Lessons from Auroville Farm Assessment 2023
Across the red soils of Tamil Nadu’s southeast coast, Auroville’s farms continue to hold space for one of the most enduring experiments in community-scale organic farming and agroecology. Home » Blog » Lessons from Auroville Farm Assessment 2023 Lessons from Auroville Farm Assessment 2023 October 2025 · Anshul Aggarwal Across the red soils of Tamil Nadu’s southeast coast, Auroville’s farms continue to hold space for one of the most enduring experiments in community-scale organic farming and agroecology. With the rising ecological, social, and economic pressures on agriculture, it is important to review Auroville farming and put it in perspective with the ongoing global discourse on food and agriculture. As a first step towards this, in 2023, a sector-wide assessment brought together five-year data from sixteen of Auroville’s twenty-six farms to understand the state of farming in Auroville. The study examined land and water use, production, labour, and finance. What emerged is a picture of both resilience and fragility — a network of farms that have weathered shocks, diversified their outputs, and upheld ecological integrity, yet remain challenged by issues of labour, finance, and generational renewal. The full assessment methodology and results can be found here: https://www.avfarmassessment.in/ The assessment team comprised four Aurovilians: Anshul, Avinash, Madhuri, Nidhin. A summary of the main insights gleaned from the assessment with recommendations from the assessment team are given below. 1. A Network of Commons-Based Farms The sixteen farms together span 306 acres, of which 84% are actively used. About 60% of the cultivable land is irrigated through borewells, ponds, and rainwater harvesting systems, reflecting adaptation to Auroville’s dry plateau ecology. All the farms practice organic management, relying on compost, green manures, and traditional bio-ferments such as jeevamruth and panchagavya. Dairy-holding farms close the nutrient cycle internally, producing manure and fertility inputs in-house. These are not industrial operations but diverse agroecosystems that integrate fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy, and poultry. 2. Resilience Through Diversity Production data show clear patterns of resilience. Vegetable output declined sharply—by 34%—in 2020–21 due to COVID-19 and extreme rainfall, but recovered by 2022–23. Fruits remained steady around 42 tonnes annually, while dairy production more than doubled and egg output nearly tripled. This diversity has been key to recovery. Perennial crops and livestock buffered the shocks faced by annual vegetables, demonstrating that integration across crops and animals increases resilience. The findings reaffirm a core agroecological principle: diversity and cooperation, not specialisation, sustain farming systems in the long run. 3. Labour: The Strength and the Strain Auroville’s farms employ about 150 people, including 49 Aurovilians, 65 regular Tamil workers, and 30–70 seasonal workers. They remain a stable source of employment in the region, yet labour conditions reveal deep strains. Daily wages in 2022–23 ranged from ₹200–565 for women and ₹365–800 for men, exposing a persistent gender gap. Wages rise 5–10% each year, often faster than farm income, and the workforce is ageing with few young Aurovilians entering the field. Auroville’s community agriculture cannot thrive without labour justice. Equity in pay (gender and Aurovilian v/s non-Aurovilian), social benefits, and apprenticeship pathways for youth must become collective priorities if Auroville’s farms are to remain viable into the next generation. Additionally, the costs of justice must not be passed on solely to consumers or absorbed by individual farms, but held collectively within the community economy. 4. Finance and the Fragility of the Shared Economy Between 2018 and 2023, the assessed farms collectively borrowed about ₹1.05 crore—43% from Auroville’s Farm Group and 57% through personal investment by farmers themselves. Only one-third has been repaid. This reliance on private funding highlights a contradiction within Auroville’s shared economy: collective food security often depends on individual financial risk. Even farms with positive farming surpluses remain vulnerable without structured capital support or budget-linked planning. To secure the future, the community must adopt shared financial frameworks—coordinated budgeting, transparent reporting, and collective investment—to replace ad-hoc dependence on personal loans and goodwill. 