroville farms are low on mechanization. Mechanisation is costly.

And money is another important resource we lack. AVI-UK gave some money recently, but we have no long-term funding.  The Sustainable Agriculture Plan addressed all the major challenges and laid out a phased programme for development. We thought that on the basis of this plan we could get support from the FAMC and significant funding from outside funders. However, this didn’t happen.  So now we have to build ourselves up from the bottom with nothing; it’s a shoestring-type of development. 

For example, sometimes our local farmers struggle because they can’t afford to dig decent wells. The Farm Group doesn’t have the money for this, so the farmers put in cheap wells, without casing, and consequently sometimes these wells collapse. At the same time, we know that we are facing a water crisis, that there is too much over-pumping in the bioregion, so we are also pushing water efficiency. Most of our farmers with adequate water have stopped flood irrigation and are using drip irrigation now, but this also costs money.

But I think the basic points made in our Plan still hold true. We identified, among other things, the need to improve marketing, to have organic certification, to provide training, to optimize natural resource management and to invest in infrastructure. 

There is this new movement in Auroville of urban farming, and there are people experimenting with hydroponics. Do you see this as complementary to traditional farm practices or as competition for our farmers?

I see it as complementary.  In my view, the more people engaged in food growing the better. But some of our farmers may feel a little bit threatened by these new initiatives. 

Are you optimistic about the future of farming in Auroville?

Yes, we are moving along, despite setbacks like not getting our five-year Sustainable Agriculture Plan funded.  We have people fundraising now and if the funds come in, we are clear about what we want to do with them. If not, we go on building one brick at a time and, at one point, we will see the beginnings of a wall.  

Actually, I think farming in Auroville is on a cusp. An Aurovilian has just joined us who has skills in writing project and funding proposals, and we have the promise of some funding for a snack bar in the new FoodLink area. If we can develop the new FoodLink project with a snack bar and food processing facilities as well as a farm shop, it could turn out to be a great way of promoting our work. 

Vision

1) Create and maintain a healthy and conscious farming system, integrated with and providing food for Auroville.

2) Produce food in a way that is sustainable for the earth, the community and the bioregion.

3) Promote and advance sustainable farming practices locally and globally.

Mission

1) Provide as much healthy, organic food for Auroville as possible.

2) By providing one of the basic needs of the community, Auroville’s agricultural sector will be a major contributor to making Auroville a self-supporting township.

3) Establish and maintain a community-embraced network that guides and supports food production and distribution for Auroville.

4) Information systems will enable the farms to estimate demand, monitor production and set targets for production of selected item.

5) Certification and monitoring systems will ensure high quality organic produce and promote the sharing of best practices amongst farmers.

6) Increase knowledge, awareness and practice of sustainable organic farming.

7) In Auroville and beyond, provide education and experience for individuals, wishing to learn about sustainable farming.

Plan criteria agreed with FAMC

1) Food production to meet the needs of the growing AV population.

2) Partnerships with non AV farmers / farmer organizations.

3) Optimizing natural resource management.

4) Sharing of infrastructure, equipment and material.

5) Maximizing use of renewable energy

6) Research, training and education to maximize ecological awareness and develop cutting edge organic farming practices.

7) Manpower and succession planning / human resource management.

8) Close connection to the bioregion

9) Performance and delivery driven

10) Open processes, transparent and accountable.

Strategy

1) Increase own production and decrease dependence on external procurement.

2) Optimize agricultural assets in a sustainable manner.

3) Use educational tools to evince interest and participation in food and agriculture.

4) Make food and agriculture an attractive, and creative sector to work in.

5) Change food habits to a more sustainable diet (more of locally grown, organic farm produce, e.g.: CSA initiative) and management.

FoodLink

Develop it into a central service for Auroville Food and Agriculture activities essential to the full realization of the 5 year plan.