The Fukuoka Farming Website The Dialogue FAQ |
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Q. Hello, is this the Fukuoka_Farming FAQ?
A. Yes it is.
Q. I'm confused, shouldn't there be a simple list of questions with answers?
A. I don't know whether there should be, but there could've been. It is just that Fukuoka and his work seem to require a different approach.
Q. Right, so what should I do?
A. Just ask some questions and I'll see if I can answer them, that way we both might learn something, create a dialogue.
Q. Who or what is Masanobu Fukuoka?
A. He is a simple Japanese farmer and leader of the 'One-Straw Revolution.'
Q. I can understand studying the leader of a revolution but not a simple farmer, are the two related?
A. Yes, intimately. Fukuoka has developed a form of farming that equals and ultimately surpasses conventional farming.
Q. What is the name of his type of farming?
A. Natural Farming.
Q. Why 'Natural Farming'?
A. Because it works with and not against the grain of nature.
Q. Sounds good, but what does that actually mean?
A. In perhaps the greatest revolution in agriculture since, well...since agriculture began, Fukuoka has come to realise not humans but nature grows plants.
Q. So what does he actually do?
A. It's more what he doesn't do.
Q. What doesn't he do?
A. Plough.
Q. So, he just scatters the seeds on uncultivated earth?
A. Yes, though sometimes he uses seedballs.
Q. What's a seedball?
A. A clay pellet containing many seeds.
Q. Yes, but why does he use them?
A. So that birds and rodents don't eat the seed, so each seed remains in the soil until conditions are favourable to its growth and then it germinates.
Q. What else doesn't he do?
A. He never uses any chemical fertilizer or prepared compost.
Q. Doesn't he exhaust the soil?
A. No, each year his land becomes more fertile.
Q. That's impossible!
A. No, not impossible, just revolutionary.
Q. This goes against everything I know about agriculture, how does it work?
A. By following nature.
Q. Could you be more specific?
A. Fukuoka uses both the crop plant and a cover crop to maintain and increase soil fertility. After cutting the rice, barley or wheat he leaves the roots in the soil and after threshing the grain, he returns all the straw to the fields. The white clover he uses as cover crop fixes nitrogen.
Q. Is there anything else Fukuoka doesn't do?
A. He doesn't weed.
Q. After not ploughing, fertilizing or weeding he then sits back and relaxes?
A. No, then he continues not using pesticides or herbicides.
Q. Then he can rest after his exertions at doing nothing?
A. Yes, except if he's working in the orchard, then he doesn't prune either.
Q. This is amazing, but I just can't believe it! Do you have any proof?
A. Let me ask you a question, what do you mean by proof?
Q. Well, what about replication, documentary evidence?
A. There are currently 260 members of this email list, many of them attempting to replicate Fukuoka's work; 261 if you join us.
Q. What about scientific replication?
A. I think you haven't read any Fukuoka yet, otherwise you might not have asked that question.
Q. Why?
A. Because scientific inquiry has created modern conventional farming, Fukuoka is the antidote.
Q. There must be some documentary evidence?
A. There is, Fukuoka's The One-Straw Revolution.
Q. Won't I find only Fukuoka's words?
A. Yes.
Q. From what you say I can see the appeal of Natural Farming but I have to say, I think it all sounds too easy.
A. Simple perhaps, but not easy.
Q. If it it's that 'simple', why doesn't everyone do it?
A. Because it takes someone exceptional to unravel 100 centuries of culture.
Q. Why do you mention culture when we are talking about farming?
A. Agriculture, like all human activity, is an expression of its culture.
Q. Sounds like fashionable post-modern relativism, is it what Fukuoka believes?
A. Yes, I think so. But here's a well-known quote from Fukuoka, make up your own mind: "The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings."
Q. Actually, that's the reverse of your answer. Fukuoka is saying that agriculture can change culture by perfecting humanity, not culture influencing agriculture.
A. Do you know, I think you're right. We are both learning something!
Q. So, Fukuoka is attempting to change culture through Natural Farming?
A. It would certainly seem so. He is a revolutionary. But change is never easy, not even his children continue to farm naturally since he retired.
Q. I knew it all had to be too good to be true. Why continue to study and discuss Fukuoka knowing even his own family had given up on Natural Farming?
A. I do not know his family's reasons, but I suspect them to be cultural rather than agricultural, especially as Fukuoka was at least equalling the yields of the farms using conventional farming techniques.
Q. But that just doesn't make sense!
A. No, it doesn't. Then it also doesn't make sense for the developed world to continue conventional practices when there is incontrovertible evidence of the environmental impact it is having.
Q. Right, so how do we go about changing this?
A. By farming naturally.
Q. But practically, how do we go about that on our farms and in our gardens?
A. By reading his books.
Q. So there are practical instructions in his books?
A. Yes there are, but they may be useless if you aren't a Japanese rice farmer living in a semi-tropical climate.
Q. What's the point of me reading the books then?
A. You'll learn how Fukuoka learn't to do nothing.
Q. Then they are useless to anyone living in a temperate climate?
A. This will depend on whether you want to adopt the techniques or the approach.
Q. Is there a difference?
A. Well, scattering vegetable seedballs on a vacant lot in New York and expecting to return a few weeks later to make a salad would be one difference.
