The Banyan Tree : A Textbook for
Holistic Health Practioners
APPROPRIATE
NUTRITION : ITS ROLE IN HEALTH
NATURAL FARMING During the
International Science Congress held in January 1987 at
Pune University, agricultural experts from different
parts of the world had assembled to give presentations on
different aspects of hi-tech farming. Each expert came
one after another, to put forth and expound on his
particular interest and field, giving impressive and
complicated statistics and methodology. At the end of it,
a diminutive, elderly, simply dressed, Japanese came
forward and stunned the audience with his concept of
Natural Farming, which he called The Do-Nothing
Farming’.
Fukuoka, the author of the book The One-Straw Revolution
1, explains how he started going about developing this
new method of agricultural practice. As he says,
"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 techinics 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 which
results in making the work easier instead of harder.
‘ How about not doing this ? How about not doing
that ?’ and that was my way of thinking. I
ultimately reached the conclusion that there was not need
to plough, no need to apply fertilizer, no need to make
compost, no need to use insecticides. 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."
Herein lies the essence of Fukuoka’s philosophy, and
the source of it. Natural farming, as he defines it, is
"Farming done as simply as possible, within and in
cooperation withthe natural environment, rather than the
modern approach applying increasingly complex techniques
to remake nature entirely for the benefit of human
beings.
Natural farming is not as easy as it sounds, as Fukuoka
himself learned the hard way. It is not easy, because in
order to do natural farming one must first undo all the
repercussions of years of so called
"artificial" or scientific or hi-tech farming,
which according to him is merely ‘tampering with
nature’. He found this at great cost of his
father’s fields.
Around 1937, Fukuoka resigned from a promising career as
a microbiology researcher and decided to experiment on
his father’s farms. His father was growing
tangerines at that time, and Fukuoka moved into a hut on
the mountain and began to live a very simple, primitive
life. He thought that if here, as a farmer of citrus and
grain, he could actually demonstrate his realisation, the
world would recognise his truth. So he settled on the
mountain, and everything went well until the time hat his
father entrusted him with the richly bearing trees in the
orchard. He had already pruned the trees to ‘ the
shape of a sake cups’ so that the fruits could
easily be harvested. When Fukuoka left the abandoned in
this state, naturally the result was that the branches
become intertwined, insects attacked the trees and the
entire orchard withered away in no time. His conviction
had been that crops grow themselves and should not have
to be grown. He had acted in the belief that everything
should be left to take its natural course, but found out
the hard way that if you apply this way of thinking all
atonce, before long things do not go so well. This
‘abandonement’, is not natural farming, he
realised.
Ofcourse the outsome of this was that his father was
furious with him,and told him in no uncertain terms that
he must rediscipline himself, take a job somewhere, and
return when he had pulled himself back together. He took
up a job as Head Researcher of Disease and Insect Control
at a Testing station. For eight years he wroked there,
and during all this time pondered the relationship
between scientific and natural farming agriculture, and
whether his conviction that natural farming was superior,
had any basis . At the end of eight years he took up
farming anew.
But is second experiment at natural farming also turned
out to be a disaster. His idea of natural farming was to
just leave the citrus orchard to itself. He did no
pruning. Naturally again the branches became tangled and
the trees were attacked by insects and almost 2 acres of
mandarin orange trees withered and died.
All this time, the question at the back of his mind, was
‘What is the natural pattern?’ He wiped out
another 400 trees before he finally arrived at the
answer. Which is that before you can take up Natural
farming, you have first undo years of unnatural farming
and gradually restore the field and its surrounding eco
system to its original harmonious state. For example, in
abalanced rice field eco-system, insect and plant
communities maintain a stable relationship. Dragon flies
and moths fly up in flurry. Honey bees buzz from blossom
to blossom.
Part the leaves and you see insects, spiders, frogs,
lizards and many other small animals bustling about in
the cool shade. Moles and earthworms burrow beneath the
surface. Here it is not uncommon for a plant desease to
sweep through the areas, leaving the crops in these
fields unaffected. This by the way, is not some imaginary
meandring. It is a description of his own rice fields in
Japan, as described in his book The One Starw Revolution.
To put it briefly, his method of natural farming is based
on four principles, which are as follows.
No
Cultivation : It means no ploughing or turning of
the soil. For centuries, farmers have assumed
that the plough is essential for growing crops.
However, noncultivation is fundamental to natural
farming. The earth cultivates itself naturlly by
means of penetration of plant roots and the
activity of micro-organisms, small animals and
earhtworms.
No
Chemical Fertilizer or Prepared Composte : People interfere with
nature, and try as they may, they cannot heal the
resulting wounds. Their careless farming
practices, drained the soil of essential
nutrients, and the result is yearly depletion of
the land. If left to itself, the soil maintains
its fertility naturally, in accordance with the
orderly cycle of plant and animal life.
No
Weeding by Tillage or Herbicides : Weeds play their part in
building soil fertility and in balancing the
biological community. As a fundamental principle,
weeds should be controlled, not eliminated. Straw
mulch, a ground cover of white clover
interplanted with the crops, and temporary
flooding provide effective weed control in my
fields.
No
Dependence on Chemicals : From the time that weak
plants developed as a result of such unnatural
practices as plowing and fertilizing, disease and
insect imbalance became a great problem in
agriculture. Nature left alone, is in perfect
balance. Harmful insects and plant diseases are
always present but do not occur in nature to an
extent which requires the use of poisonous
chemicals. The sensible approch to disease and
insect control is to grow sturdy crops in a
healthy environment. When all is said and doen,
Fukuoka and Gandhiji seem to be saying the same
thing. In fact all we have said in regard to the
ten myths and their cure, were also Gandhi’s
views.
In India natural farming
is doen on a small scale at Rasulia Friends Rural Centre,
Hoshangabad, M.P.
Just as we see balance in the human body brings health --
so also balance in the agricultural techniques can also
restore health to the land instead of relying on all the
hi-tech answers which are further upsetting the balance
of nature, Fukuoka pleads for listening to and responding
to nature’s wisdom.
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