Global Johnny Appleseed: Masanobu Fukuoka

From The Fundamental Reality that Underlies Fukuoka's Principles :

Soil is created by living plants working with microorganisms, and by the plants' residues and the microorganisms' corpses after their death.

Soil is drained of nutrients by cultivation, NOT by plants.

Tilling and cultivation of any sort diminishes the natural fertility of the soil...

From Masanobu Fukuoka's Natural Farming and Permaculture :

The idea for natural farming came to Fukuoka when he was about twenty five years old. One morning, as he sat at sunrise on a bluff overlooking Yokohama Bay, a flash of inspiration occurred. He saw that nature was perfect just as it is. Problems arise when people try to improve upon nature and use nature strictly for human benefit. He tried to explain this understanding to others, but when they could not understand he made a decision to return to his family farm. He decided to create a concrete example of his understanding by applying it to agriculture.

But where to begin? Fukuoka had no model to go by. "'How about trying this? How about trying that?' That is the usual way of developing agricultural technique. My way was different. 'How about not doing this, and How about not doing that?' - this was the path I followed. Now my rice growing is simply sowing seed and spreading straw, but it has taken me more than thirty years to reach this simplicity."

The basic idea for his rice growing came to him one day when he happened to pass an old field which had been left unused and unplowed for many years. There he saw healthy rice seedlings sprouting through a tangle of grasses and weeds. From that time on he stopped sowing rice seed in the spring and, instead, put the seed out in the fall when it would naturally have fallen to the ground. Instead of plowing to get rid of weeds he learned to control them with a ground cover of white clover and a mulch of barley straw. Once he has tilted the balance slightly in favor of his crops Fukuoka interferes as little as possible with the plant and animal communities in his fields.

This is not to say that Fukuoka did not experiment. For example, he tried more than twenty different ground covers before noticing that white clover was the only one which held back weeds effectively. It also fixes nitrogen so it improves the soil. He tried spreading the straw neatly over the fields but found the rice seeds could not make their way through. In one corner of the field, however, where the straw had scattered every which way, the seedlings emerged. The next year he scattered the straw across the entire field. There were years when his experiments resulted in almost a total crop loss, but in small areas things worked out well. He closely observed what was different in that part of the field and next year the results were better. The point is, he had no preconceived idea of what would work the best. He tried many things and took the direction nature revealed. As far as possible, Fukuoka was trying to take the human intellect out of the decision making process.

His vegetable growing also reflects this idea. He grows vegetables in the spaces between the citrus trees in the orchard. Instead of deciding which vegetables would do well in which locations he mixes all the seeds together and scatters them everywhere. He lets the vegetables find their own location, often in areas he would have least have expected. The vegetables reseed themselves and move around the orchard from year to year. Vegetables grown this way stronger and gradually revert to the form of their semi-wild ancestors.

From South-european Greenbelt Initiative :

In spring '98 Masanobu Fukuoka and his longtime scholar Panaiotis Manikis initiated the "Greenbelt for southern Europe"initiative . The goal is to create a green belt in Europe - to stop desertification and recreate fertile soils . A first largescale sowing (10.000 ha) took place at Lake Vegoritida in Northern Greece . Fukuoka led the project .

European volunteers, several hundred pupils, students and farmers sowed out completely 7 tons of seed pellets with 60 tons of alumina and on 2.500 hectars . Ministers, scientists, journalists and the local population showed active interest and supported the action .

This was the first of further planned sowings in deforested areas in southern Europe. Resumed in the autumn 1998 sowing internal message it north Greece. Further action will take place in southern Greece, Italy and Portugal.

From Farmer from Kollegal shows the way :

Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Kailashmurthy says that the book, One Straw Revolution, written by the Japanese farmer, Masanobu Fukuoka, inspired him to try natural farming. Natural farming does not require ploughing, chemical fertilizers, or insecticides. On the contrary, insects and pests are welcome as they help restore balance naturally, he adds.

"Insects are to be welcomed as eight out of 10 varieties are helpful to the environment. And when pests raid crops, nature controls it with predators. But this harmony is being disturbed by the use of pesticides and chemicals, which only destroy biodiversity," Mr. Kailashmurthy says.

He notes that farmers in and around Kollegal, as in the rest of the State, have been using chemical fertilizers indiscreetly. But the only input he provides to his farm is water. Even the "artificial" input of water will be stopped in due course, he says.

