Samuel Benoit

Special regard must be paid to agriculture.
-Baha’u’llah, Tablets 90

When I arrived to the campus of the University of Agricultural Sciences on the 30th, my new home for the next 6 months, I wasn’t able to get an accurate impression of the campus because it happened to be the site of a public municipal election results counting – something that thousands of people apparently like to watch. A week later, I still have no idea what the campus is actually like because immediately after the clean up for the election the four day agriculture trade fair Krishi Melabegan and completely took over. The campus was packed with thousands of farmers from the Northern half of the state of Karanataka.

Let me show you here some of the photos from this phenominal event that I have just posted to my photo site along with some quotations from Baha’u’llah and ‘Abdu’l-Baha that kept ringing in my ears as I was there. As always, you should still go to my flickr photo site to look at all of the pictures because some of them are really cool.

Seeing these guys gather around this giant thresher for a photo brought back for me images of friends of mine in Canada doing the same thing over new cars at car show or people posing with enormous guns at a weapons trade show, except that I could finally understand and partake of the excitement here. Peter (the Master’s student from Queens that just arrived) and I had to be pried away from stall after stall as our co-workers struggled to get us through the show within a reasonable amount of time.

As the University’s website eloquently puts it, it has been “providing yeoman services to the farming community of Northern Karnataka.” Helping farmers of the region is built into the mission of the university and it shows. This means, for example, that if a farmer places a request for the assistance of one of the university’s professors, the professor has no choice but to go — at the university’s expense in one of its cars.

Another part of their assistance to the farmers is the annual event, where about a third of the fair is reserved to showcase the research work of the university’s students, professors and other staff. Much of this research is done on it’s massive farmlands surrounding the campus. Above is an image of a booth taken up by undergraduate student research conveyed in models and posters in the local language of their own innovations aimed at assisting the farmers in aspects such as rainwater collection, composting and watershed management.

Below is a model of a typical storage shed for potatoes with the proposal to have plastic pipes placed through it to cut down significantly on lost produce due to rotting from heat.

I shudder to imagine what we would do back at my own university if every department was called upon do demonstrate to the surrounding communities what they are doing to improve their lives.

The fundamental basis of the community is agriculture, tillage of the soil. All must be producers.
– ‘Abdu’l-Baha, Promulgation of Universal Peace 217

The especially interested could venture beyond the stalls to the surrounding fields where university staff were eager to show farmers thier research in more depth. Here my own supervisor, Dr. S G Patil was showing a group of students from the nieghbouring university the site of an experiment. They are trying to determine the right ratio of water to waste water from a local distillary that could be used to actually help crops as a source of nutrients.

Strive as much as possible to become proficient in the science of agriculture, for in accordance with the divine teachings the acquisition of sciences and the perfection of arts are considered acts of worship.
-‘Abdu’l-Baha, Selections 144-145

For more on the Krishi Mela check out the university website, or this article from The Hindu newspaper. For more on the many intriguing Baha’i teachings on agriculture and their current applications around the world I recommend getting a copy of Paul Hanley’s 2006 anthology The Spirit of Agriculture and checking out its fantastic companion website. It is one of the only books I have actually bought in the past few years and my signed copy is among the even fewer that came with me on this trip. Those who know my aversion from buying anything – especially books, as well as my light packing will know that this must be an important book.

I plan on writing more on some of the research into exciting things like composting, solar energy and water use that I am learning about here. If you have zero interest in agriculture or sustainability, this may not be the right blog for you. Or planet.

Knowledge is as wings to man’s life, and a ladder for his ascent. Its acquisition is incumbent upon everyone. The knowledge of such sciences, however, should be acquired as can profit the peoples of the earth, and not those which begin with words and end with words.
– Baha’u’llah, A Compilation on Scholarship