By Kulavati Krishnapriya Devi Dasi,
In the Czech Republic’s countryside, two ISKCON-affiliated farms show what Srila Prabhupada’s vision of agrarian self-sufficiency can look like after three decades of steady work. Krsnuv Dvur, established in 1990, and its newer extension, Surabhi Farm, acquired in 2022, together form one of the most productive grain and dairy operations among ISKCON’s farm communities in Europe.
A Farm Built From Necessity, Not Theory
Varnasrama Dasa, president of Krsnuv Dvur, has led the community since 1997, when he took on the role at age 27 with no formal training in agriculture. “What I knew about agriculture was mainly what I had learned practically on the farm since 1991,” he said, describing early years spent working with horses and in temple service before responsibility for the farm fell to him.
That practical, trial-and-error approach shaped everything that followed. When the farm’s first successful grain harvest filled its storage bins, Varnasrama Dasa discovered that selling the crop on the open commodity market would actually lose money on every kilogram produced. The solution was to process the grain themselves. “We decided to process the grain ourselves and make flour,” he said. “That was the beginning of a journey that has lasted for more than twenty years.”
Today, Krsnuv Dvur operates a professional grain-cleaning operation and flour mill meeting European food safety standards, supplying outlets across the Czech Republic as well as ISKCON’s own temples and restaurants.
Syamasundara Dasa, manager of the goshala, or cow sanctuary, at Bhaktivedanta Manor in England from 1992 to 2014, who has also assisted successful ISKCON Ministers of Cow Protection and Agriculture since the late 1990s and now supports Krishna Ksetra Swami, the European minister in that role, called Krsnuv Dvur “probably the leading arable farm in certainly the Western world,” adding that its scale remains largely unrecognized within the devotee community.
Read more: https://iskconnews.org/cow-protection-and-agriculture-modeled-at-czech-farms/
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