I was aiming at a pleasant, natural way of farming which results in making the work easier instead of harder. "How about not doing this?" "How about not doing that?" -- that was my way of thinking.
I ultimately reached the conclusion that there was no need to plow, no need to apply fertilizer, no need to make compost, no need to use insecticide. When you get right down to it, there are few agricultural practices that are necessary.
The reason that man's improved techniques seem necessary is that the natural balance has been so badly upset beforehand by those same techniques that the land has become dependent on them.
-- Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution
Masanobu Fukuoka died last week at the age of 95.
Like the 20th century's other great critic of industrial agriculture, Albert Howard, Fukuoka got his start as a conventional plant pathologist. Both spent lots of time staring into microscopes looking to "solve" the various problems associated with teasing food out of the earth.
They came of age when plant science was beginning to splinter into a set of specializations, each viewing particular aspects of agriculture in isolation.
Fukuoka and Howard both decided that the conventional scientific approach led to disaster: a downward spiral of "solutions" to problems created by the previous solution. As Fukuoka, Japan's most celebrated alternative farmer, put it in his masterpiece, The One-Straw Revolution:
Specialists in various fields gather together and observe a stalk of rice. The insect disease specialist sees only insect damage, the specialist in plant nutrition considers only the plant's vigor.
These specialists are blind to the broader context in which the rice plant thrives or flails -- and to the vast ignorance that surrounds their narrow bands of knowledge. Many conventional scientists (such as the one now shaping our nation's foreign policy with regard to ag development) exude arrogance about humanity's ability to control "nature"; Fukuoka preached humility.
"The irony is that science has served only to show how small human knowledge is," he writes.
Here's another irony:
Fukuoka's "do-nothing" style of farming is extremely difficult in our era. As he writes, the "the natural balance has been ... badly upset"; our farmland has become dependent on heroic interventions. Restoring the proper balance for do-nothing agriculture takes time and resources. Fukuoka offered no one-size-fits-all method for proper farming. He urged farmers everywhere to discover simple, low-input, synergistic/symbiotic approaches appropriate to their areas. That project takes time and resources. It could -- and should -- be the main task of publicly funded ag research, and indeed of all ag policy. It isn't, though.
As Fukuoka well knew, you can't just take over a piece of farmland, "do nothing," and expect a bumper harvest. He tells an anecdote about his first attempt to farm without chemicals after abandoning his science career. He took over a patch of tangerine trees owned by his father, and proceeded to "do nothing." The result: "the branches became intertwined, insects attacked the trees, and the entire orchard withered away in no time." He concludes:
I had acted in the belief that everything should be left to take its natural course, but I found that if you apply that way of thinking all at once, before long, things do not go so well. This is abandonment, not "natural farming."
In our time, small-scale farmers operate under brutal economic pressure -- and the resources needed to develop a truly sustainable agriculture too often lie beyond their grasp. So we slog on, doing our best, often falling short.
Fukuoka's vision offers a beacon, a goal, an ideal to strive for. Making predictions is arrogant, but I'll venture one anyway: As long as humans are still scratching their sustenance out of the earth, Fukuoka's work will remain an inspiration.
Grist Exclusive: Will Whole Foods’ new mobile slaughterhouses squeeze small farmers?
Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change
Global boiling declares war on Thanksgiving
Comments
View as Flat
Jonas Posted 9:03 am
26 Aug 2008
I think he was lucky to live in a country that became food secure because of scientific and technological interventions. These are the objective circumstances which allowed him to write about and practise alternative farming.
You will never find a Fukuoka in, say Central Africa, where "do nothing" farming is the current practise. And where malnutrition and hunger are the rule. Central African farmers use no fertilizers, no pesticides, no insecticides, no fungicides, no mechanisation, no hybrids, nothing. They also die in scores.
Quite frankly, I think that most nations will go through a phase of dirty modernity, which brings crude wealth, generates a demographic transition (like the one seen in Japan) and creates bourgeois middle classes, from which figures like Fukuoka can emerge.
It is only after this dirty phase, that people become wealthy enough to invest in restoration, conservation and "do nothing" philosophies.
Perhaps Fukuoka should be put in context a bit more. It's always important to analyse the material circumstances which allowed gurus and their followers to emerge. In Fukuoka's case, these are quite obviously the exact opposite of what he suggested.