5. Ecological and Operational Constraints Wildlife intrusion—from boars, deer, and porcupines to peacocks and stray cattle—is among the most cited causes of crop loss. Periodic water scarcity and monsoon flooding further disrupt operations. Limited cold storage and processing facilities lead to wastage of perishable produce, especially fruits.Larger farms with machinery and infrastructure weather these challenges more easily, while smaller vegetable farms remain exposed. Conscious and significant investment in capital for shared tractors, boundary fencing, and expanded rainwater harvesting could greatly improve sector-wide resilience. 6. Aligning Production and Consumption The assessment reveals a mismatch between what Auroville’s farms produce and what its residents eat. While farms grow tropical fruits, greens, and grains, many community kitchens and eateries rely on temperate vegetables and external supplies. Bridging this gap requires closer coordination between farms and consumers. Seasonal menu planning, CSA-style prepayments, and small-scale processing of surplus fruits into dried or preserved products could stabilise farm income and reduce waste. In doing so, the community also reclaims its connection to seasonal, local food. 7. Education, Youth, and Food Sovereignty The long-term sustainability of Auroville’s agriculture depends on generational renewal. The study recommends a young-farmer pathway combining practical training, housing support, and education in agroecology and cooperative management. Farming education must be seen not just as vocational training but as an integral practice of consciousness—a way to unite ecological awareness, skill, and inner growth. Re-rooting farming within Auroville’s educational ethos can ensure that agriculture remains both livelihood and spiritual discipline. Beyond food security, Auroville’s guiding principle must be food sovereignty — the community’s ability to shape its own food system in alignment with ecological limits and social justice. This means shared governance among farmers, distributors, kitchens, and consumers; transparent budgeting; and participatory planning. Overall the assessment presents a mixed but hopeful picture: a sector that holds the resilience to recover from crisis, has diversified its base, and maintained organic integrity, yet faces structural fragilities in labour and finance, remaining limited in utilising its full potential. In doing so, Auroville’s living experiment in community farming continues to offer a quiet but vital contribution to the search for
Monthly Updatesㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
We continue to renovate our chicken coops introducing new systems for drinking water and feeding the birds. Next, we will redesign the nesting boxes. Last month, we welcomed the third flock of brown birds. This marks the full transition of our poultry from white birds to brown! Home » Blog » Monthly Updates Monthly Updates October 2025 · AuroOrchard Poultry We continue to renovate our chicken coops introducing new systems for drinking water and feeding the birds. Next, we will redesign the nesting boxes. Last month, we welcomed the third flock of brown birds. This marks the full transition of our poultry from white birds to brown! Vegetable garden Monsoon has arrived early! We are finishing some last remaining green manure work. We could not finish planting sweet potato in the fields due to the rains but have started rugula and spinach in the greenhouse. We are still getting a good quality of brinjal, ladies finger, some last cucumbers and pumpkins and anticipate a reduced production next month due to lack of Sun. Orchards The new Avocado block planting is done! This was just in time for the monsoon. We now continue to prune and cut grass to add biomass in the Papaya, Avocado, Jackfruit orchards. For this rainy month, we will focus only on pruning and cutting biomass creating more light and ventilation for the plants as well as adding mulch to protect the soil from rain compaction. Many more biomass trees like Melia dubia, Acacia auriculiformis, Medical Sunflower, Subabool, Moringa, Agathi and others. have also been added in the old and new orchards. Seeds & Nursery Most of the tree saplings raised in the past months have been planted across the farm for biodiversity and biomass production. We started a diversity of herbs this month– Basil, Celery, Mint, Peppermint and Lemongrass. Our experiments with mint have been great and we are offering this in the baskets regularly. The coming days will be busy with preparing seedlings of Rugula and Spinach. Abundance We are renovating the Abundance room where all the products are stored and the work of food preservation is done. We continue to offer a large diversity of produce through Abundance– cashew, coconut oil, lemon marmalade, basil pesto, conserves of lemon and mango, dry herbs and seasonal vegetable recipes like Brinjal spread and Rosella leaf chutney. Our team is exploring how we can move away from the idea