EARTH FRIENDLY FOOD GROWING 

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Ever since Buddha Garden was  told, early in 2022 by the Auroville Foundation Office, that a VIP road was planned to go across farm, it has been difficult for all of us to be positive about what we are doing.  In addition to the road, we were told that an unspecified amount of the farm would be turned into car parks for the nearby Visitors Centre.

 

At first we spent quite a lot of time and energy trying to find new land onto which we could move the farm activities.  Requests to various groups – Auroville Planning, the new Farm Service and the Auroville Foundation Office - met with little interest with no realistic alternatives being offered.  Land was suggested but in all cases it was insufficient for our needs and none had adequate access – which was probably why it wasn’t already being used for farming or something else.  We were also told that Auroville had little or no budget to help us move and develop the infrastructure on a new place.  Despite repeated requests for clarification over the months and years since the first announcement was made no one in the present administration has been able to say when the road might come, precisely where it will go or what will happen to the farm activities when the land is repurposed.  Will the farm survive?

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In this situation of extreme unclarity we stopped investing in the farm infrastructure and have continued as best we can, growing food for the community.  As time went on, however, it was clear that this approach was not working.  The built infrastructure is visibly crumbling and only short term planting is possible.  We are still growing microgreens and vegetables but anything that requires more than 12 months of investment (including growing plants like  bananas and papaya) are not worth doing given the  effort and money needed to get them into the ground. As a result there have been diminishing returns both on productivity and work satisfaction. 

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There is a saying ‘Live like you will die tomorrow, farm like you will live forever’ and I have felt that very strongly over the last months.  To farm in a sustainable way means working with the land, aligning ourselves with the way that nature and natural processes work together within nature’s time.  When the farm has no long term future that becomes impossible.  Although we have continued to grow food for the community, without that collective long term commitment to the land of Buddha Garden we feel very constrained about what we can do. 

 

Watching the farm infrastructure crumble and production gradually decrease has been soul destroying.  Yet I found that other people still wanted to come to Buddha Garden, that even in the midst of great uncertainty and a lot of difficulties people wanted to come and stay, to participate and/or see what we were doing.  That even although the farm felt as if it was dying some people felt as if we still had something to give which was important enough to them to seek us out to find it.  Gradually over the first three months of the year as I spoke to our many visitors  I came to understand that we still had something to give.  That although the land of Buddha Garden might disappear the spirit of what we had done and were still doing could move on.  Perhaps that spirit could even be reignited somewhere else.

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OUR SEEDS

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Ever since Buddha Garden started we have always had a seed garden.  In the very beginning this was a necessity because of the difficulty of obtaining open pollinated seeds which had not been treated with poison to keep out the bugs. There used to be one person in Chennai who grew and sold open pollinated organically grown seeds which were available from time to time.  And of course Auroville   farmers have always grown and shared seeds – the long beans that came originally from Australia , the brinjal that we know grows in the Auroville situation etc.  Gradually in Buddha Garden we learnt how to grow, process and save the seed and eventually were able to purchase a solar fridge which enabled us to keep more seed for longer. 

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Originally we did not grow our own seed very systematically, but the benefits of doing so were brought home to us by the 2012 cyclone.  The cyclone made landfall very close to Auroville and was very destructive.  Many trees were blown down and in Buddha Garden a roof came off one of our houses and the nursery was badly damaged.  There were several beds where what we were growing was destroyed because of falling debris.  So there was a lot to do to clear up and we found that having our own source of seed was crucial to getting back to where we had been very quickly.  Within two to three weeks the damaged beds had not only been repaired but already had plants growing on them. 

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As time passed  we found there were other advantages to growing our own seed.  Over several generations the plants that grew from our seed gradually adapted to the conditions in Buddha Garden. They became resistant to many of the  bugs that in the beginning would devour them and became more resilient. They became able to produce during extra heavy monsoons, unexpected rains or increasingly hot and dry periods, able to grow well whatever the conditions.  I see our Buddha Garden seeds as containing something of the essence of the place – while at the same time having the quality of being able to adapt to whatever situations demand.

 

We now grow and share our seeds more consciously as a way of sharing  the essence of Buddha Garden.  As well as teaching about how to do this by developing a workshop about seeds and how to grow and save them. 

