Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1581237 in Books
• Published on: 1985-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Customer Reviews

wonderful
I read this book years ago when it was first published and it has been a magor influence on me and my gardens for all these years. I've followed Fukoka's ideas as much as closely I can living in a city and have had wonderful results. He is right, let nature do the work. My garden is the most beautiful in the neighborhood, and without any pesticides, fertilizers, tilling, or backstrain. Buy this book, Gaia's Garden, and Forest Gardening. They all follow the naturalistic, symbiotic, permaculture mode that mother nature has been evolving for a billion years - just plug into the natural order and start growing!

Zen and the Art of Farming?
Masanobu Fukoka was a laboratory agricultural scientist who worked on fighting plant diseases. He also had many unanswered questions about the interrelationship between man and nature. After a long sabbatical he resigned his position and took over his father's rice and mandarin orange farm. Fukuoka thought that by putting the subjects of his questions into actual material challenges he might find the answers he sought.

Fukoka was immediately drawn to organic and natural farming methods, and over the years developed a type of natural farming that he refers to as "do-nothing farming". Contrary to what you may imagine, this method does involve work, much of it menial, but at least in Fukoka's experience the benefits outweight the negatives. His method of farming is thus:

After the seasonal heavy rains, the rice is planted by scattering it by hand throughout the farming area. The planting rice is rolled in a type of clay that will help prevent animals from eating it but will not inhibit sprouting. Clover seeds are also sewn at the same time in the same method. The clover acts as a natural barrier to the young rice shoots, and helps the soil from eroding.

The rice will grow naturally over the course of the next few months without constant pools of water as are often seen in traditional(from 1600-1940s) Japanese rice farming, albeit shorter and stockier than the cultivated rice. After the rice harvest, the leftover straw is scattered over the field to decompose, adding nutrients back into the soil. Afterwards, barley is planted as a winter crop and to further enrich the soil for the next rice season.

Fukoka does not use compost on his rice fields or on his citrus orchard as he finds that the byproducts of the plant provides all the soil nutrients needed. He does maintain a small compost pile for his vegetable garden, however. Outside of the rice season, he tends to his mandarin orange orchard, which is also kept on a "do-nothing" method of growth. From using this technique, he has not only kept up with modern(tractor, fertilizer, pesticide) farmers in quantity, but has a much higher quality of rice, barley, and oranges. He spends very little out of pocket and sells his produce for a very fair price.

The great thing about this short book (192pp) is that it is not exclusively about farming. In fact, there are many pages where Fukoka expands on philosophy, history, nutricion, intentional communities, and sustainibility. There is also an excellent forward by Wendell Berry, one of my favorite authors(Jayber Crow is a must read) Highly reccomended although it seems to be out of print. I borrowed mine from a local library.

my little green book
A critique of current farming practices as well as consumer values, Masanobu Fukuoka's One Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming outlines a more simple life that strives to work with the earth rather than against it. Mr. Fukuoka states that natural farming is not just a method of agricultural production but it is a way of life.
In The One Straw Revolution Mr. Fukuoka explains that modern methods of agriculture work to control nature with the assumption that humans can understand nature and there by improve on it, but modern techniques using synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are only temporary solutions that humans have discovered in order to correct the imbalance they have caused. "Human Beings with their tampering do something wrong, leave the damage unrepaired (SIC), 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."
Natural farming allows for nature's processes to take care of most of the work that farmers find necessary in conventional methods of agriculture. Mr. Fukuoka claims "there is no time in modern agriculture for a farmer to write a poem or compose a song." When he first began, Mr. Fukuoka thought, "How about not doing this? How about not doing that?" By allowing for the natural processes of decomposition and growth to occur there is very little work to be done and the farmers have more time to enjoy life. This line of thought has been central to Mr. Fukuoka's natural farming philosophy. Eventually he came to the realization that "there are few agricultural practices that are really necessary."
Mr. Fukuoka's method of natural farming follows four basic principals; "No Cultivation", "No Chemical Fertilizer Or Prepared Compost", "No Weeding By Tillage Or Herbicides", and "No Dependence On Chemicals". Although many of the practices described in the book relate specifically to farming rice, wheat, roots, and oranges in southern Japan, it is these four principals that can be applied to farming anywhere in the world.
To give a good example of natural farming, Mr. Fukuoka's method of cultivating rice and winter grain is as follows. In the fall Mr. Fukuoka sows the seeds of white clover, rice, and winter grain onto the same fields and covers them with a mulch of rice straw. The grains and the clover sprout up right away but the rice seeds will lie dormant until spring. When spring arrives the grains are harvested and the straw is scattered over the fields as mulch. The fields are flooded for a short period during the monsoon season giving the rice a chance to sprout through the cover. Once the fields are drained the clover recovers and spreads beneath the growing rice plants. As you can see, this is a far cry from the labor-intensive methods of paddy farming that is common throughout Southeast Asia.

The One Straw Revolution is a great book, it is insightful, practical, easy to read, and the chapters are short and give the reader concise, to the point information. Mr. Fukuoka gives readers a viable alternative to the current consumer lifestyle. The strong beliefs and successes of natural farming found in this book make Mr. Fukuoka's arguments extremely convincing. However, I'm sure the sheer simplicity will create doubt among readers, as we are used to the complexities of fertilization and pesticide use. Even organic farmers who swear by compost and manure are doing unnecessary work according to Mr. Fukuoka.
The farming techniques found in this book are extremely important as our use of fertilizers and pesticide use has skyrocketed over the past century creating many environmental problems, and life on earth is facing serious consequences as a result.
Another important point made in the book is "Humanity must stop indulging the desire for material possessions and personal gain and move instead toward spiritual awareness." This sentence outlines what I feel to be the reason for the problems of humanity today. Without a deep respect for nature and our place within her we have no limits on what we expect from her. We have increased our material wealth greatly and yet we have not become more contented, in fact we become more stressed. By creating a simpler life where our days are spent outside tending to the fields under natures guidance. We not only would curb the destruction that is related to consumption but we also are given a chance to breathe and become truly aware of our surroundings and ourselves.
I feel that the words of Masanobu Fukuoka have only increased in importance since the time in which they were written. People's lives have become increasingly urbanized and we now have generations of people who have been cut off from Mother Nature's wisdom. Although Mr. Fukuoka's sentiment that "if 100% of the people were farming it would be ideal." may seem extreme to some, it would be a plausible solution to many of the problems we face today.
The environmental movement was just beginning when The One Straw Revolution was first printed we now have scientific studies reinforcing what people have been noticing for years and the lands and waters that were once healthy are now being poisoned. I would recommend reading The One Straw Revolution to anyone interested in spirituality, globalization, farming or the environment, but I would also recommend it to anyone with an interest in preserving the quality of life on earth.