Farming in Auroville: a round table discussion

Bindu: I think we’re all in agreement around this table that our farming sector does need help. But we probably have very different ideas of what is needed.

Lucas: Farming all over the world needs support and gets support. Most of the public money of governments helps farming, but we do not do that here. Our farming cannot do better than the rest of the world without support. That’s where we have to start. Farms need a constant investment for maintenance and development and we don’t provide enough support for our farmers.

Vivek: There are many ways that the government supports farmers in India that our farmers do not benefit from.

Ulli: So we are at a disadvantage?

Vivek: I would not suggest that we are always at a disadvantage because most of the Auroville farmers receive a maintenance from Auroville, which is not the case with farmers outside.

Lucas: But maintenance is not enough to develop farms. It is only enough for an individual to live at a basic level.

Tomas: The one thing that for me is clear is that after 50 years Auroville farming has not gone very far, so we have to examine why. Unfortunately, the Farm Group, which should be doing this, is not functioning properly, so it’s not the vehicle to move Auroville farming forward. We have to find other ways.

Vivek: I think farming in Auroville hasn’t evolved because the community has no understanding of its basic needs regarding healthy food and food security.

Sauro: I think that Auroville farming needs support but not in the way it is presently organized. There is a need for some kind of realignment. We have a situation where, historically, farms developed for land protection, to establish a presence on a place. The land might not have been the most suitable for farming. So there is a need for our planners to give priority in land use to farming where the land is most suitable for this.

Secondly, we need to reconnect our farming to what we are eating: we need to be eating food that we can grow here. Thirdly, we need to go beyond the individualistic trend in farm management where every farmer decides what they will grow. The farmers should adopt an approach which takes into account the needs of the community.

Tomas: Farmers do this automatically because we look at the market. If I can sell a certain product, I’ll grow it, if I can’t I will not grow it.

Sauro: But market demands should go in the direction of promoting food items which are more sustainable to grow here.

Lucas: The objective of growing food for Auroville comes up constantly in the Farm Group. But there is also a pressure on the farmers to make their enterprises profitable in any way possible. This may mean producing items, like cheese, which are not necessarily a staple food of our community but where the profit margins are higher. So how do you resolve these different pressures?

Ulli: There are different ways of supporting farming. One is to cover the maintenances, which is done at present to a certain extent, but this doesn’t really respond to how well a farm is working. Another is for City Services to put aside a certain amount of money and then allow the farmers to decide the best way to spend that money. This could involve subsidising their produce.

Tomas: What we really need is support which stimulates development and higher quality, and subsidies don’t necessarily do this. For a farm like ours, we need support for R&D, and for those Aurovilians who want to work with us. We don’t get this at present.

Other farms might have different needs, so we would have to analyse carefully where to put the money to promote development because this is not happening at the moment: we are stuck.

Ulli: In the Budget and Coordination Committee we decided we were not going to throw all the money we collect into farm maintenances and recurring expenditure. We also wanted to use some of that money to make investments where there will be a return. So we looked at the farms that are already functioning rather well and we selected one farm, Annapurna, and asked, “Where do you need money?”

Tomas: I sent you a project.

Ulli: So then we analyzed it and as a consequence we felt this would give a really good return, and it would help the farm. The point is, if you give a little bit to fifteen farms then the effect is hardly noticeable, but if you take one or two farms which have proper management and support them for the next five years, something substantial may be achieved. So I think it’s a question of the community setting priorities when making funds available for farming.

Bindu: Another possibility is to build stronger linkages between farmers and food processing units.

Tomas: This is already happening. Martina, who manages Naturellement food processing unit, needed certified organic fruit and I am the only farm in Auroville with an organic certification of domestic and international validity. So we agreed that I would grow some guavas for her and she invested in the farm. We still have to see how that relationship works but it is a promising option.

For some years, Maroma also supported Auroville grain farming. Some of the money went to the farms, and some was used to provide free grain to the Solar Kitchen. This was an interesting approach because it not only supported the farms but also helped the Solar Kitchen experiment with using more locally-grown food. The Maroma support stopped because of the big global economic crisis, but these are the kind of stimulants we are looking for, ones that help the farmer but also help introduce the consumer to locally-grown foods.

Ulli: In the case of Naturellement, it’s basically a soft loan, so for that you need to be able to convince the person who provides the loan that there’s a reasonable chance that you will be able to serve it. And I think that if other farms are able to do this, they can also attract funds.

So there is also a responsibility on the Farm Group to be able to communicate to the community where it will receive the best return for the community’s very limited resources. Unfortunately, at present the confidence level in the community concerning the Farm Group and some of our farmers is very low.

Vivek: The farmers don’t deserve all the criticism that they receive. I feel that more and more our farmers feel defeated. No matter how hard they work, they don’t feel that they have done something significant for the community or that the community appreciates their efforts. I think there has to be some financial mechanism to support them but the first thing that is necessary is that we begin to appreciate them.

Lucas: I agree. In this community there’s a total disrespect for farming. You hear that ‘this farmer is a lazy bum’ or a ‘bad manager’. Yes, there are some rotten eggs in the basket but if you have one bad teacher in a school, you don’t condemn the whole school.

At the same time, I don’t see we have a realistic assessment of the importance of the farming sector. Do we really want food security, organic food, healthy food? And do we understand that many of our farms are on eroded, laterite soil and that you have to invest in them for many years before farms become productive?