In the wake of a water crisis, as witnessed since the past three years in the State, crops tend to wilt and farmers sustain heavy crop losses and end up in debt. But in contrast, Mr. Kailashmurthy's land is full of biomass, and the holding capacity of the soil is more as the plot is fully covered by vegetation. This, he says, results in less evaporation of water. Water is retained for a longer period and since the soil is very loose and naturally fertile, water easily percolates into the ground. "The vegetation that grows under natural conditions penetrates deep into the earth as the roots tend to move towards the water points. The deeper they go, the barriers in the form of rocks and the like in the earth's crust are broken and this generates topsoil. So even when there is less water available, the crop output is not affected. And since we work by the laws of nature, even drought is naturally resisted," Mr. Kailashmurthy says.

So how do farmers view natural farming as practiced by Kailashmurthy? The ones who earlier used to laugh now look to him for guidance.

From Greening The Desert :

I talked to the head of the desert department at the United Nations about my natural farming. He asked me if my natural farming could change the desert of Iraq. He told me to develop the way of changing the desert to green. At that point I thought that I was a poor farmer and I had no power and no knowledge, so I told him that I couldn't. But from then I started thinking that my task is working on the desert.

Several years ago, I travelled around Europe. It seemed to me that Europe was very nice and beautiful, with lots of nature preserved. But three feet under the surface I felt desert slowly coming in. I kept wondering why. I realized it was the mistake they made in agriculture. The beginning of the mistake is from growing meat for the king and wine for the church. All around, cow, cow, cow, grape, grape, grape. European and American agriculture started with grazing cows and growing grapes for the king and the church. They changed nature by doing this, especially on the hill slopes. Then soil erosion occurs. Only the 20% of the soil in the valleys remains healthy, and 80% of the land is depleted. Because the land is depleted, they need chemical fertilizers and pesticides. United States, Europe, even in Japan, their agriculture started by tilling the land. Cultivation is also related to civilization, and that is the beginning of the mistake. True natural farming uses no cultivation, no plow. Using tractors and tools destroys the true nature. Trees' biggest enemies are the saw and ax. Soil's biggest enemies are cultivation and plowing. If people don't have those tools, it will be a better life for everything.

[ ... ]

Robert: How have you applied your method to the deserts?

Masanobu: Chemical agriculture can't change the desert. Even if they have a tractor and a big irrigation system, they are not able to do it. I came to the realization that to make the desert green requires natural farming. The method is very simple. You just need to sow seeds in the desert. Here is a picture of experimentation in Ethiopia. This area was beautiful 90 years ago, and now it looks like the desert in Colorado. I gave seeds for 100 varieties of plants to people in Ethiopia and Somalia. Children planted seeds, and watered them for three days. Because of high temperature and not having water, the root goes down quickly. Now the large Daikon radishes are growing there. People think there isn't any water in the desert, but even in Somalia and Ethiopia, they have a big river. It is not that they do not have water; the water just stays underneath the earth. They find the water under 6 to 12 feet.

Diane: Do you just use water to germinate the seeds, and then the plants are on their own?

Masanobu: They still need water, like after ten days and after a month, but you should not water too much, so that the root grows deep. People have home gardens in Somalia these days.

The project started with the help of UNESCO with a large amount of money, but there are only a couple of people doing the experiment right now. These young people from Tokyo don't know much about farming. I think it is better to send seeds to people in Somalia and Ethiopia, rather than sending milk and flour, but there isn't any way to send them. People in Ethiopia and Somalia can sow seeds, even children can do that. But the African governments, the United States, Italy, France, they don't send seeds, they only send immediate food and clothing. The African government is discouraging home gardens and small farming. During the last 100 years, garden seed has become scarce.

Diane: Why do these governments do this?

Masanobu: The African governments and the United States government want people to grow coffee, tea, cotton, peanuts, sugar - only five or six varieties to export and make money. Vegetables are just food, they don't bring in any money. They say they will provide corn and grain, so people don't have to grow their own vegetables.

Fukuoka quotes from Wikipedia :

"If we throw mother nature out the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork."

"When a decision is made to cope with the symptoms of a problem, it is generally assumed that the corrective measures will solve the problem itself. They seldom do. Engineers cannot seem to get this through their heads. These countermeasures are all based on too narrow a definition of what is wrong. Human measures and countermeasures proceed from limited scientific truth and judgment. A true solution can never come about in this way."

"Natural farming is not just for growing crops, it is for the cultivation and perfection of human beings."

Throw nature out with a pitchfork; she'll soon be back. - 'naturam expellas furca tamen usque recurret' - is a quotation from the Roman Poet Horace. And, as it happens,a favourite of the psychoanalyst C. G. Jung.