Permalink
Stephanie Ogburn Posted 12:27 pm
26 Aug 2008
Stephanie
Permalink
Delay And Deny Posted 12:46 pm
26 Aug 2008
It's a hard call. We all want leisure. To not farm. But we all want good food. Which requires if not farming, then hard work and oversight.
I believe that America will be sprawling every more at a higher order of magnitude during this, our next rung on the energy latter, as we step up to the Hydrogen Economy.
We'll each have more land per family and bigger houses as we turn from a tightly coupled to a loosely coupled grid.
That means we can have leisure to self-farm and yet have Wimax to order trendy garden supplies from Smith and Hawken.
Permalink
Biodiversivist Posted 1:55 pm
26 Aug 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 3:44 pm
26 Aug 2008
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
Permalink
Russ Posted 6:25 pm
26 Aug 2008
Just wondering - where do you think the energy for this is going to come from?
Remember before you answer - any large-scale renewable system can be built only on the foundation of cheap, plentiful fossil fuels.
Permalink
MAD MAC Posted 6:43 pm
26 Aug 2008
"In our time, small-scale farmers operate under brutal economic pressure -- and the resources needed to develop a truly sustainable agriculture too often lie beyond their grasp. So we slog on, doing our best, often falling short."
Victory in Pattani
Permalink
mcronheim Posted 12:08 am
27 Aug 2008
Agriculture, as with the economics of all resources, is an ever equilibrating force (real estate market, energy, etc.). Industrial agriculture is rapidly approaching the point at which it can no longer sustain itself. Thus the return to small(er) scale farming, the industrialization of organics, local food, the mainstreaming of local foods, etc. These trajectory's, while often predictable, are not unidirectional vehicles on a crash course. Rather, security often finds people looking back, seeing what they had foolishly forgotten, and recalling those practices...
The argument suggesting that all must go through a period of "dirty farming" is a familiar, Marxist ideology in which a prescribed time line is adhered to by all. While it is instructive as a starting point, history just ain't a science.
So who really cares what the socioeconomic circumstances of these people are/were? This reminds me of the presidential campaigns, in which the amount of homes owned by a candidate is favored over the details of his policies.
Matthew Cronheim
Permalink
Jonas Posted 1:48 am
27 Aug 2008
Remember before you answer - any large-scale renewable system can be built only on the foundation of cheap, plentiful fossil fuels.
Russ, you're right. Cheap and plentiful. Let's first do the 'plentiful' bit: there's more coal than we can use. That's the fuel China and India are using to rapidly industrialise. Interestingly, China is one of the largest investors in renewables.
The 'cheap' bit is more interesting. As long as fossil fuels (of which we have established that they are 'plentiful'), remain too cheap, there will be no investments in renewables. So it's best to have them a bit more expensive, prompting countries to make definitive switches to renewables.
So what we really need is plentiful expensive fossil fuels. Which is exactly where we are.
I don't see how a Fukuoka based farming system can become global. It will work in highly advanced, post-industrial societies which are extremely wealthy and which have low fertility rates and aging populations. But it won't work in the rapidly developing countries, who need quick fixes to produce enough food to make a transition to becoming industrialised nations with lower fertility rates. Eventually, these countries too, after the dirty phase, will have enough resources to invest in more sustainable production methods.
Permalink
Erik Hoffner Posted 2:17 am
27 Aug 2008
One Straw Revolution is magnificent. I picked it up in a used bookstore for $5 when I was a farm apprentice, and then found out that it's worth $100. Out of print, and still on my bookshelf. So if any o' you find a copy for cheap, buy it.
And then read it (Jonas). And you'll see that Fukuoka essentially founded permaculture, based on good old fashioned natural-history-style observation, and worked out some very elegant systems for growing food. But he didn't do-nothing, it was still a lot of work, but it was elegant and bountiful. He grew veggies and fruit in a polyculture guild, ahead of his time, and rice, too, and the rice bit was the genius part, to me.
He demonstrated that rice paddies don't need to be flooded for the whole growing season. He thought it was a waste of water, and bad for biodiversity, and too good for mosquitoes, to leave the paddies flooded. He'd observed that rice grows just fine on dry ground, and that the only purpose of the water he saw his neighbors leaving in the paddy was to keep weeds down.
So he'd plant the rice and flood the paddy, and leave it like that until the rice had a big head start and all weeds were inhibited, then he drained it and let the rice luxuriate and tower over the weeds. No more water needed, unless it got dry.
