Farms

On 13 August, the managers of Annapurna Farm received an email signed by three working groups constituted by the Governing Board – the Funds and Assets Management Committee, L’Avenir d’Auroville (Auroville’s Town Development Council) and the Farm Service – stating: “It has been decided to allocate 100 acres of Auroville land at Annapurna for the IIT [Indian Institute of Technology, eds.]

In response to a Right to Information request of 7 December, 2024 the Department of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education has sent the applicant on 3 January the minutes of the 67th Governing Board meeting held in Auroville on 31 May, 2024.

In the beginning of May, the Auroville farmers published a report in the community edition of the Auroville News and Notes questioning the results of the imposition of the fruit harvest auction by the Auroville Foundation Office (AVFO).

The Working Committee of the Residents’ Assembly (RA-WCom) has sent its concerns and a rebuttal of the recent land exchange involving Auro Orchard land to the Governing Board and the International Advisory Council.

Annapurna Farm, Auroville’s largest rice farm, has started integrating ducks into its paddy fields. The ducks reduce the labour of paddy weeding, fertilize the field, control pests by eating insects and snails, and stimulate rice plant growth by moving around the plants throughout the day, and so increase the rice yields.

After interactions with the farmers and directives from the Governing Board, The FO Farm Service and FO FAMC announced they have come up with a work plan for farming and food security in Auroville.

Food Link serves as an intermediary service between farms and consumers. On June 20th, two long-standing executives of Food Link who have been working there for 25 and 7 years respectively were dismissed without prior notice or explanation or following due process.

Auroville has 22 farms, ranging in size from 120 to about 6 acres. Each farm is managed by one or two farmers. Jointly, they run the Farm Group.

When the lockdown started across India in late March, economic activity ground to a halt in Auroville, and individuals, commercial units, and community services had to take a rigorous look at their expenses to see how they would survive.

The future is very unpredictable and will unfold in many unexpected ways and we have to be responsive and alive to that. The weather is becoming more erratic and resources like water and energy will become scarcer and more costly.

The popular Sunday walks in Auroville farms and forests have resumed. A series of 15 walks will be led by Auroville stewards of farms and forests on successive Sundays until mid April.

The A4A team reports on the results of supporters’ solidarity.

The International Zone Coordination Team shared the International Zone’s latest developments and future plans in an open community meeting in January.

In December, a group of post-graduate planning students from Queen’s University, Canada, visited Auroville under the auspices of the Auroville Integral Sustainability Institute.

Tamil Nadu and many other parts of India are currently facing an unprecedented drought. This message was formally delivered by the Chief Minister on January 10th, 2017, declaring Tamil Nadu a drought-hit state.

Just as much it fills my heart with joy to see a sapling poke its head out of the ground and slowly grow and unfurl its leaves to the light, so also it gives me immense joy to see a new educational initiative take root and steadily grow each year.

Demonetisation – this brittle word with its short, sharp syllables, gained currency overnight with the draconian move of the Indian Government to invalidate Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 notes.

Recently, Auroville Today brought together some farmers, planners and those involved in managing community finances to look at the present situation of farming in Auroville and to examine options for the future.

Before Auroville was officially founded in 1968 and before the final location of Auroville was decided by the Mother, disparate plots of land had been bought in the surrounding region.

At 135 acres, Annapurna is Auroville’s largest farm and is furthest away from the city centre. Due to lack of (wo)manpower and capital for investment, only a quarter of Annapurna is under intense cultivation, while fodder and timber is grown in the rest of the land.

The deeper vision behind Food Link, an activity of the Auroville Farm Group is to create community by linking the residents of Auroville to the farmers through educational initiatives.

The Joy of Learning is an experiment in collective learning which addresses a wide range of themes associated with life in Auroville. It tries to (re)familiarise the residents with important issues in a stimulating and respectful learning environment, and is supported with funding from Stichting de Zaaier.

Anusuya is a greenbelt community that was started at the end of the 1970’s. It was a difficult place to settle; people came and people went.