of food processing to food preservation where the goal is not just “adding value” to sell something for a higher price, but focus on food preservation keeping the nutrition and flavour for longer. We welcome people from the community who may have any ideas or time to explore this with us. Research & Education We are happy to receive a small yet significant seed fund from SDZ, Netherlands for our project on Natural Beekeeping. Beekeeping at AuroOrchard began in 2015 to restore ecological balance and strengthen pollination. Following Natural Beekeeping principles—no treatments or artificial feeding—we let colonies live by their own rhythm. With about thirty hives of native species, including Apis cerana and stingless bees, our focus has remained on pollination, not honey extraction. We are now exploring if small amounts of honey can be harvested from the stingless bee hives to offer this medicinally rich product to the community. New hives have been made and we continue to multiply the hives. The goal will be to discover a method that maintains the integrity of Natural Beekeeping as well as offer some honey for the nutrition of the community. September 2025 Poultry AuroOrchard is now a member of the Cage Free and Free Range Poultry Producers Association of India. It is a small group of poultry farmers in India committed to high ethical standards of poultry keeping. We are also in the process of applying for the international Humane Farm Animal Care certification (https://certifiedhumane.org/). We will share details on our progress with this and the standards followed soon. This is a big step for us in formalising the free range standards at AuroOrchard as well as taking further steps to continue improving the quality of life of the birds and the eggs. Vegetable garden The vegetable production has suffered in the last month due to lack of Sun and constant rains. The rains also mean more weeds which we are working hard to catch up with. Our experiments with the burlap mulching sheet are showing some good results. However, termites have already gotten to them. Crops like Pumpkin, Cucumber, Beans will now be stopped until the monsoon passes and we are beginning to prepare for conserving the soil for monsoon by mulching and ground covers.Sweet Potato and Tapioca planting is also underway and will finish before the arrival of monsoon in October. Orchards The rains in the last months have been a blessing for planting trees. We have successfully finished planting the new Jackfruit block (called Hope Jackfruit) with about forty jackfruit trees. We have now started planting for the new Avocado block (called Hope Avocado) with about 45 Avocado trees together with Papayas, Moringa, Subabool, Mexican Sunflower, Rosella, Corn, Cow grass etc. In the last two years, this is the seventh intensive orchard being planted (after Mango/Citrus, Coconut/Banana, Papaya/Citrus, Ramphal/Pineapple, Avocado/Papaya, Jackfruit/Papaya). This is part of the ongoing effort to optimise orchard cultivation at the farm and increasing fruit production for Auroville. Seeds & Nursery We have a large variety of tree saplings in the nursery which we are now planting in the gardens before the monsoon. We are thankful to all those who sent us back the Avocado seeds. We have been able to start a substantial number of seeds which will be planted out in the coming months to increase Avocado production on the farm. For monsoon, we are now focussing on starting some herbs which can be planted in the green house- Basil, Celery, Mint, Peppermint, Lemongrass etc. Abundance We added Brinjal spread last month to our regular recipes. Brinjal grows on the farm
Food and Agriculture in Auroville, India
We are being called to view agriculture not as a ‘business’ or a transaction with nature, but a participatory ‘joyous sacrifice of interchange’, a way of mutual action and growth. Home » Blog » Food and Agriculture in Auroville, India Food and Agriculture in Auroville, India September 2025 · Anshul Aggarwal As consciousness advances, Sri Aurobindo (1939) envisioned that the desire for food would, “progress from the type of a mutually devouring hunger to the type of a mutual giving, of an increasingly joyous sacrifice of interchange…Thus the law of Hunger must give place progressively to the law of Love, the law of Division to the law of Unity, the law of Death to the law of Immortality” (pp. 207-208). We are being called to view agriculture not as a ‘business’ or a transaction with nature, but a participatory ‘joyous sacrifice of interchange’, a way of mutual action and growth. Can agriculture be more than growing food? Can it be a path toward human unity and the evolution of consciousness? Over the last five decades, Auroville has undertaken remarkable ecological restoration work—today, much of