【Buyer Reviews of】
①One more straw
Doing nothing, being nothing, becoming nothing is the goal of Fukuoka farming method, an approach to agriculture which he has pursued for over forty years with resounding success. With no tillage, no fertilizer, no weeding and no pesticides he consistently produces rice, barley , fruit and vegetable crops that equal or exceed the yield per acre of neighboring farmers who embrace modern scientific agriculture. The basis of his philosophy is that nature grows plants just fine without our interference so that the most practical approach is to get out of the way . In the course of explaining his reasoning and methods, this do-nothing farmer delivers a scorching indictment of chemical agriculture and the human assumption that we can improve on nature. He explains the beneficial role of insects and plants usually characterized as pests, the fallacy of artificially boosting fertility with petrochemical concoctions, the logical error implicit in the use of farm machinery or draft animals, and why pollution is an inevitable result of misguided attempts to improve on nature. Calculation of the energy input versus the caloric output of various farms results in the surprising discovery (perhaps it should not be) that (minimal) human labor is the most efficient way to produce food. Draft animals add more work and more energy input, small scale machines compound the problem and large scale mechanized agriculture proves to be a vast waste of energy. He calls modern American farmers "subcontractors of the oil industry," and claims that traditional Japanese farmers on 3-5 acres achieve a real net income higher than American farmers on 500-700 acres. (A skeptical friend of mine wondered if Japanese farm price supports were a factor here. Obviously a complex issue, that, but the declining economic viability of petro-chemical farming is obvious when we note that the onslaught of monster tractors and oil based fertilizers and pesticides has paralleled the collapse of the family farm. The author, to his credit, rejects any artificial manipulation of food prices and believes they should naturally be more or less the same worldwide.) Nor is this text pure philosophy, including as it does specific practical advice on the transition from scientific to natural methods. Crop rotation programs for cold or warm climates, and a ten year rotation system for grain and vegetables make this a practical manual for husbandry. As Fukuoka eloquently suggests, the universe is a circle returning to nothing. Nothing is .. the most profitable object of our meditations Doing nothing is simply going with the flow (See also his "groundbreaking" (literally) ONE STRAW REVOLUTION, Other India Press; 1992)
②It's all here
After reading the one straw revolution i really wanted to see how Fukuokas' system worked. I was not disapointed by this well layed out and functional guide to his methods. While his philosophy claims that no list of rules and time tables can acturatelly set out how natural farming should work, the publication of the hystory and methods of his experiment proves vital to the unhinging of common industrial theories on the subject.
③This book explains how to put the philosophy of One Straw
One Straw Revolution is Fukuoka's farming philosophy thesis and The Natural Way of Farming explains how to put Fukokua's philosophy into practice by detailing each of his farming methods. It explains everything mentioned in One Straw Revolution such as which crops to use as green manure and Fukuoka's recipe for seed balls. While One Straw Revolution reads like a prose Tao Te Ching, The Natural Way of Farming reads like a university science textbook due to its in-depth descriptions of Fukuoka's personal farming research. This is the perfect book to use as a practical followup to One Straw Revolution especially if you are interested in transferring Fukuoka's practices to your garden.
Fukokua has an extensive bibliography but only two of his works are currently published in the United States, One Straw Revolution and Sowing Seeds in the Desert. Therefore, The Natural Way of Farming is shipped from India where it is still being published in English. This book arrived in only four days with an expedited shipping charge of $ 6.99. It was in pristine condition even after being opened by customs.
④a revolutionary worldview and philosophy
This was the second of 3 books (translated into English) by this amazing Japanese farmer and philosopher. Comparatively little-known here, Fukuoka (RIP) is famous in India, where his techniques are being used to revive desert areas.
His keen observations of, and communion with nature, ultimately created, over the years, a natural farming technique requiring no machinery (no plowing or digging, ever!) Or fossil fuel, no chemicals, no prepared compost and very little weeding. Yields are comparable to the most productive farms. Natural farming creates no pollution and the fertility of the fields improves with each season. He calls it "do-nothing farming" but it is more like "do-little" (harvesting is the most laborious part of the year).
Here, the author continues his critique of scientific farming practices, explaining why they can never succeed, and of how our belief that we know better than nature inevitably separates us more and more from from everything, including ourselves and each other. Fukuoka explains that scientific farming attempts to correct and improve on what it perceives as the shortcomings of nature through human effort.
Scientific experiments always take a single subject and apply a number of variable conditions to it while making some prior assumption about the results. Natural farming, however, pushes aside all conditions and, knocking away the precepts from which science operates, it strives to find the laws and principles in force at the true source. Unchanging truth can be found only through experiments free of conditions, assumptions, and notions of time and space. When a problem arises, natural farming relentlessly pursues the root causes and strives to correct and restrain human action . The best plan, then, is true non-action; it is no plan at all.
