The annual seed festival hosted in Auroville that promotes sharing of traditional knowledge and sustainable farming practices gets under way here on Saturday.
The third Auroville seed festival hosted by the Sustainable Livelihood Institute (SLI), a joint venture between Auroville Foundation and the Tamil Nadu Rural Livelihood Mission, gets under way at the Auroville Village Action Group grounds, Irumbai panchayat.
The event, which brings together seed savers (those who conserve and multiply traditional seeds, including rare varieties) organic farmers and agriculturists from neighbouring districts of Tamil Nadu, has been growing organically with each passing year. The festival will display, and facilitate exchange of diverse seeds, particularly traditional ones, that are conserved in situ by farmers apart from sales of organic food produce, talks and discussions on farming related subjects.
“The growing emphasis of the last two years had indicated that there is a need for farmers to exchange seeds regularly,” said Sathyaraj, coordinator of the seed festival from SLI.
SLI has been offering courses on sustainable agriculture for more than four years to leaders from across the State of Tamil Nadu and several other states as well.
Apart from over 100 seed varieties on display and over 35 stalls, there will also be students activity corner, parallel sessions on farm-based education and medicinal plant conservation this year.
On the eve of the seed festival, SLI is also co-hosting a State-level consultative seminar on “Building Eco-system for Farmer Producer Organisations in Tamil Nadu” along with Centre for Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship, IIT Madras. “Tamil Nadu’s policy on Farmer Producer Organisations and Organic Farming are long overdue, we hope to capture the diverse stakeholder’s voice on what needs to go into such a policy and present the same to the government,” said Ramasubramanian, former SLI Director and facilitator of the seminars scheduled for July 25 and 26. Further information is available by e-mail at programme@tnavsli.in or on calling +91 413 262 2333.