the township is now under a forest canopy. Alongside this, a network of community farms has taken root, supplying fruits, vegetables, grains, milk, and eggs to the kitchens of Auroville. Yet, like farms everywhere, Auroville’s food system is not without challenges. Farmers face the same global pressures: commodification of food, labour shortages, climate shocks, wildlife pressures, and financial strain. At the same time, Auroville’s farms hold the potential to be something more—collective experiments in the advancement of human consciousness. But we need a new language to address the often overlooked potential of agriculture, and of Auroville farms in particular. Looking at agriculture through the lens of Sri Aurobindo and Mother’s Integral Yoga allows us to discover its multiple dimensions, which could all be integrated into what we can call- Integral Agriculture. The Dimensions of Integral Agriculture 1. The Physical (Ecological) Dimension Farming is becoming increasingly complex due to the changing climate, the presence of wildlife on farms, and sudden attacks by insects and microbes on crops, among other factors. Being a farmer means bearing these challenges and risks while still trying to put food on the table. At the same time, agriculture itself has a massive impact on the land, and especially modern agriculture has caused large-scale biodiversity loss. Through agroecology and ethical stewardship, farms in Auroville are attempting to restore the balance between wilderness and cultivation and turn agriculture from colonisation of land into a conscious partnership with it. Auroville farms have an interesting history of regenerating land in different ways, and the diversity of soil profiles, diets and farming techniques in this community presents an incredible opportunity to experiment with different approaches toward this goal. 2. The Vital (Social-Economic-Political) Dimension Every farm is as much a self-contained community as it is a part of the wider socioeconomic and political network. A healthy farm cannot just be healthy ecologically but needs to address issues of financial sustainability, people’s welfare and the sovereignty of food production. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo envisioned self-sufficiency in food as essential for a gnostic community. In Auroville, this is both practical and symbolic: a way of lessening dependence on fragile global food systems and cultivating responsibility at a local level. An assessment of Auroville’s farms (2024) showed that the shortfall in community-grown food is not only about production—it is also about distribution and consumption patterns. Interestingly, 70% of the farmers themselves come from outside Auroville, reflecting the community’s openness and the challenge of embedding farming into its core culture. Community farming in Auroville is thus a rare, living laboratory: small enough to manage, yet complex enough to mirror the dilemmas of global food systems. 3. The Mental (Scientific) Dimension of Agriculture Technology, particularly Artificial Intelligence, is making inroads into all aspects of our lives, and agriculture is no exception. Today we have automated irrigation systems managed remotely at the touch of a phone, drones sowing seeds and spraying fertilisers and pesticides, drone bees facilitating pollination, satellite imagery being used to predict soil moisture, plant health and so on, multi-purpose tractors and combines that can manage a large monoculture farm almost independently. There are many who believe that ‘smart farming’ with technology will replace human farmers. But this will come at the cost of diversity and traditional human knowledge and experience, which has developed and sustained agriculture for at least over ten millennia. We need solutions that do not seek to replace farmers, but become their allies and partners in supporting a new future of agriculture, which is technology-driven and yet remains at a human scale. With its interest in the evolution of consciousness, Auroville is poised to become a pioneer in discovering frameworks of conscious technology, particularly in fields like agriculture. 4. The Spiritual (Community) Dimension of Agriculture Agriculture teaches us the need for expanding our notion of community from only humanity to the non-human beings on this planet. It requires us to re-establish our lost connection with nature and locate ourselves as participants in the larger flow of energy. As Sri Aurobindo (2005) notes, “All Matter according to the Upanishads is food, and this is the formula of the material world that ‘the eater eating is himself eaten’ (p. 204). Thus, food must be considered not only as an object of sustenance of the material life but also as an object of contemplation for a spiritual life. It is a reminder of our separation, our desire to complete ourselves through each morsel. Auroville’s commitment to realising human unity, a unity not only within the human community, but unity of human with the Divine, adds a spiritual dimension to the agriculture practised here. 5. The Psychic (Educational) Dimension of Agriculture Finally, we are in a time in the world when everything has stopped making sense. The solutions of the physical, vital, mental, and even spiritual are hard to grasp and are not
