How to save the world? A global journey into making our lives better…

Can the world be saved from hunger? To answer it I would like to introduce today the work of a true genius. His name was Masanobu Fukuoka. From advanced scientist to coming back to nature, this Japanese man did nothing else than bring to the world a real agricultural revolution, a culture shift capable of radically changing our rapport to food production.

But let’s start with just a few sad facts:
• Every six seconds a child dies because of hunger and related causes;
• 1.02 billion people do not have enough to eat – more than the populations of USA, Canada and the European Union.
• The number of undernourished people in the world increased by 75 million in 2007 and 40 million in 2008, largely due to higher food prices;
• The cost of undernutrition to economic development is estimated at US$20-30 billion per annum;
• Iron deficiency is impairing the mental development of 40-60 percent children in developing countries
Most critically, there are evidences we have reached what people call “peak oil”, with significant shortage of petroleum within only 10 years, which means two things:
• The decline and end of most modern machinery. Oil is used to move engines (obviously), but also for making asphalt, most plastics, tyres, motor lubricants, acrylic (heavily used in making clothes), adhesives…
• Catastrophic food crisis: in order to support a developed-world style diet, 10 calories of fossil fuels is required for every calorie of food – for machinery, pesticides and fertilizers, shipping, refrigerating, selling, etc.

Masanobu Fukuoka’s path is first and foremost a path of humility, of realising that, in the end, human knowledge is at best very limited and heavily clustered. At worst, science is a burden which keeps man apart from reality – and I totally subscribe to this from my own scientific background. This is not about rejecting science as a whole, and even less so about rejecting scientific methods which are at the heart of the discovery of natural farming, this is about not placing man’s limited understanding above nature and the order of things.

With this came a second realisation: why on earth is man trying so hard to do differently what nature has forged over millenniums of evolution? Why for instance farmers work very hard tilling the land when crops have evolved over millions and millions of year to germinate on untilled land?

Masanobu left at 25 a successful soil scientist career to devote his life to taking this path of humility. With his scientific mind, he worked over several decades to achieve how best to understand nature, questioning one by one every assumption of modern agriculture, and finding ways to get better results by copying nature and working with it.

You recognise a true scientist by the way he questions commonly accepted dogma. It is by doing so that mankind made its most spectacular advances. And the results of his life of patient observation are truly extraordinary. He found out that to achieve very high agricultural yield there is absolutely:

• no need to plow nor till the land: as tilling compacts the soil, increase erosion, kills beneficial organisms and reduce fertility.
• no need to apply fertilizer or compost: since need for fertilisers is the result of monoculture and tillage.
• no need to remove weeds by tilling or herbicides: as controlled weeds improve soil fertility.
• no need to use chemicals: the best path to pest control is a balanced environment and healthy crops. Spreading poisons on the ground imbalances the food chain and leads to the emergence of pest and harmful fungi.

In addition to the four above root principles, there is a number of practices discovered by Masanobu to get to making a natural farm truly efficient. It includes:
• rotating crop to improve soil fertility,
• broadcasting seeds in clay pellets to prevent pests eating them,
• scattering straw over the field and let ducks run wild to create natural “compost”
• using clover as ground cover to control weeds and fix nitrogen in the soil
• growing rice without flooding the field
• using no heavy machinery
• not pruning trees (except tree previously damaged by pruning)
• growing vegetable below trees in his orchards

The huge added benefit of this agricultural technique is how it saves energy and money. By removing the need for some of the hardest work and highest expenses of the farmer, Masanobu was able to feed himself with only a few hours of work a day, using virtually no fossil fuels, and this without compromising yield while vastly increasing production quality, to the extend he nicknamed his technique “Do-Nothing agriculture“. In fact, he reckons a quarter acre (1,000m²) can produce more than 600kg of grain by growing season using his natural method. His yields were actually comparable or higher to the best yield obtained using conventional or scientific methods.

Aside from that, he also experienced increasing soil fertility: by not spraying pesticides and fertilisers, his land became alive with swarms of micro-organisms, beneficial fungi, bugs and higher animals. A few of his crops were consumed by pests, but the pest were eaten by their natural predators and the ecosystem therefore was able to strike a balance without damaging the harvest.
His farm departed from modern agriculture’s monoculture practice, thereby allowing plants to work together in a mutually beneficial relationship.

A natural farm takes time to set up. The reason that man’s impoved techniques seems to be necessary is that the natural balance has been so badly upset beforehand by those same techniques that the land has become dependant on them. Besides, due to novelty of this natural approach there is no manual for every microclimate in the world, and some experimentation is necessary.

Masanobu Fukuoka’s work has had a global impact, and he is regarded as a major pioneer of the organic agriculture and permaculture movement. He passed away in 2008 at the age of 95.
His methods reached countries in Asia, Africa, Europe… In India, Fukuoka is fondly-regarded and his work has found a number of practitioners who have termed their method of farming ‘rishi kheti‘ literally meaning agriculture of the sages. He travelled extensively to desolate places in Africa, Europe and elsewhere to teach how to grow food naturally while restoring wasted ecosystems.

The natural farming the way he describes it is a pinnacle of simplicity and beauty, and it strikes a chord deep in one’s heart: nature is not evil, and man can live in harmony with it. One of my long term goals is to develop this type of agriculture.

Just a last word of warning to would-be natural farmers:
• this is no “do nothing”, natural farming is hard work at the beginning, and requires manual work.
• it took Masanobu Fukuoka years of trial to learn the right way to do it. This little post has no pretention to be a how-to guide. You can start to get a better understanding of his technique by reading his little book: One Straw Revolution.

Sources:
• world food program http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats
• U.S. Energy Information administration on peak oil (see chart page 8.)
• Energy Use in Production of Food, Feed, and Fiber (D.R. Mears) for energy in food production calculation (here)

Tags: book review, climate change, food crisis, Peak oil, reforestation, thinking differently