Masanobu Fukuoka

This is the wonderful man from Japan that gave us the means to take action on Global Warming in the Andes of Peru. The Pacha Mama and Apu´s thank you.

Masanobu Fukuoka

In Japan there is a farmer by the name of Masanobu Fukuoka who practices what he calls the "no-plowing, no-fertilizing, no-weeding, no-pesticides, do-nothing method of natural farming". To him the idea that people can grow crops is ego-centric. Ultimately it is nature that grows crops. He sees modern agriculture as doing-this and doing-that to grow crops, but it is meaningless work. With his do-nothing method he is able to get yields in his rice fields that are equal to the highest yields attained with chemical, do-something agriculture.What he does do, at least by my translation, is manipulate habitat to favor the crops he wants to grow. He works within the laws of ecology to tilt the ecosystem in favor of the plants he wants. Then his crops virtually invade and grow like weeds. Fukuoka was born in 1914 and schooled in the Western sciences of microbiology and plant pathology. He worked as an agricultural customs inspector in Japan until he became gravely ill at the age of twenty-five. After his sickness he was "reborn", realizing that "human knowledge was meaningless".