The hydrological cost of growing our food
In my last note, I shared about the economic paradigm that is taking us towards a ‘world without agriculture.’ I would like to explore this economic paradigm a little more by isolating the costs of the food that we grow. Let’s take water as the first one. As per several studies, agriculture accounts for about 70% of all freshwater use globally. This number is more than 80% in a country like India where over 50% of the population is still engaged in agriculture. Within Auroville, farms (perhaps along with Matrimandir) are the biggest users of freshwater. The challenges of groundwater depletion, rampant use of free electricity borewells in the bioregion for non-edible crops like casuarina and other fast-growing timber, the beginnings of salination of groundwater and so on offer an opportunity to us to reflect on the hydrological cost of growing food and how can we not only reduce our water consumption but, perhaps what I think is more important to focus on, optimize the use of water in agriculture. Home » Blog » The hydrological cost of growing our food The hydrological cost of growing our food Mar 11, 2025 · Anshul Aggarwal In my last note, I shared about the economic paradigm that is taking us towards a ‘world without agriculture.’ I would like to explore this economic paradigm a little more by isolating the costs of the food that we grow. Let’s take water as the first one. As per several studies, agriculture accounts for about 70% of all freshwater use globally. This number is more than 80% in a country like India where over 50% of the population is still engaged in agriculture. Within Auroville, farms (perhaps along with Matrimandir) are the biggest users of freshwater. The challenges of groundwater depletion, rampant use of free electricity borewells in the bioregion for non-edible crops like casuarina and other fast-growing timber, the beginnings of salination of groundwater and so on offer an opportunity to us to reflect on the hydrological cost of growing food and how can we not only reduce our water consumption but, perhaps what I think is more important to focus on, optimize the use of water in agriculture. There are different ways of thinking about what we should grow and what we can grow depending on people’s preference and the weightage we can give to the ecological and social costs of growing food. Should something be grown only because it’s easier to grow, or because it is more water efficient, or because people really ask for it, or it is less labour intensive and so on. The answer to these questions is never black and white and they change from situation to situation and from time to time. For instance, farmers cannot impose water efficiency over people’s preference for a certain kind of food. At the same time farmers cannot simply chase what the market demands, prioritizing it over its ecological costs. Flood irrigation Flowering Avocado tree A classic case for this is Avocado. It is common knowledge that Avocado is a water guzzling crop. AuroOrchard received its first Avocado seeds from the Mother herself in the early 70s. These we now call the Mother trees. From these trees, many more trees have been planted at AuroOrchard as well as outside. These Avocados are some of the best that we can find in the region, some would say anywhere. There is a huge demand for these Avocados in Auroville and also the Ashram community. Should we be planting more Avocado knowing that we can grow them well? Or should we turn our heads and let people buy Avocados from Pondy market which are nowhere near as good and definitely have a higher ecological cost. Again, the answer is not straightforward and we need to find a balance. We have planted more Avocado trees in the last year but we are exploring how Avocados can be grown with other fruit crops so that water can be used optimally. In such a scenario, the hydrological cost of Avocado gets distributed to many other crops that are growing with it. However, such a solution would then add to the management costs of the system and perhaps the management is even more costly since water for the moment is free. Therefore, if farmers are delegated with the responsibility of conserving our natural resources while farming, there are costs associated with conservation as well and these are to be borne collectively. The hydrological costs of water must not be seen only as the cost of water used to grow food but also the cost to the farmer to be water-wise, to protect the water-source, to optimise farming within the water resource they are entrusted with. Avocados growing with Papayas Next Article Featured Articles Monthly Updatesㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ 19 Sep 2025 Abundance Product of the Month 18 Sep 2025 Recipe Alert – Stir Fried Sweet Potato leaves with Tofu 22 Sep 2025 Food and Agriculture in Auroville, India 18 Sep 2025