Voila. Why not do this everywhere it works on a planet running out of supplies of clean fresh water? It's not 'do nothing' it's 'do intelligently.'
But more to the point, why not grow food in ways that we can observe are harmonious, just based on what we see happening? We've all got a Fukuoka to call on, and One Straw Revolution is the best place to start drawing on that.
Erik
The Orion Grassroots Network: supporting grassroots groups working for conservation, justice, & more
Permalink
Russ Posted 3:28 am
27 Aug 2008
No, Peak Coal is not far off. Most projections, at current usage rates (which may increase), place it sometime in the 2020s.
And, large amounts of oil are used in mining it. Since Peak Oil is either happening already or is a few years away, it's soon going to become increasingly difficult and expensive to mine what's there, so the aforementioned coal peak may be enforced much sooner simply because it won't be possible to mine large amounts economically.
(I suppose slaves could always dig it out, but that's a question for the coal-mongers to ponder.)
(Also, it seems you have a jolly unconcern with climate change, if you're so gung ho about coal, one of the true afflictions of our world. Climate change will of course most grievously affect the poor about whom you always claim to care so much.)
The 'cheap' bit is more interesting. As long as fossil fuels (of which we have established that they are 'plentiful') [Nope - the contrary.], remain too cheap, there will be no investments in renewables. So it's best to have them a bit more expensive, prompting countries to make definitive switches to renewables.
First I should clarify what I meant by cheap. I meant to include a carbon price, and that ALL the external costs be internalized. Such a true price for fossil fuels would be very "expensive" according to the way you used the term, but still "cheap" compared to what the price will become if/when energy descent is precipitous, as seems likely.
So by that measure fossil fuels today are not only cheap but artificially cheap below what would still be their natural "cheap" price.
So- while you're right about interest in renewables being a function mostly of fossil fuel prices, these prices have been and are evidently too low to foster any sort of renewable renaissance.
However, when I referred to "cheap, plentiful fossil fuels", I wasn't even referring primarily to price signals.
I was referring to the large fossil fuel inputs required to mine and construct the renewables materials, the panels, the steel, etc., to fuel the vehicles to transport the materials,, the workers, to construct the turbines, to generally provide the societal infrastructure while this transformation was taking place (also to provide any necessary backup generation during at least an interim period), and to maintain political and socioeconomic stability while it was taking place.
And of course this all assumes some future when the energy from renewables will provide for their own maintenance. From what I've read, that's questionable.
So, that's why I'm a pessimist on this vaunted renewable energy civilization ever being built.
Permalink
MAD MAC Posted 3:46 am
27 Aug 2008
So, that's why I'm a pessimist on this vaunted renewable energy civilization ever being built."
You pretend to give a shit, but you don't. People who give a shit think in positive ways about how to tackle challenges. People who just highlight the roadblocks are useless. That would include you. you want the system to come crashing down. At least be honest about it. You and Wolverine are of the same ilk. And you're both dead wrong by the way. It ain't going to come crashing down. Mankind is not going to run out of energy and revert to a hunter - gatherer status. Sorry buddy. Go shoot a bear, wear some bear skins, and live in the backwoods of Maine. The rest of us will work to make the world a better place while you self indulge this bullshit.
Victory in Pattani
Permalink
Erik Hoffner Posted 4:45 am
28 Aug 2008
Erik
The Orion Grassroots Network: supporting grassroots groups working for conservation, justice, & more
Permalink
MAD MAC Posted 5:03 am
28 Aug 2008
Victory in Pattani
Permalink
JWF Posted 6:43 am
28 Aug 2008
Contrast this to the time spent in confinement of those cows who are raised in factory dairies where their feet never touch soil, only the cement in the CAFO and the manure in the barn. As for the farmers in those situations: they seemed harried to me, between managing the labor who milks the cows, and the constant stress and strain of managing 800 to 8,000 cows in confinement. Definitely NOT "do nothing." They did not seem better off than those self-described slackers, the grazers. I also tasted some of the cheese produced from those grass-fed cows, and it was remarkable.
Permalink
Wolverine Posted 8:24 am
28 Aug 2008
Masanobu Fukuoka explains that industrial agriculture works to control nature with the false assumption that humans can adequately understand nature and improve on it. This speaks even more to genetic engineering, which has the capability to cause problems that are even more fundamental and long-lasting than those caused by chemical farming.
