Master Quote: Masanobu Fukuoka – 03/13/18
Source: http://www.onestrawrevolution.net/One_Straw_Revolution/One-Straw_Revolution.html
Excerpt from Masanobu Fukuoka's One-Straw Revolution
"I became a supervisor in the scientific agriculture division, and in research devoted myself to increasing wartime food productivity. But actually during those eight years, I was pondering the relationship between scientific and natural agriculture. Chemical agriculture, which utilizes the products of human intelligence, was reputed to be superior.
The question which was always in the back of my mind was whether or not natural agriculture could stand up against modern science.
When the war ended I felt a fresh breeze of freedom, and with a sigh of relief I returned to my home village to take up farming anew.
For thirty years I lived only in my farming and had little contact with people outside my own community. During those years I was heading in a straight line toward a "do-nothing" agricultural method.
The usual way to go about developing a method is to ask "How about trying this?" or "How about trying that?" bringing in a variety of techniques one upon the other. This is modern agriculture and it only results in making the farmer busier.
My way was opposite. I was aiming at a pleasant, natural way of farming [Farming as simply as possible within and in cooperation with the natural environment, rather than the modern approach of applying increasingly complex techniques to remake nature entirely for the benefit of human beings] 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 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.
This line of reasoning not only applies to agriculture, but to other aspects of human society as well. Doctors and medicine become necessary when people create a sickly environment. Formal schooling has no intrinsic value, but becomes necessary when humanity creates a condition in which one must become "educated" to get along."
The One-Straw Revolution - 1978
Chapter 1
Subsection: Returning to the Country
Content commentary by Larry Korn
Page 15
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