He continues:. All that man really has to do is direct the vast, hidden forces of nature but people instead choose to destroy it Weeding and plowing each year depletes fertility, creating a deficiency of trace components, diminishing the soil's vitality and hardening the topsoil -. killing off microbes and turning rich, living, organic material into a dead, inanimate, yellowish-white mineral matter, the only function of which is to physically support the crops Man also makes crop disease and pest control indispensable by growing unhealthy crops. Agricultural technology creates the causes that produce disease and pest damage, then becomes adept at treating these. Growing healthy crops, in healthy soil, it should take precedence.
The author taught (and proved in his farm and elsewhere) that "nature is in balance and perfectly abundant just as it is. People, with their limited understanding, try to improve on nature thinking the result will be better for human beings, but adverse side effects inevitably appear. Then people take measures to counteract these side effects, and larger side effects appear. By now, almost everything humanity is doing is mitigating problems caused by previous misguided actions. "
This book has an equally fascinating expansion of his revolutionary at-one-with-nature philosophy of the first book, "The One Straw Revolution", where he tells the story of how he came to farm in this way, with a fascinating overview of . his philosophy and farming techniques The second half of this book is a wonderful how-to manual for natural farming, based on four major principles:
1. no cultivation [plowing ruins the soil]
2 no [prepared] fertilizer (although cultivation without the use of chemical fertilizers is possible, crops can not immediately be grown successfully without fertilizers on fields that are normally plowed and weeded - however, in 5 to 20 years, natural farming can even turn hills of red clay into rich, fertile land)
3. no weeding [weeds are instead deliberately encouraged, as a support to crops and soil improvements]
4. no pesticides [none is required]
Finally, his translator comments that "Sowing Seeds in the Desert", his last work, is probably his most important Fukuoka shares more of his philosophy and writes -. In the later part of the book - about his world travels (via government and university invitations) to revegetate the deserts of the world using natural farming.
⑤Fukuoka for dummies
An awesome follow up (For me) from the One Straw Revolution. Trying to figure out the logistics of how and when, this book was the answer. Easy to read, easy to follow, easy to apply to your little bit of the world, good bye conventional farming.
【購入者のレビュー】
①One more straw
Doing nothing, being nothing, becoming nothing is the goal of Fukuoka's farming method, an approach to agriculture which he has pursued for over forty years with resounding success. With no tillage, no fertilizer, no weeding and no pesticides he consistently produces rice, barley, fruit and vegetable crops that equal or exceed the yield per acre of neighboring farmers who embrace modern scientific agriculture. The basis of his philosophy is that nature grows plants just fine without our interference so that the most practical approach is to get out of the way. In the course of explaining his reasoning and methods, this do-nothing farmer delivers a scorching indictment of chemical agriculture and the human assumption that we can improve on nature. He explains the beneficial role of insects and plants usually characterized as pests, the fallacy of artificially boosting fertility with petrochemical concoctions, the logical error implicit in the use of farm machinery or draft animals, and why pollution is an inevitable result of misguided attempts to improve on nature. Calculation of the energy input versus the caloric output of various farms results in the surprising discovery (perhaps it shouldn't be) that (minimal) human labor is the most efficient way to produce food. Draft animals add more work and more energy input, small scale machines compound the problem and large scale mechanized agriculture proves to be a vast waste of energy. He calls modern American farmers "subcontractors of the oil industry," and claims that traditional Japanese farmers on 3-5 acres achieve a real net income higher than American farmers on 500-700 acres. (A skeptical friend of mine wondered if Japanese farm price supports were a factor here. Obviously a complex issue, that, but the declining economic viability of petro-chemical farming is obvious when we note that the onslaught of monster tractors and oil based fertilizers and pesticides has paralleled the collapse of the family farm. The author, to his credit, rejects any artificial manipulation of food prices and believes they should naturally be more or less the same worldwide.) Nor is this text pure philosophy, including as it does specific practical advice on the transition from scientific to natural methods. Crop rotation programs for cold or warm climates, and a ten year rotation system for grain and vegetables make this a practical manual for husbandry. As Fukuoka eloquently suggests, the universe is a circle returning to nothing. Nothing is the most profitable object of our meditations. Doing nothing is simply going with the flow. (See also his "groundbreaking" (literally) ONE STRAW REVOLUTION, Other India Press; 1992)
②It's all here
After reading the one straw revolution i really wanted to see how Fukuokas' system worked. I was not disapointed by this well layed out and functional guide to his methods. While his philosophy claims that no list of rules and time tables can acturatelly set out how natural farming should work, the publication of the hystory and methods of his experiment proves vital to the unhinging of common industrial theories on the subject.
