Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Friends at the Terrace Garedening Meet

Moonstar had booked the ticket and I came to know much later that it was in AC. Infact the first time that I got my Asthma, it was in and AC compartment so I kind of dread them. Since we had not talked of it she didn’t know my need so it was ok. I hung out near the vestibule where there was a berth for the attendant. Infact it was birth on the door with an very open view.

At the Terrace Gardening Meet in Bangalore I met some old friends. I was glad to know that Deepak Bhai was there. I have been to his farm and stayed there for a month. Have learnt a lot about farming from him. He practices Natueco Farming in MP and the farm is on the banks of Narmadaji. While I was there I used to go for a bath at Narmadaji and also do yoga on the banks. Its strange that there used to be sounds of bombs often in the river. The fishermen throw them in the river and the explosion kills all the fish in some area. The worst part is it kills all the fishes, even the one which are of no use to the fishermen. The birds would also rush to the area where there was an explosion as they would find lot of dead fish, without much effort.

I saw Purvita Kapadia also there. She is a super enthu city farmer. I have met her in Pune, she had visited FTII and saw our kitchen garden. She suggested that I put some amrit pani. I wantet it but had no way to get gobar. The next day she came with cowdung, cow urine and jaggery and made the culture for amrit pani. I was impressed with her enthu. I am glad that there are such crazy people around. Bauls also refer to each other as ‘khepa’ or the mad one. We need more of such people. She is also part of the group ‘Urban Leaves’.

There were others from the group whom I know from before. Preeti Patil also worked with Deepak Bhai and has been instrumental in setting up a rooftop garden at the Mumbai Port Trust. She has good energy too, she looks so much at peace with herself.

There I met Vinay, who is helping people set up their kitchen gardens. He also gets some money for his work. It is interesting to see people making their passion into a way of earning their living.

Got to meet Saurabh from Dehradun, who is into organic farming and explring the issues of sustainable living and bringing them into his own life. He was earlier working for Microsoft and moved out of the corporate world. He is now promoting kitchen waste composters designed by Poonam of Daily Dump in Bangalore. I have just heard of her as a person who designed these amazing, beautiful three story earthen pots where one can turn the kitchen waste into manure. Interestingly any one is free to copy their designs and it is like open source. In a way they have shared the ownership and that’s why its growing in a very decentralsied way.


There was Anil from Mumbai who is also passionate about the Daily Dump Composters and he promotes them. He mentioned that he picked up a book about thoughts of Buddha from Navdarshanam, in which he had talked about the wise man who know how to make manure out of waste. Yes, we all encounter so much ‘crap’ in our day to day lives and its up to us or we have to choice as to how we want to react to it and whether we can create some thing positive out of it or go deeper into shit. To break it down to manure which can then be a nourishing thing.


It is interesting how language gives perspective to our world view.Moonstar was pointing out how initially when she got the composter at her house in chandigarh, the left over vegetable scraps were referred to as ‘kachara’ or waste by her mother but then now she calls it ‘khad’ which means manure.


The conference was conducted in a a typical cr(l)assroom mode where on person speaks and many listen. There were lot of people who had been into city farming. I feel that there could have been a way where sharing could have been done in groups of three or four so more people could have got the chance to share their stories. More like the World Café Conversations.

There were stalls selling organic rations but the food that was served was also from any typical caterer. I gave my feedback that next time if they have such a meet they could try to serve organic food, even if it is a simple one pot meal like a khichadi.


Had a chat about all this with Preeti Patel and fortunately it has been decided that the next meet will be held around Bombay and The Cityfarmers group will be hosting it. Preeti is also excited about this meet and we have talked of serving organic food and have it on a place where there is some opportunity to do some farming or some small experiments in soil making etc…


We also went to see some rooftop gardens. I was reminded of some one from Pune who had spoken about the ‘law of entropy’ in the context of city farming in the Pune Ecological Society meeting. He thought that most of the experiments on city farming are not going to have a significant impact. He felt that if we are taking water from the dams to cities and then using more electricity to take it to the roof to grow a very small amount, then according to him we are using much more energy to get much less energy. According to the law of entropy the energy is getting dissipated. We have to create systems where the dissipation is much less and if we do the energy audit of any activity then there should be a net gain in energy. But most of the practices we have today are such that even with some of the so called energy saving ways there is a net loss. As it could be a case with the electric bicycle. Just because the exhaust is not giving any fumes it doesn’t mean that all is fine. We have to calculate the fumes that could be coming out in the power plant as they might be more than what we have got from the burning of the fuel in the bike. Or as my friend Amol Gajewar once said that we have to also calculate the amount of energy going into making solar panels and if it is less than the energy that we are going to get form their use.

The person who was critiquing city farming also said that by promoting city farming and we are trying to say that cities can be made sustainable. According to him the idea of city itself is not sustainable so how can we think that by doing some farming to make them sustainable. Its like delaying the ultimate catastrophe. When he expressed his opinions I was a bit skeptical of his ideas. But then I did see some truth in what he was saying. He said instead of bringing water from far off do farming where the water falls. I would also say if some one is not using electricity to pump water and also using grey and black water then it’s a positive step. But his ideas did put the see in me that ultimately we have to make the cities smaller and shrink them.

But then i think that things are not that black and white as there is the story of Cuba how they survived the oil and fertiliser 'crisis'. When Russia could no loger send them fertilisers they moved to organic farming and began to use every available piece of land to grow organic food and now 80 percent of veeggies of Havana come from the city itself. There is a film on How Cuba Survived Peak Oil Crisis. Moonstar also mentioned the idea of Transition Towns in England where people are experimenting with the idea of redesigning existing townships and transiting to more sustainable towns.

In the conference it was good to see so many positive stories and to realise that so much is also happening which is going to bring sanity to the world.

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