Sauro: I think we should take farming as a priority in the community but a system should be designed where there is more shared responsibility between the consumer and the producer. The consumer should feel concerned that the food that they need in their daily life is being produced locally and healthily. This is a long process because it cannot be done by compulsion, but if you can stimulate a change in people’s awareness and tastes, then it will generate a different demand within the community and we can grow a lot more crops that are more sustainable. This is how I see the support for the farmers coming in the long-term although, clearly, financial investments also have to be made.

Tomas: We do not have so much time left if we want to develop farming on a large scale in Auroville. For this to happen, we need skilled labour and mechanisation. Farming requires skill. I can’t get my crops harvested, planted, and weeded by volunteers, but at the moment skilled labour is a problem because everybody wants to get out of farming into something like an office job.

Vivek: In the last five years, only about three people who have come to Auroville have taken up farming.

Tomas: Partly because of this, it is obvious that mechanization has to happen on all levels, including the use of computers. But a lot of our Auroville farmers can’t handle this level. Farming is changing but some of our farmers still follow a kind of subsistence farming where if you have a few acres, you grow peanuts and some kombu. This doesn’t feed the community: you can’t run a community farm like this.

Bindu: We started in Auroville with a lot of western farmers but now we have a lot of local people farming in Auroville and they have a rather different approach to farming.

Tomas: They say their father and grandfather farmed land, but this was not professional farming: it was just growing a few basic crops for the family. This is why, once they get a piece of land in Auroville, they are stuck: they have no idea about investment or what organic farming really involves. In Holland, if I want to become a farmer I have to go through a four year rigorous training and only then am I allowed to start a farm. Farming is a profession; it’s not just putting a few seeds in the ground. We have to take it more seriously and abandon this idea that anybody can farm.

Bindu: Are there training programmes available at present in Auroville? Because it is not just learning about farming techniques. Some of the local farmers don’t have the ability to put down a proper proposal or to have a vision of what they could achieve in the next 5, 10 or 15 years. This is where support groups for the individual farmers could be useful.

Tomas: At the moment, there are no training programmes running.

Lucas: When I was in the Farm Group, we never made it a very formalized thing. We said let all of the young apprentices be on a farm and, simultaneously, I developed a few lectures. But I don’t think formalization of a training programme is necessarily the answer as people might simply attend the lectures to tick the boxes.

When I was still in Farm Group meetings I had the impression that we made it very tough for someone to take up the stewardship of an Auroville farm. I didn’t see the reason for this because we need stewards for the land. I don’t see a quick solution for improving training, but if there are a few people who really want to go for farming I would give them whatever they need, including financial support, to help them make a success of it.

Bindu: What about the future? Should we be prioritising acquiring good agricultural land for Auroville?

Vivek: At present, we have 365 acres of farmland in the Farm Group. Do we need more here? The current situation is that we can grow more on this land, but we can’t distribute it. So perhaps it is better to have farmland somewhere else where we can produce things that people like to eat but which we cannot produce here. The other problem we have is that some of our farmland is in small parcels, and you can’t do much with just one or two acres of land. We need to consolidate, otherwise we will have all this land but we won’t have the human resources to do anything with it.

Lucas: We keep going back to the fact that we don’t have enough people who are interested in farming, or willing to invest in farming.

Ulli: What I am picking up here is there are certain things which we did for the past 30 or 40 years which are not viable anymore because of the changed labour situation, our inability to buy all the land etc., so we need to reassess our approach. We need to secure our food supply but that doesn’t mean it has to happen here or that we have to own all the farms where our food is grown. It might also be an option to partner with other organizations who have similar understandings about the need for healthy food, because awareness of this is increasing in India. Can we start looking at alternatives like this, or acquiring good farmland elsewhere?

Tomas: I agree that we should examine, re-examine and keep examining our approach to farming in Auroville because the times are changing and reality is changing. For me, partnering with local farmers has a lot to do with connecting to the bioregion and helping make it more green, healthy, both for the people and the environment. But, at the same time we should develop our own agriculture to the best of our ability, which means looking at it critically and seeing where and how we can improve.

Annapurna is one of Auroville’s oldest, largest and most productive farms. It is the only IMO certified farm of Auroville producing grain and dairy products. Annapurna also serves as Auroville’s granary-procuring, processing and storing grain from other farms. It has 135 acres, out of which 30 acres are intensively cultivated with food crops – rice, millets, oilseeds, while the remaining land has fodder, timber, and forest. For the viability of the farm in the long run, and to manifest Annapurna’s vision of meeting the needs of community, Annapurna needs periodic investments. To that end, Annapurna now has a group of Aurovilian volunteers as a Support Group. To raise funds for necessary investments, the Annapurna Support Group has decided to solicit support from the community by inviting all to join an Annapurna Support Fund.

The Annapurna Support Fund operates on the basic principle of asking people to invest a minimum amount of Rs. 10,000/- for a minimum period of 1 year. The interest accumulated during this period goes to fund actual expenses that further Annapurna’s growth as a farm. The fund will be built up by:

a) Individual investments (In this case, the capital or the money invested by an individual will always belong to the owner. This option is available only to people directly connected to Auroville and via the Auroville Financial Service Account).

AND

b) Donations (Donors will not be able to withdraw their money from the Support Fund, but their donation can only be used for the specific purpose of supporting the farm).

Response:

Within 24 hours of reaching out to people, there was already an overwhelming response. For further information, please contact [email protected].