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OUR EXPERIENCE

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When I started Buddha Garden I had had very little experience of farming and my main learning has been through talking to other farmers and the day to day tasks of food growing.  I found the land itself to be the most potent teacher.  As the farm took shape and in the years that followed we had a wide range of people coming into Buddha Garden, wanting to know more about our farming activities, often so they could try something similar themselves when they returned home from Auroville.  Increasingly we saw that Buddha Garden was a potent place of learning and over the 20 years of Buddha Garden’s existence we have had an apprenticeship scheme and various courses for students of all ages.  Early on we started a farm helpers scheme and Buddha Garden is still a place where if you turn up when work starts (6.15am on weekdays and 7.00am on Saturdays) you can jump straight in and help with whatever needs doing. 

 

People from all the world have come to stay in Buddha Garden for a longer and deeper experience of our food growing with a few being inspired by their experience to create their own food growing projects elsewhere.  For me developing Buddha Garden and the daily work with the soil that this entails has been my spiritual practice as much as a practical farming project.  Which for me has been deeper than anything I have experienced studying spiritual texts or talking about spirituality with others.

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This experience has been encapsulated in several books I have written and which I intend to expand and make more available through the website and social media.  While we still have access to the land we intend to create a new ‘farm walk’ and audio guide together with many new information posters around the farm to supplement what is being said on the audio.  The aim will be to produce something which people coming to see  the farm can use on their own to understand more about what they see and what we have experienced.  This will enable us to reach more people coming into the farm with more information and hopefully understanding of the work we do.  Doing this in a more time efficient way than we could with creating workshops etc.  It will also provide us with the opportunity to give everyone the most up to date information about the farm, the challenges we are facing and how we are responding to them.

 

A NEW VISION FOR A NEW REALITY

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As I was pondering on what it was that Buddha Garden still had to give I  realised that we already had a new vision for the farm.  That in the changed circumstances of Auroville and the uncertainty of Buddha Garden’s future there was a positive way of responding to the situation and moving forward. 

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I remember starting Buddha Garden with only the vaguest idea about what I wanted to do.  Mainly I wanted to create a successful working alternative to the nature unfriendly methods of conventional food growing.  As Buddha Garden has developed over the years so the vision evolved, often going in surprising directions.  Sharing the place of Buddha Garden and finding ways to enable others to experience it has turned out to be more important than I would ever have imagined.  We have seen ourselves as not only a sustainable organic farm providing a basic need for everyone, but also a place that inspires and teaches the next generation; with the working farm showing that a productive farm built on sustainable/ecological principles is possible. We have used  many types of interaction with volunteers, students and school children to help them experience this in practical and inspiring ways.

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For many years these were our guiding principles:

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• To grow food with love and awareness for the community of Auroville; food that nourishes every part of our being, using methods that nurture the earth.

• To create a sustainable farm that is financially viable and in this process, provide a place where others can come to share with us. 

• To experientially learn and understand what it means to farm organically and to live lightly on the earth.

 

In an alive and vibrant learning environment we work together; learning about organic farming, about Auroville and about ourselves.

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While retaining the central feature of the old vision our new vision focuses more on what we now have to share having set up and run Buddha Garden Farm for the last 25 years.  With this in mind we aim:

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• To grow food with love and awareness for the community of Auroville for as long as  we are able and have the land resources to do so.  Food that nourishes every part of our being, using methods that nurture the earth and sustain our farm  ecology.

• To consciously share our experience of the last 25 years of Buddha Garden’s existence in experiential and  theoretical ways.  To help educate, inspire and support  those wanting to create a sustainable and just food system for the future.

 

New ways of sharing are already happening both in Buddha Garden and outside India in Malaysia and Sri Lanka.  The future looks both exciting and bit scary full of things that I could never have imagined possible.

 

Who knows where the spirit will spread and where it will be reignited…….?

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Priya Vincent

May 17th 2025

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To find out more about the background to Auroville and its history – the ‘official’ version www.auroville.org

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For another version that focuses on the recent changes that have brought about a different ethos to Auroville and changed both the material and ideological basis on which it was set up over 50 years ago, go to the Voice of Auroville https://auroville.media/voa/ 

 

For a variety of information and views  go to the monthly publication ‘Auroville Today’  https://auroville.today/