Annapurna Farm faces challenges

Auroville Today: Did you have a background in farming before coming to Auroville?

Tomas: Before I came to Auroville in 1983, I had trained to be a conventional horticulturalist in Holland. When I came to India, at first I was involved for six months in an agricultural project in Bengal as a volunteer. Then somebody recommended I should visit the Sri Aurobindo Ashram farms and see organic farming. I soon saw that they were not of interest to me, but Auroville was just down the road and when I visited something clicked. I began to get involved with Kottakarai farm where Jaap was farming, but then he left for some time, during which many conflicts arose within the community; the farmland was split up into pieces, and farming was no longer possible there because everybody seemed to be objecting to it or to something else. I became sick with hepatitis, went through a hard time, and eventually I moved to Annapurna. That was in 1986.

Was Annapurna Farm already well established?

No. At one time, before I arrived, the Aurovilian Cow John had been growing fodder there for his cows in Aurobrindavan, but when I arrived there were only some roadside tree plots which had been planted by Peter Clarence-Smith and Bernard (Pebble Garden) to see what would grow on this black clay. I had to begin the farm from scratch. But this was no problem. After the Kottakarai experience, I didn’t want anything more to do with endless discussions and dealing with people. I was happy to be on my own, working the land.

Had you ever worked with a black clay soil before?

No, I had to find out by trial and error what would grow there. This was very challenging because sometimes the soil is either too hard or too wet to do anything.

And you had no support in doing this?

Bernard joined me for some years in 1988 until we had an ideological falling out because I started to explore biodynamic agriculture. Mother had mentioned that Rudolph Steiner, the founder of Biodynamic farming, was an Asura, and my interest in it was a bit too much for Bernard. I also was probably not always an easy person to work with as well; I can get a bit too absorbed in the work and become stubborn. Besides Bernard, different people over the years have been involved in the farm; Krishna Solitude was there, as well as Sydo, Freech, Brooks, Luciano and Nidhin were there for longer or shorter times. Andre (Mom) joined in 1989 and is there still. Madhuri joined a few years back. So three Aurovilians are living there and managing the farm now.

Is biodynamic agriculture something you still practice?

Over the years, I have absorbed something from all these people – Fukuoka, Bill Morrison and others – but, of course, nothing fits fully here so I use different elements from each. However, biodynamics still speaks to me because it sees the farm as an organism and the role of the farmer, by collaborating with whatever is there, is to orchestrate nature and get everything working as well as is possible. Humans are the highest part of nature and with that we have the responsibility to work with the natural elements in the best way possible.

After 40 years of working there, do you have a good sense of what works in Annapurna and what doesn’t?

I’m still learning because there are always new and old unsolved challenges. Today the climate is changing, obtaining and affording labour is a big problem, wildlife is threatening our crops, and, of course, there is the present Auroville situation, which is not at all supportive. Dealing with weeds has been a challenge from day one and we are still grappling with it.

You have heavy industry close by. Is there an issue with pollution?

Not so much. We harvest rainwater and our water is not coming from that area, and I’m not aware of much air pollution. We have an Ashram farm close to us which is even bigger, and if we could join these farms together, we would have more of a buffer. However, Auroville is not ready to think about this as now the focus is totally on the city.

In terms of the challenges you have had to face over the years, is the present situation in Auroville one of the biggest?

Yes. Initially we wondered if Annapurna was going to be sold or exchanged, which made it very difficult to plan for the future. This threat seems to have receded somewhat, but now the main problem is finance as our financial reserves are being depleted. Since July 2023 the farm’s stewards – Andre and myself – have had their personal maintenances replaced by a “care package”, resulting in a loss of approximately Rs 27,000 monthly to the farm as this personal maintenance would normally be transferred into the farm account and the community kitchen expenses would be paid from it. Then, in June 2023, the GB FAMC replaced the Foodlink executives from one day to the next. This has resulted in poor management decisions by this unit and currently there are around Rs 3 lakhs owing to Annapurna Farm. There is also several lakhs of project money pending, because the current administration does not want to release it.

Moreover, during Covid the annual price increases for farm products was not made since the Auroville economy was down, and now with personal maintenance being abolished for a lot of individuals in Auroville it is again very difficult to raise farm product prices sufficiently to cover all the farm’s expenses. For the costs of inputs like labour, fuel, machinery, services, compost, etc. have all risen steeply.

Finally, the dairy with its processing unit, which is the farm’s economic motor, has been producing poorly for some time now. While things are slowly improving, this has also hit us seriously.

So we’re being squeezed at the moment, I am trying to find solutions but definitely we will need some kind of support.

But you have a plan.

Yes. Annapurna’s strength is land because we have many acres. We use most of the land at present, but we could make it more productive. But making land ready for cultivation and putting a crop on it is expensive. It would require a huge investment – between 5- 10 crore rupees – to make the farm fully productive and I’m sure we will not get this from the community soon.

