Food production

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.]

Annapurna is Auroville’s largest farm. Comprising over 35 acres, it is a mixed farm with cattle, paddy and fruit trees, as well as a dairy and food processing unit.

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.

As early as August 1970, the Administrative Committee of Auroville, which reported to The Mother, agreed that Auroville, like the Ashram, would have a poultry farm.

I’ve been in Auroville since my marriage 26 years ago. I grew up in Chinnakottakuppam village on the backside of Forecomers, towards Pondicherry.

On 20th November, The Hindu newspaper reported that an initiative had been launched to make Puducherry and Auroville the world’s first ‘Fair Trade Twin Towns’.

Have you walked behind the Town Hall lately? You might be surprised by what you see. Nestled in that dense urban area, surrounded on all sides by buildings, you can find young banana plants, bountiful bougainvillea, creepers climbing up the walls of Citadines, a robust vegetable garden, and a drip irrigation system supplying water to young fruit trees.

Auro-Orchard, one of Auroville’s biggest farms, took the decision to go organic in October 2012. How have they done? And how optimistic are they about the future of food production in Auroville?