The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka.

2/5 rating. 184 pages.

Book #77 of 2020. Read October 22, 2020.

This was a huge letdown of a book since I am 110% on board with Fukuoka’s style of “do-nothing” farming.

For most of his life, Fukuoka manned a farm where he managed to grow comparable amounts of crops to today’s industrial farms, all while using no chemicals, working much less, and using no heavy machinery. The tenets of his farming practice were:

“NO CULTIVATION, that is, no plowing or turning of the soil”

“NO CHEMICAL FERTILIZER OR PREPARED COMPOST”

“NO WEEDING BY TILLAGE OR HERBICIDES”

“NO DEPENDENCE ON CHEMICALS.”

Fukuoka used ground cover of other plants that stopped weeds but allowed his rice to grow, did not flood his fields, and returned all stalks and straw to the fields as a kind of mulch. As Frances Lappé says: “Fukuoka tells us that truly successful agriculture requires not so much arduous labor as awareness, observation, connection, and persistence.”

My issues with the book were all apart from this groundbreaking farming technique. I don’t know if it’s partially translation issues, but this book reads in many parts like a mixture between over-the-top Zen Buddhism, an anti-science Luddite riffing, and pure nihilism. I agree with his assessment that some of the worst parts of humanity have come about from our seeking ever more things, but Fukuoka blows past the “going back to the land” movement and keeps going to believing that all progress in any form is inherently bad.

I plan to read more about this kind of farming, but hope to find a book that is much more meat, and much less railing against society.

Everyone who has any interest at all in sustainability or farming needs to look into Fukuoka’s techniques, but do yourself a favor and don’t read this book.

Quotes:

“Fukuoka tells us that truly successful agriculture requires not so much arduous labor as awareness, observation, connection, and persistence.”

“When we change the way we grow our food, we change our food, we change society, we change our values.”

“An agriculture that is whole nourishes the whole person, body and soul. We do not live by bread alone.” – Wendell Berry

“I ultimately reached the conclusion that there was no need to plow, no need to 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 really necessary. The reason that man’s improved techniques seem to be necessary is that the natural balance has been so badly upset beforehand by those same techniques that the land has become dependent on them.”

“And now look over at the neighbors field for a moment. The weeds have all been wiped out by herbicides and cultivation. The soil animals and insects have been exterminated by poison. The soil has been burned clean of organic matter and microorganisms by chemical fertilizers. In the summer you see farmers at work in the fields, wearing gas masks and long rubber gloves. These rice fields, which have been farmed continuously for over 1,500 years, have now been laid waste by the exploitive farming practices of a single generation.”

Four Principles: “The first is NO CULTIVATION, that is, no plowing or turning of the soil…The second is NO CHEMICAL FERTILIZER OR PREPARED COMPOST…The third is NO WEEDING BY TILLAGE OR HERBICIDES….The fourth is NO DEPENDENCE ON CHEMICALS.”

“If you want to get an idea of the natural fertility of the earth, take a walk to the wild mountainside sometime and look at the giant trees that grow without fertilizer and without cultivation. The fertility of nature, as it is, is beyond reach of the imagination.”

“Using agricultural chemicals is the most inept way to deal with problems such as these, and will only lead to greater problems in the future.”

“To have mandarin oranges just one month earlier, the people in the city seem happy enough to pay for the farmer’s extra investment in labor and equipment. But if you ask how important it is for human beings to have this fruit a month earlier, the truth is that it is not important at all, and money is not the only price paid for such indulgence.”

“To say it in a word, until there is a reversal of the sense of values which cares more for size and appearance than for quality, there will be no solving the problem of food pollution.”

“If you plant one grain of rice, it becomes more than one thousand grains. One row of turnips makes enough pickles for the entire winter. If you follow this line od thought, you will have enough to eat, more than enough, without struggling. But id you decide to try to make money instead, you get on board the profit wagon, and it runs away with you.”

“If we do have a food crisis it will not be caused by the insufficiency of nature’s productive power, but by the extravagance of human desire.”

“A community that cannot manage to produce its own food will not last long.”

“In seeking the essential nature of man, no matter how you go about it, you must begin with the consideration of health. The path which leads to right awareness involves living each day straightforwardly and growing and eating wholesome, natural food.”

“A natural diet lies right at one’s feet.”

“A natural person can achieve right diet because his instinct is in proper working order. He is satisfied with simple food; it is nutritious, tastes good, and is useful daily medicine.”

“Food is life, and life must not step away from nature.”

“Doctors take care of sick people; healthy people are cared for by nature. Instead of getting sick and then becoming absorbed in a natural diet to get well, one should live in a natural environment so that sickness does not appear.”

“Right Food, Right Action, Right Awareness”

“If economic growth rises from 5% to 10%, is happiness going to double? What’s wrong with a growth rate of 0%?”

“Let us say that the key to peace lies close to the earth.”

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