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Masanobu Fukuoka set out “to create a food-producing environment that diverged as little possible from what he considered a natural one”.
To learn how to accomplish this, FUKUOKA says, "I just emptied my mind and tried to absorb what I could from nature." For the next few years, therefore, he observed which plants and animals lived naturally on his small piece of earth. He scattered fruit, vegetable and tree seeds randomly and watched as some of them rooted and thrived while others died. (Cypress, cedar, and orange trees grow best in the rich soil of his orchard; cherries, peaches, pears, and plums in the thinner soil.) Proceeding by trial and error, he farmed the land passively. Instead of asking, "how about doing this?" asked, "how about not doing this?" Over the years his original insight about natural farming was borne out. As a more natural ecology was re-established, the less he did, the better the land responded. This is why his Four Principles of Natural Farming, as he eventually summarized his experience, compose a list of things not to do.
Fukuoka’s 4 Principles of Farming:
» The earth cultivates itself, observed FUKUOKA. There is no need for man to do what roots, worms, and micro-organisms do better. Furthermore, plowing the soil alters the natural environment and promotes the growth of weeds. Therefore, his first principle is: No plowing or turning of the soil.
» Secondly, in an unaltered natural environment the orderly growth and decay of plant and animal life fertilizes the soil without any help from man. Fertility depletion occurs only when the original growth is eliminated in favor of soil-exhausting food crops or grasses to feed cattle. Adding chemical fertilizers helps the growing crop but not the soil, which continues to deteriorate. Even compost and chicken dung cannot improve on nature, he concluded; moreover chicken dung can cause the disease rice blast. Therefore FUKUOKA's second principle is: No chemical fertilizers or prepared compost. Instead he promotes cover crops like clover and alfalfa which natural fertilizers.
» Weed is everywhere the enemy of the farmer. Yet FUKUOKA observed that when he ceased plowing, his weed population declined sharply. This occurred because plowing actually stirs deep-lying weed seeds and gives them a chance to sprout. Tillage therefore not the answer to weeds. Nor are chemical herbicides, which disrupt nature's balance and leave poisons in the earth and water. There is a simpler way. To begin with, weeds need not be wholly eliminated; they can be successfully suppressed by spreading straw over freshly sown ground and by planting ground cover. Eliminating intervals between one crop and another through carefully timed seeding is essential. No weeding by tillage or herbicides is FUKUOKA’s third principle.
» Finally, what to do about pests and blights? As FUKUOKA’s grain fields and orchards came more and more to resemble a natural ecology—with the proliferation of plant varieties growing all ajumble— they also created a nature-like habitat for small animals. In such a habitat, FUKUOKA noted that nature's own balancing act prevented any one species from gaining the upper hand: snakes eat the frogs which eat the bugs, and so on. Furthermore, insect infestations and diseases attack the weakest plants, leaving the strong to fruit more abundantly. (A blight-reduced rice field, he says, may actually yield larger quantities of grain than one left untouched.) Although chemical solutions can be effective against pests and plant diseases in the short run, in the long run they are hazardous. Wholly aside from the pollution they leave behind, they permit weak, chemical-dependent plants to survive. Left to itself, nature prefers hardier stock. FUKUOKA’s fourth principle is: No dependence on chemical pesticides..........
