What farming could become

Auroville Today: Did you always want to be a farmer?

Anshul: No. I studied engineering at college but I was an ‘accidental’ engineer because after I finished school I was completely clueless about what I wanted to study, and there were few alternatives in those days.

After college, I worked in a school in Ahmedabad for four years, helping run a programme called Design for Change which developed programmes for children to design their own learning process. It was a whole new world for me, it gave me a new perspective, but I was not finding it complete in some way. That’s when I first visited Auroville.

I thought, how could Mother have such a dream? Is it possible? If so, why isn’t the entire world here? I wanted to see how it actually worked, so I began helping in the Sacred Groves project. This was a wake-up call because I realised that even after 24 years of education I knew nothing, absolutely nothing. I didn’t know how to build a house or grow my own food, my cooking was very basic…

That got me thinking that I had to make a major shift in my life. I had just met my future wife, and we decided that the first thing we had to learn was how to grow our own food. That was the start of the journey.

But you didn’t pursue it in Auroville at that time?

No. We left Auroville for various reasons at that time and, after attending a Permaculture Design Course, started farming in Kodaikanal. For three years we worked as permaculture designers and farmers for a client there. Though permaculture added something to my knowledge of design, something still felt missing. The approach seemed very westernised to me, and I didn’t feel it made sense to the local farmers. That’s when I started thinking about the wisdom of the ancients and the indigenous peoples.

If you study the culture which is coming from the Vedic societies in India or other old agricultural societies across the world, you see that they had some profound understanding of who they were and of their connection to the universe. For instance, the native peoples of the Americas don’t think in the way that we do, their perception of the world is entirely different. They view plants and animals as part of themselves, and see land as sacred rather than a commodity. This perception was created by the context that they were in, by the agricultural society in which they lived, and through which they were connected with each other and with the land.

To explore this further, life took us to Himachal Pradesh where we rented a piece of land to grow a farm. We had this romantic idea of living off the land. At the beginning it was an adrenaline rush, but after a while we realised this is not the work for just a couple of people as it was very intensive. We were harvesting three times a week, we had a market where we were selling our pickles and jams, and we were running courses. From six in the morning till six at night we were busy running the farm and our house with very little social support.

But there have been examples of indigenous communities or ones close to the soil which have destroyed the land around them. So this connection to the soil doesn’t seem to necessarily lead to a sense of oneness with the environment.

Agreed. There is a very good book by David Montgomery, called Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, in which he talks about how civilisations like the Greeks and those of South America reached a certain peak of prosperity, which was also the peak of their agriculture. However, because of greed and the desire for power they destroyed their ecology, and as soon as agriculture declined their civilisation started waning.

Also, indigenous communities require the individual to be subsumed in the collective, which is not productive of individual freedom or consciousness development.

Yes, and this is why the solution is not to go back. For the sustainability of humanity we need new cultural and social paradigms where we can realise our highest potentials both as individuals and as a collective. Moreover, these indigenous cultures are not sustainable in our rapidly changing world. We stayed with an indigenous community in Colombia: in regard to the spiritual wisdom of indigenous communities, these people were at the top. However, now they are under the threat of being wiped out as a culture because of pressure from the drug cartels to grow coca, and from humanitarian organisations that want to ‘help’ them by modernising their diets and lifestyle. Moreover, their new generation is not as connected to the land and the culture and aspire to leave. So I don’t see how the present situation can be sustained. It needs an evolution which takes into account the reality of our capitalist world and the need to imagine alternative futures.

On a more practical side, farming is very physically demanding. We need people to farm despite all the technological advances, for we are not at a stage where farming can be completely mechanised (at least not in countries like India), and, anyway, mechanisation has its own drawbacks. So an important question is, who is going to do the backbreaking work? The children of Indian farmers no longer want to work on the land and the new farmers may not have the skills or the endurance to do this work for years.

So what is the solution?

I don’t know. I used to believe in breakthroughs, in something that would change the world, like COVID. That didn’t happen. And then I realised that what we are talking about can only come about with a change of consciousness, a new worldview altogether, and that won’t happen overnight.

In terms of my personal development, however, what I felt I had been missing I found in Sri Aurobindo and The Mother’s explanation of the evolution of consciousness. For They were talking about the need for present humanity to evolve, to become more than human: to become divine. This made the picture much more complete for me.

