The Fukuoka Farming Website 'Times of India' Interview with Fukuoka |
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With his wispy beard, traditional blue robe and white stockinged feet, 84-year-old Masanobu Fukuoka looks more like a Taoist scholar than a revolutionary agriculturist. The English translation of his The One-Straw Revolution became an instant cult classic when it came out in 1978. In it he espoused a radical method of farming which required no machines, no chemicals, and very little weeding.
Unlike traditional farmers, Fukuoka does not hold water in his ricefields throughout the growing season. He also eschews prepared compost on his fields which have been unploughed for decades Yet his yields compare with those of the most productive Japanese farms.
Fukuoka started as a microbiologist and worked for the Japanese customs until his transformation following an illness and an ecstatic illuminative experience. His central insight was: "There is nothing, really nothing at all whether this be the mundane world or God's world."
He returned thereafter to his hometown on the island of Shikoku in 1938 and started a natural farm. After experiencing repeated failures; he developed a method of successive plantings of rice and winter grains, using direct throwing of seeds and non-cultivation.
Currently on a visit to India, Fukuoka wants to green the Deccan desert by sowing it with seeds wrapped in clayballs, "to create a forest for elephants." Vithal C Nadkarni met the master in Mumbai on the way to an international conference on global unity at a Sevagram, Wardha. Excerpts from the interview:
Q: What is so special about that sheaf of rice in your hand?
A: It's called "Happy Hill" after my surname. The mother stock of this noble rice came from Assam and the father stock from Japan. It took me eight years to get this rice to yield. It's the world's most productive strain of rice, providing on an average more than 200 grains per pod, which is twice that of normal yields in Japan.
Q: Has this been noticed by the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines?
A: I showed it in the Philippines in 1988 when I went to accept the Ramon Magsaysay award at the height of the Green Revolution there. But I was totally opposed to multinational giants who wanted to corner the rice for their private profit and hybridisation programmes. Subsequently, the IRRI came out with its own version of the super rice in 1995. (Each plant consists of only about 10 stems rather than 20 to 25, but all of the stems contain seed pods bearing 200 to 250 grains of rice, while only about 15 stems on other varieties of modem rice carry pods that bear about 100 grains. Thus, in ideal conditions, a single super rice plant will produce up to 2500 grains of rice compared with a maximum of 1500 grains from today's varieties.)
Q: Although IRRI's super rice is said to he a more efficient plant, boosting per leaf photosynthesis by 15 per cent, does it not still need abundant irrigation, along with high doses of chemical fertiliser and pesticides?
A: Absolutely. That's where my naturally-grown rice triumphs over the mollycoddled hybrid. All these expensive inputs are simply not required for reaping bumper yields from the Happy Hill rice. The path I have followed, this natural way of farming, which strikes people as strange, was first interpreted as a reaction against advance and reckless development of science.
But all I have been doing, farming in Japan, is trying to show that humanity knows nothing. Because the world is moving with such furious energy in the opposite directions, it may appear that I have fallen behind times, but I firmly believe that the path I have been following is the sensible one.
Q: It must certainly seem so for the poor and marginal farmer who cannot afford high-value inputs.
A: I have often said that value does not lie in things, but that people create the conditions that make things necessary, then value first arises in those things. For example, when we are sitting under this tree (Flame-of-the Forest planted in the courtyard of the Marathi Vignyan Parishad's compound in Mumbai) and when a fine breeze is wafting across, we have no need or value for a fan.
So if we make conditions and environments that do not make those things necessary, the things, no matter, what they are, will be valueless. Cars are not needed by people who are not in a hurry. I live in a house which has no 'modern' conveniences. We draw our drinking water from a spring. Meals are cooked on a wood-burning fireplace. Light is provided by sunshine (and after dark by candles and oil lamps). There is no electricity. But we have the five elements to provide for our natural way of life.
I also found this when I visited Tanzania, where the majority of the farmers do not have access to electricity. They do without fans, air-conditioners and refrigerators and what not. The only "machine" they possess is a long wooden stick with which they dig holes into the earth to plant their seeds...
Q: You have been called a Gandhian farmer. Have you been influenced by Gandhiji's philosophy?
A: I do not know it first hand because I have not read many books. But when I heard about his campaign of non-violent resistance, I saw absolutely no contradiction. Unlike many other great men I've met throughout the world, I think Gandhi alone embodied total unity of thought and action. I am told that Gandhi did not follow the time of the wristwatch but that of the Ganga. His spinning wheel embodied the cyclic rhythms of nature which are what I would like to follow. I was also moved by his insistence on a return to a village-based life of simplicity and truth. I, too, would like my rice, my methods to be spread among the poorest of the poor to revive the much-abused earth.
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