Exploring Auroville farming

The Auroville Farm Festival, organized by the Farm Group (FG) and its distribution unit, Foodlink, took place around Pongal, Tamil Nadu’s traditional harvest festival. The Farm Festival was intended to remind the Aurovilians of Mother’s vision that, as far as possible, Auroville should become self-sufficient in food, and that with 21 farms and just about 50 Aurovilian farmers, aided by countless volunteers and hired hands, the farming community struggles to step up to this challenge [also see Auroville Today # 310, May 2015].

Vivek, the FG coordinator, points out that these days, unlike in the past, most of the community members do not know from where their food is sourced, or what it means to eat ‘locally’. Few, indeed, know where their organic red rice or millets such as varagu are grown. They are not aware of the multi-faceted aspects of farming in Auroville, and how this affects their life. Community dining spaces such as the Solar Kitchen and other farm cafés are often the only links between the community and its farmers.

Farming with thought

Auroville farmers aim at providing organic food. But there’s more to it than just ensuring that the shelves of the Pour Tous Distribution Centre and Foodlink are stocked with an assorted variety of organic vegetables and fruits. For years, Auroville farmers have been trying to promote ecological sustainability and not just demand-based production. At Charlie’s dairy farm (Aurogreen), cows are retired rather than being sent to the slaughterhouse; Bernard and Deepika’s Pebble Garden is a showcase of organic seed conservation efforts; Stephan’s seed centre at the Auroville Botanical Garden provides first-quality organic vegetable seeds. These and many more Auroville farming practices have been recognized as important in farmers’ networks across the country.

In the months ahead, the Farm Group aspires to achieve much more. There is a need for a standardised certification process for the products of all Auroville farms, including the smaller ones for whom certification is often less viable. The problems of surplus production, storage and lack of distribution space need to be addressed; and there is the problem of a lack of demand for traditional local crops and the need to change the Aurovilians’ food tastes. “In Auroville, despite the community’s varied tastes, the farmers often choose to grow what they think suits the local weather and soil conditions”, says Vivek. “The farmers, moreover, decide the prices based on their production cost, and so do not suffer from market or seasonal fluctuations as do other farmers.”

When production costs all over the world have increased, especially in organic farming, the Auroville farms have done remarkably well. They have managed to reduce their costs by using on-farm composting techniques. “The only costs that have gone up are the costs of labour,” says Vivek.

How organic is organic?

But while the Auroville farms make increased efforts to supply ‘organic’ products, the meal on one’s plate in an Auroville food outlet may be less organic than one thinks. “Many products in Auroville outlets are still sourced from outside markets, from surrounding villages or from Pondicherry. Some have been labelled ‘organic’, but their quality is questionable. ‘Organic’ includes proper soil preparation, the use of natural fertilizers and pesticides, and organic seeds,” says Vivek.

To promote this, the Farm Group has set-up a Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) programme to evaluate the quality of organic farming both in Auroville and in the bio-region. Guidelines for raw and processed organic food are being drafted, with Auroville intending to label the products that are truly organic.

Much more documentation is needed of all the on-farm research that has been taking place in Auroville farms, covering farmers’ experiments with new and innovative ways of ‘green’ farming as well as how to cook unfamiliar foods. So far, only a few books have been published. For example, Buddha Garden’s work is described in the book How my Garden Grew by Priya Vincent. Her book Eating with the Seasons will be downloadable soon [see below].

Community Supported or Community ‘Run’ Agriculture?

All over the world, community supported agriculture (CSA) activities are springing up to solve the farm’s demand-supply-distribution issues, such as the Farm folk City folk initiative in Canada, and Sapney Farm’s Heal the Soil CSA in the neighbouring village of Kottakarai. CSA takes farmers’ markets one step further: it makes the community members stakeholders in the farming. People invest in a farm and get back dividends in the form of farm produce either weekly or at the end of each harvest. But more than just providing markets, CSA inspires faith and confidence and creates personal relationships with the farmers. However, Auroville farmers have not yet had much success with this approach.

Auroville farmers have done much during the past few years to promote farming in Auroville and create more community awareness of the food we eat. Most of these have been independent efforts. What we perhaps need is an Auroville ‘model’ of CSA which creates space for collaborative and participatory approaches in farming within the community, while working towards the vision of a self-sufficient city.