Human Beings with their tampering do something wrong, leave the damage unrepaired, and when the adverse results accumulate, work with all their might to correct them. When the corrective actions appear to be successful, they come to view these measures as splendid accomplishments.
Biod's comment speaks perfectly to my objection to agriculture: it is totally unnatural, destroying what grows naturally in favor of what one species wants. Very ecologically destructive and arrogant toward nature and the natural world. As Biod said, farming should be done with as little harm as possible. Of course, the ultimate goal should be getting back to hunting and gathering, not harming nature and natural processes by farming.
Finally, Fukuoka's comment about specialization speaks perfectly to one of my objections to western science, which is its reductionist view of life. Only by taking a holistic view can one have an idea of what's really going on. The reductionist view of western science is very myopic.
Permalink
MAD MAC Posted 4:40 pm
28 Aug 2008
Maybe you want to be a hunter - gather with a painfully short life span, but I don't. Screw nature. You want to be a caveman, that's on you. But I'll skip the experience thank you very much.
Victory in Pattani
Permalink
astridnova Posted 7:54 pm
28 Aug 2008
Japan was food secure in the Edo period. It only adopted industrialised farming from the 1960s and it is no longer food-secure, due to petroleum depletion trends and nitrogen overdose.
Antony Boys (an agricultural scientist who lives in Japan), in "How will Japan feed itself without fossil fuel?" in The Final Energy Crisis, Second Edition, Pluto Press UK, 2008 analyses the past, present and future on Japanese food security. You can also see a delightful short article with pictures about current Japanese agriculture here: http://candobetter.org/node/732
See also "North Korea: The limits of fossil energy based agricultural systems" also in The Final Energy Crisis.
Africa, until 1750 or so, had no widescale overpopulation problems, very rich biodiversity, and a variety of different economies, including farming, herding, hunting and gathering. I really apologise for soundling like a cliche-mongerer, but industrialisation started in Britain and is intimately related to Britain's peculiar land-tenure system, dating back to Norman invasion in the 12th century which reinforced salic inheritance laws and this system, wherever it has been passed on, has ultimately caused chaos, entailing overpopulation, soil degradation, dispossession and loss of local empowerment.
The same can be said for the Pacific Islands, post British invasion. Their societies lasted for thousands of years with steady state economies mixed farming and fishing until the arrival of so-called modernity.
Oh, there is also another book, by a Francis Ferguson, about how counter-productive attempts to change swidden-farming in North Thailand, among the Karen people, is.
I am afraid that progress is just another ideology, bolstered by fossil fuels, doomed to decline with fossil fuels.
Permalink
MAD MAC Posted 6:04 am
29 Aug 2008
Africa had no over-poplution problem because:
a. It had low life expectancies due to medical, vice food, insecurities.
b. Low life expectancies due to constant low level warfare.
Africa was NEVER a paradise. Anyone who has lived there and studied the history of Africa can tell you it was ALWAYS a tough neighborhood.
Primitive societies have populations with short life spans - because their medical intervention is poor and they live closer to nature - which causes illness and biological infection frequently.
"Japan was food secure in the Edo period. It only adopted industrialised farming from the 1960s and it is no longer food-secure, due to petroleum depletion trends and nitrogen overdose."
So you're telling me that Japan could feed it's current population using "organic" or other methods? Do you know how many people live there?
"The same can be said for the Pacific Islands, post British invasion. Their societies lasted for thousands of years with steady state economies mixed farming and fishing until the arrival of so-called modernity."
Actually there is ample evidence that many died out. But again, their populations remained small - because they died young.
You can't compare by-gone eras and then make great claims about how much better things were then without putting it in context.
Victory in Pattani
Permalink
Wolverine Posted 6:39 am
30 Aug 2008
Humanity must stop indulging the desire for material possessions and personal gain and move instead toward spiritual awareness.
This is the way toward evolution of the human race. Increased technology and complicated lifestyles, which only serve to further destroy the natural world and all who live there, are actually de-evolution; as the band Devo said, we are devolving into a race of robots. Humans are past the point of physical evolution. Mental and spiritual evolution are the only evolutionary paths still available.
Not to mention that killing for any reason other than to eat is totally immoral, and killing is what technology does.
Permalink
MAD MAC Posted 4:01 pm
30 Aug 2008
Killing occurs in the wild all the time, and not only for eating. Many animals kill for territorial reasons.
Victory in Pattani
Permalink