By Yoneda Yuriko
A farming method called
'natural farming' needs no tilling, no
fertilizers, no pesticides, and no
weeding. For about 60 years, Fukuoka
Masanobu, Japan's renowned authority
on natural farming, honed methods
based on his unique theories, insights
and philosophy. His seminal book,
"One-Straw Revolution," first
published in 1975, has been translated
into English, French, Spanish,
Chinese, Russian and other languages,
and has been read around the world.
The book addresses not only the
practical aspects of natural farming
but also the root causes of
environmental deterioration. Fukuoka's
thought and philosophy have inspired
many people worldwide by pointing out
a way of life. Here we introduce his
thought and practices.
Fukuoka was born in
1913 in Iyo, Ehime Prefecture, in the
southern island of Shikoku in
Japan. After graduating from an
agricultural high school, he took a
job at the Yokohama Customs
Office. At the age of 25, however, he
was hospitalized with acute pneumonia.
The days spent alone became a turning
point in his life. After leaving the
hospital, he continued to reflect on
matters of life and death. One
morning, a flash of insight came to
him: "There is nothing in this world.
No matter what humans try to do, they
can achieve nothing. Every thought we
have and every action we take is
unnecessary." This was the birth of
Fukuoka's philosophy, "the theory of
the uselessness of human knowledge,"
or the theory of "mu" (nothingness).
To
demonstrate his theories in
practical ways, in 1937 he
returned to his native village
and become a farmer at his
father's orange orchard. In
1939, when Japan's situation in
World War II began to
deteriorate, he started to work
at an agricultural research
station in Kochi Prefecture as
an instructor and researcher on
scientific farming, and
continued there until the end of
the war. He returned to Iyo in
1947, and continued to work on
his unique natural farming
system.
He visited America in
1979 and saw California's desertified land, it
occurred to him that his natural farming method
would work to green these regions. Visiting
American communities working on natural farming,
he kept telling people that modern large-scale
farming and cattle-raising were causing
desertification.
During one speaking tour,
the head of the United Nations department in
charge of combating desertification asked him
for technical advice. This was the starting
point of Fukuoka's initiative for desert
greening all over the globe: in China, India,
the Americas, and Africa. Farming Based on
Spiritual Philosophy Fukuoka's natural farming
method begins with the absolute rejection of
science. He says in one of his books, "My study
started with the rejection of conventional
agricultural technologies. I absolutely reject
science and technology. My view is based on the
rejection of Western philosophy, which supports
today's science and technology."
He continues, "Natural
farming, in my mind is, in fact, not part of
so-called scientific agriculture. I aim to
establish a new farming method from the
perspective of Eastern philosophy, thought, and
religion, moving away from the framework of
scientific agriculture." He values not the
Western concept, that nature is for the use of
humanity, but the Eastern way, that humans are
part of nature. Through natural "do-nothing"
farming he tries to demonstrate that science is
imperfect and unnecessary. In another book, "The
Road Back to Nature," Fukuoka notes, "Dietary
abnormality results in abnormality of the body
and mind, and affects everything. A sound body
comes from healthy food. A sound idea comes from
a healthy body." He considers food the most
significant factor in human life, and he
repeatedly uses the Daoist or Buddhist term
"shindo-fuji" in his books, which literally
means that body (shin) and earth (do) are
inseparable (fuji). That is, humans and the
environment are united. When people eat food in
season, grown on the very land where they live,
their bodies can be sound and in harmony with
the environment. Currently, most farmers in
Japan practice chemical farming using chemical
fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.
Recently, however, with people paying more and
more attention to food safety, an increasing
number of farmers practice sustainable
agriculture, through reduction of herbicides and
pesticides and/or through the use of organic
fertilizers.
At supermarkets and
retail stores, consumers are able to buy
agricultural products bearing the Organic JAS
(Japanese Agricultural Standard) logo,
certifying that food has been produced in
accordance with international guidelines. JAS
certification is given to agricultural products
from farms which have not used agrichemicals and
chemical fertilizers for more than three years.
Is Fukuoka's natural farming just one type of
organic farming? Fukuoka rejects scientific
farming based on human knowledge. Instead, he
has established a farming method that requires
as little human intervention as possible.
Organic farming, in which
people spread organic fertilizers, is different
from what he has been aspiring to prove. Fukuoka
explains natural farming: "We can make healthy
rice, healthy and rich soil that requires no
fertilizer, and have productive soil without
tilling if we just accept the fact that
excessive efforts--tilling, application of
either organic, chemical fertilizers, or
pesticides-has never been necessary.
A farming method that
develops the conditions under which people do
not have to do anything--this is what I have
been pursuing. After thirty years I finally came
to the point where my natural farm could yield,
without any effort, virtually as much rice and
wheat as typical scientific farms." 
Japan For
Sustainability Newsletter interviewed Matsumoto
Muneo, who has been attempting Fukuoka-style
natural farming in Saitama Prefecture, in the
suburbs of Tokyo. According to him, a few
farmers are now practicing "natural farming"
across Japan.
But there is no set
definition of natural farming as each person
approaches it in his own way. Having learned
natural farming from Fukuoka, they have adapted
it to their circumstances. Fukuoka's natural
farming could be described as the prototype, or
at least one of the sources of a stream. The
principles of Fukuoka-style natural farming are
no tilling (cultivation), no fertilizers, no
pesticides, and no weeding. Although "no
tilling" may be a difficult concept for ordinary
farmers to understand, Matsumoto explains that
"Tilled soil easily dries out." He continues
that the application of fertilizers, including
manure, overprotects plants. By contrast, plants
without fertilizer can grow to be robust and
tasty.
