The Natural Way of Masanobu Fukuoka This Is the Union of Science, Religion, and Philosophy

The Natural Way of Masanobu Fukuoka This is the union of science, religion, and philosophy. This is Masanobu Fukuoka sowing seed-balls of clover and winter barley into a standing crop of rice in late summer. Mere weeks before the rice-grain matures, Fukuoka sows the next season’s grain in pelleted seeds. The seeds germinate in the moist understory of the standing rice. When the rice fully matures, Fukuoka cuts the rice and threshes the grain, winnowing it from the chaff. He then returns all the rice straw to the grain field, mulching the seedlings of the next season’s grain, already emergent. Here is an example of winter barley germinating out of a seed-ball at the base of the standing Summer rice. Using this method of non-cultivation broadcast seeding, Fukuoka eventually achieved grain harvests equal to those produced by the industrial methods imported to Japan through the United States—but without their costs (financial and polluting). In fact, Mr. Fukuoka’s yields far out surpassed those of his neighbors, insofar as his non-cultivation methods yielded increases in topsoil, a revolutionary result in grain production. We will return to this later. Not only did Fukuoka develop an alternative form of grain production, he also used similar techniques to restore his father’s degraded, monocultural citrus orchard and to transform it into what became an internationally renowned polycultural food forest. This is Masanobu Fukuoka standing in the understory of his food forest, sowing seed balls of mustard and daikon radish, which produce these yellow and white flowering stalks when they produce their seed. Instead of revitalizing the degraded orchard with chemical fertilizers, Fukuoka broadcast clover, dandelion, burdock, alfalfa, mustard, and daikon, among other herbs and vegetables, as a mixed ground cover to stop erosion, cover the soil, and increase soil communities and microbial life, unlocking the fertility of the soil. Throughout the orchard slopes he planted fruit and nut trees intermixed with forest species, all of which rejuvenated the citrus plants too. Many plants began to volunteer in subsequent seasons after initial sowing, forming a largely self-replicating system of fertilizing ground cover and food production. Improved soil communities regenerated his father’s citrus trees too. Who was Masanobu Fukuoka? He began his career working for the Japanese government during WWII as a plant pathologist researching chemical solutions to food production, pest, and disease problems. During this time he suffered a series of psychological and physical illnesses. While healing from sickness, he experienced what he described as a vision of Nature in its wholeness, and that it was perfect. Convinced that the complete perfection of Nature could better answer the problems of his research than manufactured chemical solutions, he immediately returned to his father’s rice fields and degraded citrus orchard to put this belief into practice. This attempt began the journey of the rest of his life as he evolved into the understanding of farming practices that mimic natural processes, which he called “natural farming”. Along the way, Fukuoka matured in his analysis of various types of farming. This is an example of what Fukuoka called chemical-industrial-scientific farming. This is the destruction of ecosystems, topsoil and soil communities. This is a main cause of climate change, desertification, extinction, and pollution. This swath of death is the result of large-scale applications of soil sterilant after ecosystem clearance. The greatest number of known organisms in the universe are the soil organisms, the micro fauna. This, therefore, is systematic destruction of the greatest number of known organisms in the universe. It is obvious how this form of land management manufactures deserts. ! The first step is forest clearance through bulldozing and scraping. Trees and vegetation are logged, or scraped to the side and burned. Then the remaining scarred earth, robbed of the source of its long term wealth—forest litter—is attacked further still, either through plowing or through herbicides, and the food for a nation is grown. ! This is the form of land management propagated by Western Kentucky University’s Department of Agriculture. Here I am standing atop a 30 ft. tall burn pile of cleared trees and vegetation at WKU’s Agricultural Exposition Center, where an area that once was forested is continuously cleared, and that wealth in biomass is piled up and lit on fire. The smoldering ashes settle and cool and a weedy cover of Lamb’s Quarters begins the healing process of revegetation, until more woody biomass is piled upon it and burnt again. In return for the former ecosystem, genetically modified organisms compatible with poisons are grown in monocultures over hundreds of acres. The cost in bioengineering is tremendous and tax-payer funded; the cost in destruction of nature is perhaps incalculable; however, the monocultures of grain are accounted as economic