This is an incredible natural food forest grown in Auroville, Tamil Nadu, India

[Music] [Laughter] [Music] so here we have the drumstick spinach which is considered a superfood there's the Sun Kapoor their perigee the clitoria tell it here which is very good for your brain for women for their uterus this is a super juice this is a lovely spinach called pollen Gani spinach it's a traditional spinach you know if you asked a million's about pond and Gani they're like yeah this is our culture is good for your skin and good for your eyes then we have the wild brinjal this wild brinjal we don't plant it like actually quite a few of these things we don't plant they just grow and this is also very good for reverse diabetes for kidneys this is something that so fundamental you know in the in our very existence to know what foods are local to know what foods are good for us to know what foods you know can be eaten [Music] this is so a good feel this is like a magic plant and it's a weed [Music] I was very fortunate as a teenager because I went to J Krishnamurthy School in England and in that school we were very free you know to explore more existential questions of life you know why why was I born what's the meaning of my life [Music] [Applause] [Music] alone enjoy Oh crime bear enough myself call I'm just an echo on a distant wall Oh could it be that beauty's kiss to 9i just me far from my tomorrows say my prayers honest I ended up studying a lot of jazz guitar and I was doing a lot of theater I was even doing research in genetics my teacher he encouraged us to and get involved in publishing scientific papers but it was at that time that I discovered my passion for farming and gardening you know a life close to nature growing my own food there was a teacher in our school who had lived in Oroville in the 70s and he he was very involved in what he was doing and it was very appealing to be with him and I I learnt from him that we don't have to go to university to do master's degree growing your own food living in community living a simple life is a equally valid [Music] so when we started solitude you know it used to be farmland but it hadn't been used for many years and it was just the empty land it was flat and the soil was you know little poor they were weeds growing and a few neem trees and that was all that was there so we really started from scratch with this land we're trying to understand and replicate the natural systems in nature there are so many natural systems going on in H I mean the first obvious one is that leaves an organic matter fall to the ground and decane become healthy you know available nutrients for the plants so the first element in natural farming what I say is the first and last technique is to value all the biomass around us the organic matter this bio resource is our prophet it's not a financial profit it's a nutritional profit because when we return it back to the soil soil becomes healthy this is the very premise of natural farming [Music] people in the city people outside are still stuck with like maybe like seven to eight varieties of food that they are eating people are just eating cauliflowers some may be like in Bombay also we eat like two varieties of spinach s but when I came here and I saw it was like eight varieties of spinach s and out of that four are we are not even growing you see food these days is functional you eat to go and do the job everything is geared towards economic gain I got the iPad I got the car but when there's no water left in the tap what use is that [Music] [Music] man has gone so far away chasing economic growth he has to come back to this this is the future of farming [Music] first as I said we we plant fruit trees it's a ram fall and there's you know there's tamarind and there's jackfruit and mangoes and supporters is as a wide diversity of fruit trees and then there are all the papayas and bananas and so many other plants which are sort of the intermediary infrastructure and then we have things like the lady's fingers and there are cucumbers and pumpkins the sort of shorter duration the annuals then we have all the spinach is that are just growing everywhere I mean of course some of them will do in a line like the amaranth but many of them are wild and it's these more wild plants that are really interesting like I mean take this Chile here this Chile is an amazing Chile it'll grow like about 4 meters high we'll get a good full bucket of Chile's from it and we didn't grow it this sundar Chi is really a very special plant again it's something that we haven't grown it grows all over the farm now and it grows all over the farm because we valued it but the main point is we didn't grow it it grew on its own there was no industrialization needed for this there is no carbon footprint [Music] over the years we've had less and less rainfall in fact over the last seven years apart from cyclones is a couple of them that filled up the well we haven't had a monsoon that really filled the well and that makes irrigation really a challenge but when we returned organic matter back to the soil you start to see the soil becomes like a sponge you know it's holding water you know this porosity is really synonymous with fertility and this porosity allows for us to irrigate less [Music] people asked me know what about pests in natural farming there are no pests because there's an equilibrium starting with the soil and then starting with such diversity as you walk through the fields there's very nice smell of different plants the insects find their place in that but not one insect predominates to create destruction you know of the whole crop [Music] [Laughter] [Music] this is a cafe that values local foods and it's amazing to see how it's grown over the years in 2014 we started with the full-blown menu and that's like nearly six years ago it's become so popular and you can see in our bio region how green papaya is slowly valued in more by more and more people how certain spinach is are valued by more people someone from Sweden showed me how she was using the banana stem and you know that's very heartwarming because that's the aim of this cafe [Music] I think at the moment we're doing about 80 to 90 baskets in a month so that's a good income and it's all income paid in advance you know either months in advance or three months in advance [Music] many people come in they say how can I start and I've got this one a : and I say well start with fruit trees and around each fruit tree make a garden you know so you're watering those fruit trees and that water will also go for that garden so around each fruit tree you have like a a two and a half meter diameter circle where you have tapioca the morrow really killing a Kappa you have drumstick you have a papaya have a couple of bananas and maybe you have pumpkins that go out so instead of trying to you know irrigate the whole field and take care of a whole field you've actually got say 20 or 30 circles that you take care of and you could even put a drip on each circle because you have to be practical you know this is a very romantic idea that we're presenting but it's grounded in utter pragmatism and reality [Music] [Music] the key to this system for a local farmer after the technical you know implementation is community because without community you can't share the gifts of Mother Nature shops don't want banana stem and banana flower and chicken spinach you know shops want beet roots and potatoes and carrots so it's really about having a community of 2030 people for an acre farm and they say give me the nutrition of Mother Nature let my children grow up eating seasonal foods eating foods that are relevant to my culture and are good for me nutritionally and medicinally so when you have that community that honors the farmer and honors what he can offer then the farmer has economic you know gain he'll have an income or have you seen my have you seen my I defy the land that's trying to define me have you seen my have you seen my I defy the lam that's trying to define me have you seen my have you seen my I defy the line that's trying to define me in my or have you seen my I defy the land that's trying to define me you [Music]

Channel: Down To Earth

Views: 1,196,118

Rating: 4.938365 out of 5

Keywords: Environment, Science, Sustainable Development, Down to Earth, Centre for Science and Environment, Krishna McKenzie, Solitude Farm, Solitude Cafe, Auroville, Tamil Nadu, Permaculture, Climate-resilient, Biodiversity, Nutrition, Food forest, Edible wild plants, Tamil Culture, Millets, Wild, Healthy food, Sustainable Farming, Agriculture, India, Food security, Green Planet, Green Living, Masanobu Fukuoka, Natural Farming, Drought-proof, Food, Good Food, Lifestyle, Adaptaions, Climate Change

Id: 5iOTq6kb4qM

Length: 15min 13sec (913 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 20 2020