AuroAnnam Farm is among Auroville's oldest parcels of land. Most recently it was a demonstration site for organic cashews. Mawite has been caring for AuroAnnam and putting energy into making it a lively yet peaceful green entryway into Auroville. There is a question whether Auroville will keep the land or exchange it, making future plans for the place somewhat tenuous. Hear Mawite explain the situation at AuroAnnam on Earth Day weekend - first with a walk around the land and chant led by Kaya, then a presentation back at the Farmers' Cafe. Read more

Here Aromar Revi, talks about the future of renewable energy and highlights the fact that our civilization lives in the ignorance of permanence. He refers to the rise and fall of various civilizations that inhabited the Indian sub-continent and sees this as a natural cycle which will also overcome our current civilization. To download the presentation, click here. Director, Indian Institute of Human Settlement: www.iihs.co.in/about/promoters-group/aromar-revi/ Read more

Alan facilitated a general discussion with speakers and participants raising the questions if all the technological solutions may be enough to actually counterbalance the current rate of destruction of our eco system or if they are actually misleading us. The conclusion was that technologies and even lifestyle adjustments may not be enough but a radical shift in consciousness is the need of the time. Read more

Here we gathered the speakers together to have a one to one interview session with them, and to find out about their feedback on a seminar like this one and also about their experience in Auroville. Alan interviewed Herbert, Brahmanand and Aromar Revi where amongst various thoughts they also mutually felt that Auroville and its green practices need to scale up and to reach the world outside as well. Read more

As a kick-off for the presentation of the Auroville Sustainable Agriculture Plan (ASAP), within the next few months, Auroville Radio presents a series of eleven interviews concerning the foods we eat in Auroville. What were the ideas in the old days of Auroville regarding agriculture and sustainable foods? Which agricultural developments did Auroville been through since the first Aurovillians started to change the dusty plains into the forest it is today? How is the present situation in Auroville's greenbelt and what is it capable of? And, perhaps most important, what are the challenges for the future?.... Read more

As a kick-off for the presentation of the Auroville Sustainable Agriculture Plan (ASAP), within the next few months, Auroville Radio presents a series of eleven interviews concerning the foods we eat in Auroville. What were the ideas in the old days of Auroville regarding agriculture and sustainable foods? Which agricultural developments did Auroville been through since the first Aurovillians started to change the dusty plains into the forest it is today? How is the present situation in Auroville's greenbelt and what is it capable of? And, perhaps most important, what are the challenges for the future?.... Read more

As a kick-off for the presentation of the Auroville Sustainable Agriculture Plan (ASAP), within the next few months, Auroville Radio presents a series of eleven interviews concerning the foods we eat in Auroville. What were the ideas in the old days of Auroville regarding agriculture and sustainable foods? Which agricultural developments did Auroville been through since the first Aurovillians started to change the dusty plains into the forest it is today? How is the present situation in Auroville's greenbelt and what is it capable of? And, perhaps most important, what are the challenges for the future?... Read more

Lively Up Your Earth, eco - music festival, the first of its kind, last weekend in January at Solitude Farm, once again brought lots of people together. Krishna, the founder of the Solitude, and member of the band, Emergence, told us the feedback was warm. Everybody enjoy the diversity of the music and workshops and the many different offered products...all liked the multi-faceted note of the festival, which really joined ecology awareness, art and music with common thread. This way the festival was more than a social gathering - it was really a celebration of all the ideas, and people who resonate with them. Read more

It should start with each one of us to try to work on and to solve the problem of ecological imbalance, which can drive us to catastrophe. Geshe Pema Dorjee finally came to Auroville, and blessed us with his talk on the Buddhist view on the environment. His lecture was interesting, witty, and right to the point on the source of ecological problems that we're facing right now. It's desire and greed; he sees this as the main factor and source of ecological problems which started so long ago, and have now overgrown to the proportion that extinction faces the human race, including all living species. Perhaps the solution is simply to become content with what we have, vs. greediness.... Read more

Chrais an agricultural engineer gave a talk on food systems and planning processes in Auroville during the Green Practices workshop. He observed that whatever we do in the human system we cannot change that we are made of water, bacteria, microbes and more, so it is important to take these factors into consideration while planning. Chrais explained the various food systems being practiced in Auroville and their continuing experiments with newer systems.

Another speaker at the Green Practice workshop held in August was Bhavana Dee, who founded the Auroville Village Action Group (AVAG) in 1983. When Bhavana arrived at Auroville in 1971 it was a barren wasteland and “it was not anything like a city”. She went on to describe how they all worked together, along with the local villagers to help, to build Auroville. Calling it a very colourful time, she said the community was a happy one despite the lack of many basic facilities. Bhavana said if people take up the cause many such barren lands can be restored to their past glory as “mother nature is right there, ready to cooperate”.

The interesting presentation by the PondyCAN team given at Quiet on Tuesday second of Noveber 2010 with the analysis of the root causes of the problem on this Puducherry -Tamil Nadu coastline didn't bring any solutions, but surely gave a hope that this problem might be solved. It appears, though, that the implementation step by step of the required measures isn't likely to happen as soon as it could unless it is specifically asked for not only by PondyCAN but also by Auroville in a more massive way than has been done until now. Read more

Adhikasavan in an interesting interview talks about his life, connection and interactions with Auroville since his childhood, and about Botanical Garden. He's with it since the beginning because he realized that after studying long distance also need to be involve in something, and he was already working with plantings on some other occasions. As he told us he cares about Botanical Garden as it would be his own, and results are there. Botanical Garden in whole is designed for educational purpose, and over 200 governmental local schools bring children on one day environmental educational program throughout the school year. Beside different gardens – like maze and cactus one – they're trying to bring up tropical dense evergreen forest with paths of different lengths, and they do have tree nursery and a seed bank as commercial unit.

Patrice Meyniel se passionne pour la vanille depuis 10 ans. Il a voyage a travers le monde, du Mexique a la Nouvelle Caledonie en passant par le Magreb pour en apprendre plus sur la vanille et sa culture. Ce qu'il aime dans la culture de la vanille c'est cette interaction necessaire entre l'Homme et la Nature qui nous permet de trouver les gousses telles que nous les connaissons dans les super marches.

Solitude Farm is a place where one can really grow in the harmony with nature which leads to a freedom – a spiritual freedom, expresses Khaled who lives and works there for already six years. In his attitude and bright laughter one can see that he is indeed happy in what is he doing with all his passion. Recently the Solitude Farm started with tours and instructions on how one can prepare his or her own circular permaculture garden next to the house which should bring more awareness to Aurovillians about the food they consume, and maybe bring us back to the roots – connectedness with the Earth we live on. Read more