Welcome to our blog!

Welcome to the blog of the Centre for Non-Violent Farming, or CNVF as you may see it mentioned on this page. On this blog, I'll be posting news about our activities, as well as regular updates on what we're working on and towards.

So... a good place to start would be to tell you where we've been, where we are right now and where we'd like to be heading.

A few weeks ago, we visited a farm called Chetana Vikas, near a town called Wardha (famous, amongst other things, as somewhere Gandhi set up an ashram). My husband, daughter and I met a group of 10 farmers from Mohadi at Chetana Vikas. This was to be their first direct experience of being on an established organic farm. Of course, I've been singing resplendant praises of these methods, but until now the farmers had wanted proof that these marvellous stories could be true... and lo and behold! Here it was... (photos to follow!). It was great to see them relaxing as the possibilities were laid out before their eyes and gave them something tangible to work with. Here were a group of local farmers who hadn't used chemicals for many years, barely even ploughed their land, used no GM varieties and instead used local ones grown from seed they had collected... and their farm was absolutely flourishing. A group of us will be returning in due course for Chetana Vikas's training programme, as it will give us an insight into how we could do things in Mohadi. We'll keep you posted.

These last few days, I've been trying to get moving on buying in some books for the Centre's sustainable farming library, as the last time I visited the village it was highlighted as a priority. Today, I called Other India Press in Goa, to see if they print any organic farming books in Hindi or Marathi, and unfortunately they don't, so the search will continue... I'll be getting hold of someone at Navdanya, tomorrow hopefully, to see about ordering from their catalogue. If you haven't seen it, take a look here: http://www.navdanya.org/publications. Pretty good! Let's hope they accept foreign credit cards... If anyone knows of other publishers in India who might have organic farming publications, especially ones that have been translated into Hindi or Marathi, please do let me know! We're also happy to order in from over-seas if the publications are really good. Recommendations would be welcomed. We're especially seeking books about organic farming, permaculture, arid land farming (including soil management, water harvesting...) and tropical forestry relating to the Indian climate.

My other major responsibility is to find funding for the Centre. So far we've raised over £450 (including Gift Aid) through our Just Giving page: http://www.justgiving.com/cnvf/. A friend also told me the other day that she has also raised another £100 for us, which was a really nice surprise. My next task will be to find other funding bodies who may fund social projects in India. As we're not technically an NGO, it may be tricky, but I'll think of something...

Soon I'm hoping to get a newsletter up and running, so let me know if you would like to subscribe to that. It will be in electronic format, so can be emailed to you.

We're also trying to find out about a dam that may go ahead in the area near to Mohadi, which will dramatically alter the village's landscape and farming. More news when it comes...

And finally, we're hoping to get some teachers and volunteers out here soon to help deliver workshops, meet the farmers and help on the farms. We're hoping to run some permaculture training in the new year and may even have some teachers coming along, which would be fantastic. If there's anyone out there who's interested in getting involved, please get in touch.