productivity. The second type of farming that Fukuoka analyzed is what he referred to as “traditional or organic farming”. Organic farming is much idealized; but most forms of organic farming, including the one that you see here, begin again with ecosystem clearance, and are bio-mass reductive forms of land management. ! Our consumptive culture, with the vast majority of people estranged from the natural processes necessary in sustaining their lives, often evaluates products only in from the perspective of the consumer. Viewed from an ecological perspective, however, organic farming can be a soil-degenerating form of land management, especially when it is founded upon clearance of ecosystems and repetition plowing as a fundamental method. ! To take another quintessential form of organic farming from our local examples, viewed from a holistic and ecological perspective, what should we make of this common practice?— Get a loan and acquire land. Clear vegetation and sell the timber in order to repay some of the loan. Begin plowing the land and adding organic amendments as necessary, oftentimes hauled in from other sites. Because the trees have been cleared, a system of rich microclimates is lost—the way that the dappled light through tree leaves allows leafy vegetables to grow even in Summer’s drought, as the canopy edge protects evaporation of the soil and dissolves the necessity of irrigation—and now manufactured inputs (“green”houses) are hauled in to make it cooler in Summer and warmer in Winter —and that is called an organic operation here. Perchance most of the remaining wealth in carbon is used to heat the greenhouse. Among natural farming, Fukuoka analyzed two types: Hinayana natural farming and Mahayana natural farming. Hinayana natural farming, shown in Fukuoka’s rice field above, Fukuoka also refers to as “the one stroke school”, of which he was a long practitioner, both in the grain field and in the food forest. ! In this picture, the mature rice is being cut and harvested for threshing and winnowing. Beneath the standing rice, young seedlings of winter barley have already germinated through broadcasting seed balls. Upon threshing and winnowing, the rice grain is separated from the straw, and the straw is returned to the soil as a mulch atop the winter barley seedlings. Much of the rice Fukuoka and his companions ate and sold as grain; they saved an amount necessary for the next year’s crop, pelletized the seeds in seed balls, and sowed them in the fall, as if they had fallen naturally without the “one stroke” of harvest. In early Spring of the following year, Fukuoka would sow more rice into the overwintering barley. By late Spring, just before the barley matures, rice seedlings would be sprouted in the understory of standing barley. One stroke in harvest, then the barley straw would be returned to the soil as mulch on the rice seedlings—and on and on. By adopting this non-cultivation “one stroke” school, Fukuoka built soil layer upon soil layer in decomposing mulch, and enjoyed a ceaseless rotation of Summer rice and Winter barley. Similarly, Fukuoka eventually mastered the “one stroke” methods of Hinayana natural farming in the maintenance of his food forest. Once a year Fukuoka and his companions would sow seed balls of vegetables and herbs into the standing mixed ground-cover, then they would cut with scythes the standing biomass under the trees and let it decay as mulch on the germinating seeds of the next season’s growth. ! Here Fukuoka stands with mustard and radish blossoms beneath peach and citrus trees beneath Morashima Acacia, a nitrogen-fixing over-story tree of Japanese woodlands. Mahayana natural farming, or “pure natural farming”, is the “no stroke school”, or the “do-nothing school”, which is achieved when man abandons his attempts at perfecting the methods of production, and mimics nature in its stead. In nature, each generation of life in dying gives up its body to the next, continuously renewing and enriching life, even without the hand of humankind. Seeds germinate seasonally and voluntarily in the most highly efficient coevolutionary processes of nature. Hear the depth of experience of Masonobu Fukuoka’s understanding of the perfection of nature: ! “Broad, Mahayana natural farming arises of itself when a unity exists between man and nature. It conforms to nature as it is, and to the mind as it is. It proceeds from the conviction that if the individual temporarily abandons human will and so allows himself to be guided by nature, nature responds by providing everything. To give a simple analogy, in transcendent natural farming the relationship between humanity and nature can be compared with a husband and wife joined in perfect marriage. The marriage is not bestowed, nor received; the perfect pair comes into existence of itself.” ! When attempting to connect Fukuoka’s spirit and teachings to ELM projects at our church, I have been continually struck by the inadequacies of our common metaphors of “management” and “ministry” as they relate to Fukuoka’s experience.

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