The Natural Way Of Farming - Masanobu Fukuoka -...
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We carry earnest thoughts and desires in our hearts throughout our daily lives. As farmers, we are responsible for a life-sustaining industry. As evangelists of natural farming, we have stories to tell.
Fukuoka was the author of several books, scientific papers and other publications, and was featured in television documentaries and interviews from the 1970s onwards.[7] His influences went beyond farming to inspire individuals within the natural food and lifestyle movements. He was an outspoken advocate of the value of observing nature's principles.[8]
In 1983, he travelled to Europe for 50 days holding workshops, educating farmers and sowing seeds. In 1985, he spent 40 days in Somalia and Ethiopia, sowing seeds to re-vegetate desert areas, including working in remote villages and a refugee camp. The following year he returned to the United States, speaking at three international conferences on natural farming[14] in Washington state, San Francisco and at the Agriculture Department of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Fukuoka also took the opportunity to visit farms, forests and cities giving lectures and meeting people. In 1988, he lectured at the Indian Science Congress, state agricultural universities and other venues.
Fukuoka called his agricultural philosophy shizen nōhō (自然農法), most commonly translated into English as \"natural farming\".[18] It is also referred to as \"the Fukuoka Method\", \"the natural way of farming\" or \"Do-Nothing Farming\".
In Japan, where Fukuoka had few followers or associates,[8] his critics argue that the \"inner world and the connection between humans and nature does not, however, exhaust reality\" and that he did not give sufficient attention to interpersonal relationships or society.[8] These criticisms were in some ways addressed by the next generation of natural farmers in Japan such as Yoshikazu Kawaguchi, who started a movement of widespread free schools, and yearly conferences to help spread the mindset of natural farming. There are now over 40 learning sites and more than 900 concurrent students in the Japanese natural farming network.
The farm is now[when] run using some natural farming techniques: no chemicals, no tillage of the land and no use of composting. Other techniques have been changed; the pattern of irrigation is more conventional to reduce conflicts with neighbours. A do-nothing philosophy has been followed on the hilltop surrounding Fukuoka's hut. Here it has become a natural, fruit-bearing forest with minimal intervention.[44]
Fukuoka's natural farming practice rejected the use of modern technology, and after twenty-five years, his farm demonstrated consistently comparable yields to that of the most technologically advanced farms in Japan, doing so without the pollution, soil loss, energy consumption, and environmental degradation inherent in these modern types of farming. One of the main prompts of natural farming, is to ask why we should apply modern technology to the process of growing food, if nature is capable of achieving similar yields without the negative side-effects of these technologies.[7] Such ideas radically challenged conventions that are core to modern agro-industries; instead of promoting importation of nutrients and chemicals, he suggested an approach that takes advantage of the local environment.[8] Although natural farming is sometimes considered a subset of organic farming, it differs greatly from conventional organic farming,[9] which Fukuoka considered to be another modern technique that disturbs nature.[10]
In principle, practitioners of natural farming maintain that it is not a technique but a view, or a way of seeing ourselves as a part of nature, rather than separate from or above it.[14] Accordingly, the methods themselves vary widely depending on culture and local conditions.
