What else is going on with farming in Auroville?

The Auroville Urban Farming project was started by Riccardo, a long term volunteer studying Food Security in Auroville, with the aid of Luigi in late 2014. Since then the team has grown, and today includes Giacomo, Mira, Ion, Valentina and Redvan, youth at Les Maison des Jeunes (along with Jaiakash, the gardener) and Martin from Auroville Consulting.

The Urban Farming group is experimenting with promoting the idea of community involvement and integral sustainability in the City Centre area of Auroville and involving the youth in farming activities.

The farming activities are mostly done in the ‘green corridor’ areas of the City Centre, as laid out in the Master Plan. It has also been expanded to the rooftops of Citadines and the backyard of the Mitra hostel. The group has successfully planted papayas, bananas, and rucola. On Sundays, they run an ‘open day’ for people to come to plant the beds prepared by the team, in the hope of getting them to begin food farming in their own gardens. Participants are given the farm produce as takeaways.

The group is working on creating knowledge resources, including an inventory of local plant varieties, medicinal plants, ‘spontaneous’ farming and so on, in collaboration with other groups. The young team aspires to ‘foster friendships around farms’ and is on an active lookout for more Aurovilians and Newcomers to be a part of this movement.

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Earth to Eating: all things related to growing, cooking and eating healthy food

Earth to Eating is an initiative of Buddha Garden and covers a range of activities related to the growing, preparing and eating of local healthy food in Auroville. These include:

– The creation and maintenance of Buddha Garden as a sustainable organic farm.

– A range of educational activities, such as courses like ‘From the Soil to the Plate’. This will help participants explore growing and cooking local organic food. Other educational activities will include school projects and hosting school groups and research students.

– Setting-up a permanent exhibition about all things related to food in Auroville and beyond. This will include historical information about food growing and production as well as exploring cultural attitudes towards food and artistic expression.

– The website earthtoeating.org, which has been launched this month. This online presence will support all of Buddha Garden’s activities. The website offers free downloads, such as the book Eating with the Seasons (which includes information about how Auroville farmers grow organic food in the local climate; details of what is available in different seasons; and where local Auroville food can be obtained); the poster Eat With the Seasons which provides an easy reference about what is available and when during the year; and an interactive database of recipes using local ingredients.

Monica and Akash started their rooftop hydroponics unit last year, inspired by their visit to hydroponics farms in climates similar to Auroville. After almost giving up due to an initial failure, they met a lady who shared the designs and resources used in her hydroponics experiment. This led to positive results and the couple are now keen to try out different experiments with their rooftop unit, like growing salad varieties of lettuce and rucola that can thrive even in the summer, and trying to set up an automated way of regulating pH, temperature, water and nutrient levels etc. in their hydroponics unit, which is based on Nutrient Film Technology. In the beginning they had to import most of the equipment like the seedling bed foam and nutrients, but they have now managed to find local agencies that supply most of it. “There has not been much research in Auroville around hydroponics, even though it’s a promising method for urban environments,” says Akash. “A stigma attached to it is that uses chemicals, but the chemicals used are the raw nutrients found in the soil. The only difference is that while plants normally absorb these nutrients from the soil, here they absorb it directly from the nutrient charged water. The most important thing is that our produce is entirely pesticide-free.”

But is it very labour-intensive? “Right now, Monica and I have taken this up as a hobby, but it does take up more time than a regular hobby. On average, the unit takes 2-3 hours of work twice a week, while setting it up with the current design takes around 2-3 days of work. We still don’t know if we will continue doing this as a personal experiment or work on offering this to others as a partially-automated rooftop kit, especially if more people are passionate about this option. I’d be happy to help in something like technology transfer or consulting.” The unit costs around Rs. 1 lakh to set up, something which might not be an entirely viable option for most households.

Monica and Akash are currently studying how the unit will perform during the summer season, and the possibility of growing various crop varieties in their rooftop unit.