A World Without Agriculture
I arrived at AuroOrchard in the summer of 2023, intending to help farms produce more food for Auroville. Mostly I wanted to be closer with people passionate about the same. Home » Blog » A World Without Agriculture A World Without Agriculture Jan 31, 2025 · Anshul Aggarwal AuroOrchard saw some great shifts in 2024 with the land exchange, the massive loss of productive orchards and infrastructure, the financial difficulties due to the orchard being leased and finally the cyclone as the year came to a close. Through the commitment of the team and encouragement and support from friends within and outside Auroville, the farm managed to (is managing to) get through these difficulties. These moments of crises have also been moments of reflection, self-assessment, even self-criticism. Mother said to Gerard, “Grow food for Auroville”. It is a simple statement but its context has changed radically. Auroville has changed, the ecosystem has changed, farming has changed, the farmers have changed. As we move towards a new chapter in AuroOrchard’s journey, we are confronted with the same simple question, ‘What does it mean to grow food for Auroville?’. Is growing 8 tonnes of Mango enough? Is growing enough for all the kitchens enough? What does agriculture of the future look like when we are hardly able to manage on the farms? When nature is pictured as abundant and generous, why are our farms always in scarcity? Farms are now being pushed to be financially sustainable. This, in my opinion, is not a bad thing. A healthy farm is not just healthy ecologically. It creates value also socially and economically. Especially if we want young people to join farming, we need agriculture solutions that can support their livelihood and can show that farming is not a profession of poverty. To address this, AuroOrchard is experimenting with new ways of diverse perennial plantations taking inspiration from Syntropic Farming (a technique developed in Brazil by Ernst Gotsch, a swiss farmer and researcher)(Gotsch, 1995). We have also been changing our poultry practices and have introduced a new breed of birds since last year which is more resistant to diseases and well-suited for free range. We continue to push the boundaries of successive planting and harvesting in our vegetable garden, always having something to offer to the community throughout the year (we consistently harvest 6 days a week from Feb-Nov and 3 days a week for Dec-Jan) . All this good work must translate into not just higher quantities of food, but better quality of food (nutrition and consciousness). All this work must translate into better incomes for the farm workers. The world population engaged in agriculture has dropped from 70% to 25% in the last 100 years. In India, the number was 75% a hundred years ago and is now down to just about 45%. Researchers conclude that our goals of development are taking us towards a ‘world without agriculture’ (Timmer, 2009) as the agricultural workforce gradually moves out from the rural landscapes towards more developed sectors of the economy. As Auroville ‘develops’, are we also moving towards an Auroville without agriculture? Who will farm here in 20 years, 40 years? Where is the new generation of farmers of Auroville? Why would anyone join farming if it cannot pay for their sustenance? This is a question in front of all the farmers. Mother said to Gerard, “Grow food for Auroville.” Our work at AuroOrchard is not limited to growing tonnage of food. We need to find solutions to be able to continue serving the land and the community by cultivating food of the highest quality, by cultivating farmers of the highest consciousness. These solutions will not only be ecological, but will also address the social, economic, and even personal and spiritual dimensions of agriculture. We welcome all Aurovilians, newcomers, and volunteers to join us in this exploration. Next Article Featured Articles Monthly Updatesㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ 19 Sep 2025 Abundance Product of the Month 18 Sep 2025 Recipe Alert!ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ 22 Sep 2025 Food and Agriculture in Auroville, India 18 Sep 2025