③This book explains how to put the philosophy of One Straw
One Straw Revolution is Fukuoka's farming philosophy thesis and The Natural Way of Farming explains how to put Fukokua's philosophy into practice by detailing each of his farming methods. It explains everything mentioned in One Straw Revolution such as which crops to use as green manure and Fukuoka's recipe for seed balls. While One Straw Revolution reads like a prose Tao Te Ching, The Natural Way of Farming reads like a university science textbook due to its in-depth descriptions of Fukuoka's personal farming research. This is the perfect book to use as a practical followup to One Straw Revolution especially if you are interested in transferring Fukuoka's practices to your garden.
Fukokua has an extensive bibliography but only two of his works are currently published in the United States, One Straw Revolution and Sowing Seeds in the Desert. Therefore, The Natural Way of Farming is shipped from India where it is still being published in English. This book arrived in only four days with an expedited shipping charge of $6.99. It was in pristine condition even after being opened by customs.
④a revolutionary worldview and philosophy
This was the second of 3 books (translated into English) by this amazing Japanese farmer and philosopher. Comparatively little-known here, Fukuoka (RIP) is famous in India, where his techniques are being used to revive desert areas.
His keen observations of, and communion with nature, ultimately created, over the years, a natural farming technique requiring no machinery (no plowing or digging, ever!) or fossil fuel, no chemicals, no prepared compost and very little weeding. Yields are comparable to the most productive farms. Natural farming creates no pollution and the fertility of the fields improves with each season. He calls it "do-nothing farming" but it is more like "do-little" (harvesting is the most laborious part of the year).
Here, the author continues his critique of scientific farming practices, explaining why they can never succeed, and of how our belief that we know better than nature inevitably separates us more and more from from everything, including ourselves and each other. Fukuoka explains that scientific farming attempts to correct and improve on what it perceives as the shortcomings of nature through human effort.
Scientific experiments always take a single subject and apply a number of variable conditions to it while making some prior assumption about the results. Natural farming, however, pushes aside all conditions and, knocking away the precepts from which science operates, strives to find the laws and principles in force at the true source. Unchanging truth can be found only through experiments free of conditions, assumptions, and notions of time and space. When a problem arises, natural farming relentlessly pursues the root causes and strives to correct and restrain human action. The best plan, then, is true non-action; it is no plan at all.
He continues: All that man really has to do is direct the vast, hidden forces of nature but people instead choose to destroy it. Weeding and plowing each year depletes fertility, creating a deficiency of trace components, diminishing the soil's vitality and hardening the topsoil - killing off microbes and turning rich, living, organic material into a dead, inanimate, yellowish-white mineral matter, the only function of which is to physically support the crops. Man also makes crop disease and pest control indispensable by growing unhealthy crops. Agricultural technology creates the causes that produce disease and pest damage, then becomes adept at treating these. Growing healthy crops, in healthy soil, should take precedence.
The author taught (and proved in his farm and elsewhere) that "nature is in balance and perfectly abundant just as it is. People, with their limited understanding, try to improve on nature thinking the result will be better for human beings, but adverse side effects inevitably appear. Then people take measures to counteract these side effects, and larger side effects appear. By now, almost everything humanity is doing is mitigating problems caused by previous misguided actions."
This book has an equally fascinating expansion of his revolutionary at-one-with-nature philosophy of the first book, "The One Straw Revolution", where he tells the story of how he came to farm in this way, with a fascinating overview of his philosophy and farming techniques. The second half of this book is a wonderful how-to manual for natural farming, based on four major principles:
1. no cultivation [plowing ruins the soil]
2 no [prepared] fertilizer (although cultivation without the use of chemical fertilizers is possible, crops cannot immediately be grown successfully without fertilizers on fields that are normally plowed and weeded - however, in 5 to 20 years, natural farming can even turn hills of red clay into rich, fertile land)
3. no weeding [weeds are instead deliberately encouraged, as a support to crops and soil improvements]
4. no pesticides [none is required]
Finally, his translator comments that "Sowing Seeds in the Desert", his last work, is probably his most important. Fukuoka shares more of his philosophy and writes - in the later part of the book - about his world travels (via government and university invitations) to revegetate the deserts of the world using natural farming.
⑤Fukuoka for dummies
An awesome follow up (For me) from the One Straw Revolution. Trying to figure out the logistics of how and when, this book was the answer. Easy to read, easy to follow, easy to apply to your little bit of the world, good bye conventional farming.
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