Natural Farming-the wisdom of Masanobu Fukuoka

Masanobu Fukuoka (1913-2008) was a Japanese philosopher and farmer from the Island of Shikoku. He used what can be called natural farming techniques which went against the usual ploughing, tillage and scientific agricultural methods used so much today Natural farming requires no machinery or fossil fuels, no chemicals, no prepared compost and very little weeding. Even though his methods were controversial-i.e he did not plough the soil or hold water in his fields of rice as other farmers-he managed on his farm to achieve yields either comparable to or higher than the most productive Japanese farms at the time.

Natural farming creates no pollution and actually improves the fertility of the soil every season which of course poses a threat to scientific and business in agriculture where they push fertilisers and pesticides and of course machinery to till the land or irrigate.

On Caretaker farm I have tried to follow some of the principles expressed by Fukuoka in his book "The One Straw Revolution" in the way I have developed the farm with the exception of compost.

Because I personally am passionate about recycling, composting seems a natural thing to do with all the food scraps, vegetable and plant clearings and animal manures that are part of life on the farm- we make about 5 cubic metres of compost a year which gets placed on garden beds, around trees and used to make new gardens in raised beds. The soil on the farm is clay and although Fukuoka is correct that under natural methods it is not necessary to add compost, because compost is easy to make, provides an extra boost to my leafy salad veges and helps break up the heavy clay soil I do use all I make on the farm. Further we have compost toilets and all that waste feeds trees very happily.

Natural farming takes an approach of doing as little as possible because it is based on the premise that "if nature is given the opportunity it will do everything on its own". It does rely on careful planting of a variety of plants that will add nitrogen to the soil, break up heavy soils, prevent soil erosion, create windbreaks, filter water run-off and generally improve the environment for all the creatures of the place.

Fukuoka was not a purist in that he would mix native and non-native seed species of all kinds of plants in his attempts to re-vegetate desert environments. His view, which I share, is that there has been such dramatic loss of plant species in a much smaller world that it makes good sense to include seeds and spores from all over the world in the planting mix. I agree with him that plant quarantine systems are rapidly becoming obsolete with all the free travel and the complete mixing of plant species in home gardens. Because we cannot go back in time and return things to the way they were, Fukuoka believes that we should mix all the species together, scatter them worldwide and therefore do away with their uneven distribution. It would establish a new balance under current conditions giving nature back " a full palette to work with".

To put all of this in context I will quote a passage from Masanobu Fukuoka's book "Sowing Seeds In The Desert" at page 95. "Too much has happened. Conditions are far different today from what they were just one hundred years ago. Soil has become eroded and become drier due to agriculture, overgrazing, and cutting too many trees. Plant communities and the balance of microorganisms have been altered beyond recognition by ploughing and agricultural chemicals. Animals and plants are becoming extinct from the elimination of their habitat. The seas are becoming more acidic, and even the climate is changing. Even if we did go to the trouble of putting back the plants that were native to a certain place, there is no guarantee that they would thrive there anymore."

At this point with such a depressing picture being painted one could easily give up hope but instead Mr Fukuoka talks about re-vegetating deserts and establishing natural farms by sowing seeds in clay pellets and spreading them using airplane bombers in order to bring back natures natural balance.

Fukuoka is inspiring and like permaculture, organic farming, biodynamic farming and so on his gentle philosophy and practical solutions offers farmers in the world a method of farming to try that can provide a deep and renewed understanding of the relationship between human beings and nature.

These pictures are of the natural farm garden at Caretaker Farm in Whangateau NZ