Q. Aren't there any techniques I can learn?
A. After The One-Straw Revolution Fukuoka wrote The Natural Way of Farming: The Theory and Practice of Green Philosophy, it is full of techniques.
Q. The Natural Way of Farming isn't going to give me simple answers is it?
A. Simple answers perhaps, but no step-by-step techniques for temperate climates
Q. So what will I learn?
A. That it took him a lifetime of many failures to begin to get it right.
Q. Hasn't Bill Mollison the permaculturalist said something like that?
A. Bill Mollison has a favourite expression for those newly graduating from a Permaculture Design Course "Get out there and start making mistakes."
Q. Is Natural Farming the same as Permaculture?
A. No, Permaculture, though involved in farming practices, hence its name from Permanent Agriculture, is a design process.
Q. Perhaps Fukuoka learnt from Permaculture when he formulated Natural Farming?
A. Actually the influence is all in the other direction. David Holmgren, who conceived Permaculture, was deeply influenced by the work of Fukuoka.
Q. But weren't One-Straw and Permaculture One published at the same time?
A. Fukuoka's English translation appeared in 1978, Holmgren and Mollison's in 1981.
Q. Interesting.
A. Interesting, certainly and revealing if you still feel the need for exterior sources of support for the tenets of Natural Farming.
Q. So both Fukuoka and Mollison suggest it's best to get out there and start experimenting?
A. Yes.
Q. I have to begin farming to find out what will work in my temperate climate from what I've learnt from Fukuoka?
A. Exactly. Although you don't need a farm: a garden, balcony or window box is an equally good place to begin.
Q. Are you going to tell me I don't even need any plants to begin?
A. Well, if you remember the quote from earlier: "The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings", that might be a possibility.
Q. I have to say that your reticence for scientific proof, the lack of actual detail, and this 'perfection of human beings' makes Fukuoka sound more like the leader of a religious cult rather than an agricultural revolution.
A. Yes, I see what you mean.
Q. So, is Natural Farming a religion?
A. No, not in the least, it is an entirely practical way of farming.
Q. But does Fukuoka have a religion?
A. Yes, he is a Mahayana Buddhist and Natural farming grew out of his Buddhist background.
Q. Do I have to be a Buddhist to understand and practice Natural farming then?
A. Absolutely not! To be or not to be a Buddhist is just not the question.
Q. Then what is the question?
A. The realisation that western culture regards humanity as the source of all meaning, purpose, and value.
Q. So?
A. Such a conception leads to the creation of subject/object relationships; mind/body, reason/feeling, male/female and fundamentally for Fukuoka, man/nature.
Q. Sorry, but I still need to ask, so?
A. Those possessing the "privileged" properties; mind, reason, male, man, allegedly have the right to dominate those possessing the "inferior" properties body, feeling, female, nature.
Q. I think I understand. Because man feels he dominates nature, he believes he understands better than nature how to grow plants?
A. Now you're speaking like a true Fukuokan and there was no need for Buddhism at all!
Q. How does Fukuoka express this realisation in his books?
A. Fukuoka was lucky, the realisation came to him in a vision of such piercing intensity it changed his life.
Q. Is this the experience that set him on the road to Natural Farming?
A. Yes and it is fundamental to an understanding of just what Fukuoka means when he talks of Natural Farming.
Q. What did Fukuoka see in his vision?
A. He saw a night heron rise from the harbour at Yokohama, give a sharp cry and then fly away.
Q. That's it?
A. That and the realisation that not only did he understand nothing but in this world there is nothing.
Q. Your becoming obscure again, could you explain that in ordinary language?
A. How about: the calculative, instrumental vocabulary used to describe the world and thus dominate it, does not understand the true nature of nature.
Q. Who uses such a vocabulary?
A. Scientists. Fukuoka himself had been a microbiologist, this vision and the felt intensity of the experience helped cast off his patina of scientific rationalisation in an effort to gain a greater understanding than that given by scientific enquiry alone.
Q. So, Fukuoka has become an anti-scientist?
A. No, his conception of nothing does not dismiss scientific knowledge just recognises its limitations.
Q. This is too difficult to understand, would it help if I was Japanese like Fukuoka or from another eastern culture?
A. No, the West's cultural heritage also recognises this insight into nothing to oppose the pragmatic, technology related understanding of the world.
Q. What is so important about nothing?
A. For Fukuoka, nothing or nothingness must be understood before we can reorient ourselves to the world.
Q. How do I discover this 'nothing' for myself?
A. Read any existentialist philosophy or literature or, better still, get out into nature and cast the net of human knowledge and see how much of nature it encompasses.
Q. Wouldn't it be easier for me to just start growing things?
A. Yes.
--- Contributed by
Jamie
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