But then I wondered, what is the connection of consciousness development with agriculture? And I began to realise that agriculture could be more than just about saving the soil or reducing the atmospheric carbon. Farming could become a way of learning more about myself, of developing myself, and of bringing the evolving consciousness which Sri Aurobindo and The Mother spoke about into my work. In this way, agriculture could become more integral for me: farming could become my yoga.

But how can farming be conducive to consciousness development?

In the modern world, our being has become severed from nature and there is an urgent need for reintegration. By allowing me to work with the soil, farming helps me to ground myself. It teaches me the patterns of nature, and that we are part of that pattern, and so I discover my place in the universe not only as a human being, but also as an evolving being, for I can see that nature evolves all the time.

What I mean is that agriculture, in its truest sense, is more than the cultivation of food. It can prepare individuals for communion with nature, for learning about cosmic forces and, therefore, themselves: in this perspective, the soil is cultivated as a means of cultivating the soul.

So I think any journey of self-discovery would be incomplete without us putting our hands in the soil, or planting a seed and watching something grow, because all of this can teach us so much.

But I’m cautious of talking about the idea of consciousness in agriculture because I don’t want it to become a dogma or new age jargon. If I am using it as a means of transforming my own consciousness, it’s not necessary that people who are working with me should know what I am doing, and if working with the soil offers these possibilities, this need not be pointed out all the time to others.

But this journey of self-discovery cannot happen in a three-hour farming package course because no deep connections can be created in that time. It’s a long-term process. It means you have to be on the land, every day, to the point of boredom. And then you have to cross that point for it to start to become something different.

I don’t believe that everybody has to become a farmer to learn about this, but farms could become schools. If the farms became schools and children are learning and growing up on farms, they will go on to do whatever they wish to pursue, but they will do it from a deep sense of connection with themselves and with the environment. In this way, if we are talking about how someone can become more integral in their consciousness, I think agriculture has great potential.

Have you tried to offer this experience in Auroville?

Yes, I offered a one-year course at AuroOrchard to Aurovilian students. I planned to work alongside them on the land, and also to teach them about the various aspects and dimensions of farming. One student signed up and it was great. It was the longest course I had ever run and she was completely new to agriculture.

By the end of it, I could see a transformation in her. She had been very shy and unsure about herself at the beginning, but because she found a place where she could develop into something on her own, she became a very different person. I don’t want to ascribe this just to agriculture, I’m not saying nothing else can do this, but I think it provides a great opportunity for our children to learn about things which are important for understanding who they are and what they want out of life.

It’s also important that people feel they’re in a place where they can give something. Moreover, the work with the land is inherently healing because you are dealing with creation. We have a lot of volunteers on the farm, and each comes with their own issues and traumas. And I see how working with the land and connecting with others who share this work changes them. 

That’s also the power, for them to feel that if they plan something, it comes to something. This is especially important for young people, many of whom feel they have a bleak future, because it allows them to feel they can participate in the life forces in some way.

Do you think that farming as it is done in Auroville at present is promoting this kind of personal growth?

Sometimes I feel embarrassed by the kind of farming that we are doing here. If I can grow 100 kilos of something for the Solar Kitchen that is worthwhile, but can’t I contribute something more to the dream of Auroville? As Auroville is a beacon for a new kind of world, I feel that farming here should be offering something more. Can it be a space for self-reflection, critical thinking? Can it be a tool for the transformation of consciousness? Can it offer a new kind of education?

However, I’m not trying to hold the higher moral ground, because the hard truth is that our farmers are struggling. We cannot offer them a good livelihood and many are in debt, so how can we expect them to try for something more? Even before we talk about consciousness development or teaching the children on our farms, the farmers themselves have to be supported, and Auroville is not doing that at present.

Why is this? Perhaps, after all, we don’t want farms in Auroville. If so, let’s look at the alternatives. But let’s at least begin a conversation about this.

You paint a pessimistic picture, not only about farming in Auroville but farming elsewhere. If there are fewer and fewer farmers because their children don’t want to take up this work, it sounds as if the future of farming will be mechanised. And then where would be the possibility for using agriculture as a means for the growth of consciousness?

I don’t think the future is so bleak. Many people are working on this issue around the world, and many people are interested and concerned about it. At least, that is the first step. What happens next depends on all of us collectively. And even if in 20 or 30 years we are all eating everything out of packets or popping food pills, I think it may be part of a longer-term process, and perhaps we have to go through that to realise that something else is more important. I have given up the idea that a dramatic change for good will happen in my lifetime, but we still have to do the work so that it can happen, because we are responsible to future generations for what we are doing today.