Principally, natural farming minimises human labour and adopts, as closely as practical, nature's production of foods such as rice, barley, daikon or citrus in biodiverse agricultural ecosystems. Without plowing, seeds germinate well on the surface if site conditions meet the needs of the seeds placed there. Fukuoka used the presence of spiders in his fields as a key performance indicator of sustainability.[citation needed]
Widely regarded as the leading practitioner of the second-generation of natural farmers, Yoshikazu Kawaguchi is the instigator of Akame Natural Farm School, and a related network of volunteer-based \"no-tuition\" natural farming schools in Japan that numbers 40 locations and more than 900 concurrent students.[18] Although Kawaguchi's practice is based on Fukuoka's principles, his methods differ notably from those of Fukuoka. He re-states the core values of natural farming as:
Natural farming recognizes soils as a fundamental natural asset. Ancient soils possess physical and chemical attributes that render them capable of generating and supporting life abundance. It can be argued that tilling actually degrades the delicate balance of a climax soil:
Although the term \"natural farming\" came into common use in the English language during the 1980s with the translation of the book One Straw Revolution, the natural farming mindset itself has a long history throughout the world, spanning from historical Native American practices to modern day urban farms.[22][23][24]
In 1951, Newman Turner advocated the practice of \"fertility farming\", a system featuring the use of a cover crop, no tillage, no chemical fertilizers, no pesticides, no weeding and no composting. Although Turner was a commercial farmer and did not practice random seeding of seed balls, his \"fertility farming\" principles share similarities with Fukuoka's system of natural farming. Turner also advocate a \"natural method\" of animal husbandry.[25]
Japanese farmer and philosopher Mokichi Okada, conceived of a \"no fertilizer\" farming system in the 1930s that predated Fukuoka. Okada used the same Chinese characters as Fukuoka's \"natural farming\" however, they are translated into English slightly differently, as nature farming.[26] Agriculture researcher Hu-lian Xu claims that \"nature farming\" is the correct literal translation of the Japanese term.[26]
In India, natural farming of Masanobu Fukuoka was called \"Rishi Kheti\" by practitioners like Partap Aggarwal.[27][28] The Rishi Kheti use cow products like buttermilk, milk, curd and its waste urine for preparing growth promoters. The Rishi Kheti is considered to be non-violent farming[29] without any usage of chemical fertilizer and pesticides. They obtain high quality[citation needed] natural or organic produce having medicinal values. Today still a small number of farmers in Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu use this farming method in India.[citation needed]
Zero Budget Farming is a variation on natural farming developed in, and primarily practiced in southern India. It also called spiritual farming. The method involves mulching, intercropping, and the use of several preparations which include cow dung. These preparations, generated on-site, are central to the practice, and said to promote microbe and earthworm activity in the soil.[30] Indian agriculturist Subhash Palekar has researched and written extensively on this method.
To some, natural farming may appear as a return to a passive, primitive form of farming over the road of idleness and inaction. Yet because it occupies an immutable and unshakable position that transcends time and space, natural farming is always both the oldest and the newest form of farming. Today, it presses on at the very leading edge of modern agriculture.
In principle, pesticides should not be used in natural farming. But at times there may be no alternative. The following chart is a simple guide for compounding pesticides and their proper and safe use.
Fukuoka grew up on a farm on the island of Shikoku in Japan. As a young man he worked as a customs inspector for plants going into and out of the country. This was in the 1930s when science seemed poised to create a new world of abundance and leisure, when people fully believed they could improve upon nature by applying scientific methods and thereby reap untold rewards. While working there, Fukuoka had an insight that changed his life forever. He returned to his home village and applied this insight to developing a revolutionary new way of farming that he believed would be of great benefit to society. This method, which he called \"natural farming,\" involved working with, not in opposition to, nature.
Kirkus Reviews-From the late author of bestseller The One Straw Revolution (1978) comes a similar book about a philosophical approach to natural farming.\"The fundamental concept of a natural farm,\" writes Fukuoka (The Natural Way of Farming, 1985, etc.), \"begins with intuitively grasping nature's original form, where many varieties of plants and animals live together as a harmonious whole, joyfully and in mutual benefit.\" In this English translation of the author's last work (first published in Japan in 1996), he decries the \"indiscriminate deforestation and large-scale agriculture carried out in order to support the materialistic cultures of the developed countries.\" This process has created a condition called \"desertification,\" the inability of the soil to grow anything. Because humans have lost their connection with nature, Fukuoka advocates foregoing harmful modern methods of farming in favor of a simpler approach. Based primarily on the success of his farm in Japan, the author believes the solution lies in aerial distribution of a large variety of plants via clay seed pellets, the use of cover crops, and a no-tilling approach to the soil. By seeding a wide variety of species in the desert, nature will select those plants best suited for a particular location. These plants will flourish, drawing water from deep within the earth and thereby allowing other plants and trees to prosper. Taking his philosophy to Africa, India and the United States, among other places, Fukuoka demonstrated that, given sufficient time, seeding fallow earth with vegetables, plants and trees created a lush setting. More a spiritual analysis of farming methods than a hands-on approach, the book still provides viable and simple solutions to the world's increased need for productive land. An enlightened method for reclaiming the barren soils of the world. 59ce067264