Regarding the principle
of no weeding, he cuts weeds when they bloom,
instead of pulling them out. And the mowed
weeds, laid flat on the ground, keep soil moist
in summer and warm in winter; eventually they
decompose into natural fertilizer. Moreover,
Matsumoto rarely waters the plants so that the
roots search for water and stretch deep. If
water is abundant, he says, plants will have
shallow roots and become weak from getting water
too easily. When seeding, Matsumoto scatters a
mixture of seeds. A plant sprouts only when it
best suits the place, and thus he cannot
anticipate in advance what will grow where.
To those who do not know
better, Fukuoka-style natural farms may appear
to be untended, with plants growing randomly.
Neighbors often despise such farms, thinking
that they look disorderly. In this country,
where most farms have vegetables growing in neat
rows, natural farming may be hard to understand
for most people. An agricultural method that
requires no tilling, no fertilizers, no
pesticides and no weeding sounds quite easy. But
in reality it is not. In his books Fukuoka
stressed repeatedly that the "natural" in
natural farming is different from
noninterference. Matsumoto elaborates: "Nature
without human intervention just follows its
course automatically. However, nature once
tampered with by humans will not return easily
to its original condition without human
intervention."
Restoration of the
original natural conditions is rather difficult
to accomplish and certainly requires expertise.
Fukuoka was able to establish his natural
farming method only through repeated attempts
and failures, eventually returning his own
fields to the natural condition.
The rapidly growing
demand for petroleum in recent years is giving
rise to conflicts all over the world. In
chemical-based agriculture, petroleum is not
just the material used to make fertilizers and
pesticides but also the fuel to power
cultivation machinery.
In contrast, natural
agriculture requires no cultivators, fertilizers
or pesticides. Since it does not depend on
petroleum, it is a more sustainable form of
agriculture.
Greening of Deserts with
Clay Balls
Fukuoka's natural rice
farming method is a "no-tilling, direct sowing,
rice-barley double cropping" system in which
rice and barley grow in the same field
alternately in a year, from seeds sown on
non-tilled fields.
Knowing that bare seeds
tend to be eaten by birds, Fukuoka came up with
the idea of inserting seeds into clay pellets
before sowing them on fields. In general, such
clayballs are made by (1) mixing clay, water and
various kinds of seeds, (2) removing air bubbles
from the mixture as much as possible, (3)
forming small, round balls, and (4) drying them
for 3 or 4 days. Clay-coated seeds are prevented
from being eaten by birds or insects and also
from drying up. The globular shape of these clay
pellets makes them hard to break. Clayballs
contact the ground with a small area where dew
is formed due to differences in daytime and
nighttime temperatures, which facilitates the
rooting of seeds. Clayballs are especially
suited for sowing in deserts since they require
no watering or fertilizers in addition to their
low-cost nature.
Fukuoka launched a
movement for desert-greening with clayballs, and
succeeded in greening activities in Greece,
India, Tanzania, the Philippines, and worldwide.
Although Fukuoka is now retired from the
movement, activities that he initiated continue
in many countries. It takes years before the
deserts can be transformed into green areas
filled with germinating seeds, small plants,
vegetables and trees. In other words, it is
rather easy to destroy nature, but restoring
nature once lost requires tremendous time and
energy.
Bringing Nature Back Into
Our Lives
After World War II, Japan has expanded
economically and become a country that imports
materials from all over the world. Even the
food, which is essential for our survival, comes
from as far away as the other side of the
planet. Through this change, Japan has achieved
affluence. On the other hand, agriculture is now
largely detached from the lives of most people
in this highly technological society. Humanity
cannot live without nature. The
farmer-philosopher Fukuoka has shown us that
natural agriculture allows us to live without
the aid of technology. We should never forget
that it is nature that sustains our lives.
Scattering seeds to bring back nature and
agriculture closer to our daily lives may be one
step toward a sustainable society.
In 1988 Fukuoka received
the Deshikottam Award, India's most prestigious
award, and the Philippines' Ramon Magsaysay
Award for Public Service, recognized as Asia's
Nobel prize.
In 1997 he received the
Earth Council Award, which honors politicians,
businesspersons, scholars, and non-governmental
organizations for their contributions to
sustainable development.
Today, the 93-year-old
Fukuoka has retired from the greening movement,
and lives a quiet life in his home village, Iyo.
His fields are now closed to the public.
Yoneda Yuriko is staff writer
for Japan for Sustainability This article originally appeared
in the Japan for Sustainability Newsletter
#45, May 2006. This slightly abbreviated
version of the article was published at
Japan Focus on January 28, 2007.
Cuba has already experienced “peak oil” when the
Soviet Union collapsed in 1990. How can a
community survive and eventually thrive after a
loss of 80 percent of its oil and fertilizer
inputs? The answer is community interaction,
urban organic agriculture, and land rights to
small farmers. Today more than 50 percent of the
vegetable needs of Havana’s 2.2 million people
is supplied by local urban agriculture. There
are over 1,000 kiosks in Havana selling locally
grown food. In smaller cities and towns the rate
is between 80 to 100 percent.
Farmers are now among the highest paid workers.
When the “special period” began in the early
90s, every vacant lot in the city was turned
into a farm or a orchard. People cleaned up the
land and started growing food. They just did it
by trial and error. In 1993 the first Australian
permaculturists came to Cuba to start the first
train-the-trainer course. Today over 400
permaculture instructors have been trained in
Cuba.