But we have a more modest plan. It involves getting financial support for a few more years to allow us to build up something which, hopefully, will give us financial support after that. If we can receive a yearly budget of 5.2 Lakhs for 5 consecutive years, we would create wood lots which would eventually cover around 15 acres.

We would plant fast-growing casuarinas trees in these woodlots. The cost of establishing an acre of casuarina plantation on uncleared land is around Rs 50,000 but the yield after 5-6 years can be 2-3 times that amount, depending on the soil fertility and wood prices. Given our experience of working with casuarinas in the past, we think this is the best way to create an economically sustainable future for the farm. Besides creating the wood lots, the farm will use the rest of the amount requested to back up the running costs and improve the current operation.

Another big need which has arisen recently is the need for a good paddy transplanter. This is a costly machine (around 10 Lakhs) but it will help improve the economics, and being less dependent on labour in the paddy cultivation will benefit all paddy growing farms in Auroville. All told, currently we grow around 40 acres of rice.

To make a start with this new plan, the farm has decided to grow 10% less paddy in the coming season. Instead, we have already planted 2 acres of casuarina on the lower-yielding rice plots. After two years we plan to prepare some additional rice land, so the initial loss of this rice land for the wood lot will be compensated.

But won’t casuarinas deplete the soil?

No, casuarinas are nitrogen fixing and actually enhance soil fertility. After harvesting the crop there is a lot of biomass left in and on the ground. And, of course, we will not keep replanting the same patch.

But I’m not doing this just for the money. For me it has to do primarily with values. I want to treat the land and the animals in a way they deserve. I’m asking for support from Auroville and from outside because I feel it is important to work in a healthy way, instead of letting ourselves be pushed into becoming a commercial operation. Food is more than a commodity and growing it in the right way is important to me.

Do you think farming in Auroville is given the importance that it should be given?

No, it’s not taken seriously at all. Lots of people prefer to eat exotic and highly processed food rather than food grown on our farms, but they don’t realise that these products are not healthy at all. There is adulteration and heavy pesticide use. The body is part of our yoga, so if we want to keep healthy we have to give it good food.

Money now seems to become the determining factor in deciding what we eat: the cheaper the better. But if we want to move towards a healthier community, I’m sure it will be financially beneficial in the long run if people eat Auroville-grown food whenever possible.

At present, as you say, people seem to be becoming more dependent upon Pondy food and packaged foods, while some Auroville farms are looked upon simply as real estate to be exchanged for land in the city. Given these circumstances, are you optimistic about the future of farming in Auroville?

At the moment it doesn’t look very positive for the farms, given the way they are being treated by the present administration. But the Auroville farms themselves should also be willing to make changes. For example, they need to be more transparent in their management decisions if they are to build trust with the community.

Again, we cannot just blame farms and farmers for that. As a community we have somehow not found a way to develop good and healthy producing farms. There is also a cultural element involved where different cultures and backgrounds are making it quite challenging to develop a good food system in Auroville. I think what we really need is a kind of food group to look at this issue from different sides; food production, processing, catering, finance etc. In short it might need another working group.

What about the present administration’s initiative to create a model farm which could become an inspiration for other farmers in Auroville?

We were open to learning something from this experiment at Gratitude Farm, but this model farm was a disaster. It was meant to be a two-year project. They took something like half an acre and they pumped in 4 lakhs or so, and after one year they produced 7.5% of what they projected as income and a yield of 20% of what they had expected. Then they wrote a report about how fantastic it was going, but after another six months the project was abandoned. They also started a farmer training at Unity Farm but, again, nothing much is happening there. Farmers are requesting a meeting with the GB FAMC to evaluate these experiments, but we do not get any response to our communications.

People think we are fooling around and that they know better, but it is very tough to farm well under these conditions. At the moment, one of the most important considerations is to make it possible for people who have the interest to live on our farms and get involved in growing good and healthy food.

But where will you get these farmers?

True, at present who wants to farm? However, this is not typically an issue only in Auroville; farmers all over the world are getting older and less young people want to work on the land. And yes, the work is hard at times, but on the other hand, also incredibly enriching. I think a lot of people have lost touch with the elements and the soil. I also think that many people do not realize that working on a farm is not just heavy physical work, but there are many facets to farming nowadays. On a farm like ours there are so many possibilities, ranging from basic farm work, mechanics, research, admin work, food processing, education, PR and much more once you get connected to the world of farming with nature.

In Auroville farming has got a bad name and maybe we should sit together to figure out how to change this.

So why do you do it?

I ended up farming because it somehow sticks to me. I never planned to start a farm like Annapurna, it kind of just happened to me. I don’t plan my life really, I let life lead me: basically, I work with whatever comes and use a bit of commonsense, of course. In this way, my whole life has a different flavour and there is some space for magic. When I pre-plan life it comes too much from my mind and everything becomes very small. But if I can open to whatever comes and respond to that, it expands me, it gives me a totally different dimension; I feel I’m in the flow and more connected to the deeper meaning of life. And Auroville is still a perfect place for this.

For more information about the Annapurna project and how to donate to it visit https://annapurnafarm-auroville.org.in/