Customer Reviews

The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming (New York Review Books Classics)

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Some have said that the Fukuokan philosophy is the tap root of what is now more broadly called Permaculture, only Masanobu Fukuoka was a Japanese farmer, working with rice and winter grain in a southern Japanese climate. Both are no-till methods that shun the use of chemicals. However, Fukuoka should be set apart from farming in general and Permaculture in particular, in that The One-Straw Revolution is essentially a profound work of literary philosophy. Indeed, in many cases it reads like a naturalist's bible. Although the book is dressed in the language and anecdotes of a farmer, the message looms much larger. We read of a man who came to terms with the problem of death, and then decided to form a profoundly new (or is it old?) relationship with nature. In essence, the nugget of his wisdom is that, instead of struggling to control and command nature, we must learn to work with and learn from nature. Allow me to share one quote:"To build a fortress is wrong from the start. Even though he gives the excuse that it is for the city's defense, the castle is the outcome of the ruling lord's personality, and exerts a coercive force on the surrounding area. Saying he is afraid of attack and that fortification is for the town's protection, the bully stocks up weapons and puts the key in the door." Now I ask you, does the following paragraph sound like the words of a farmer or a philosopher? From the face of it, one might think Fukuoka is here criticizing the nuclear arms race, but he is actually talking about the warlike mindset of farmers who see leaf-munching pests as evil enemies that must be fortified against, sought out and destroyed. Whether we are talking about bull weevils or communities, though, his advice is sound. We must change our frame of reference and establish a different relationship with the world. Concise and yet elegant, Fukuoka's prose is pregnant with meaning. Altogether, this work provides poetic an intelligent critique of industrial agricultural practices and the linear notions of nature and progress that underlay those practices. In fact, Fukuoka goes as far as to declare that the scientific method itself limits our experience and knowledge of nature. An invaluable, timeless work that will move you, even if you have never picked up a hoe.

j.w.k.

Masanobu Fukoka was a laboratory agricultural scientist who worked on fighting plant diseases. He also had many unanswered questions about the interrelationship between man and nature. After a long sabbatical he resigned his position and took over his father's rice and mandarin orange farm. Fukuoka thought that by putting the subjects of his questions into actual material challenges he might find the answers he sought.

Fukoka was immediately drawn to organic and natural farming methods, and over the years developed a type of natural farming that he refers to as "do-nothing farming". Contrary to what you may imagine, this method does involve work, much of it menial, but at least in Fukoka's experience the benefits outweight the negatives. His method of farming is thus:

After the seasonal heavy rains, the rice is planted by scattering it by hand throughout the farming area. The planting rice is rolled in a type of clay that will help prevent animals from eating it but will not inhibit sprouting. Clover seeds are also sewn at the same time in the same method. The clover acts as a natural barrier to the young rice shoots, and helps the soil from eroding.

The rice will grow naturally over the course of the next few months without constant pools of water as are often seen in traditional(from 1600-1940s) Japanese rice farming, albeit shorter and stockier than the cultivated rice. After the rice harvest, the leftover straw is scattered over the field to decompose, adding nutrients back into the soil. Afterwards, barley is planted as a winter crop and to further enrich the soil for the next rice season.

Fukoka does not use compost on his rice fields or on his citrus orchard as he finds that the byproducts of the plant provides all the soil nutrients needed. He does maintain a small compost pile for his vegetable garden, however. Outside of the rice season, he tends to his mandarin orange orchard, which is also kept on a "do-nothing" method of growth. From using this technique, he has not only kept up with modern(tractor, fertilizer, pesticide) farmers in quantity, but has a much higher quality of rice, barley, and oranges. He spends very little out of pocket and sells his produce for a very fair price.

The great thing about this short book (192pp) is that it is not exclusively about farming. In fact, there are many pages where Fukoka expands on philosophy, history, nutricion, intentional communities, and sustainibility. There is also an excellent forward by Wendell Berry, one of my favorite authors(Jayber Crow is a must read) Highly reccomended although it seems to be out of print. I borrowed mine from a local library.

I happened upon a copy of this monumental text while looking for books on soils and agriculture at my local library. As a graduate student in agricultural engineering, Masanobu Fukuoka's book really forced me to think long and hard about the philosophy behind conventional farming. As such, Fukuoka's book is more about philosophy than farming, or better put, the philosophy of natural farming. His short vignettes on various aspects of conventional and natural farming are very enlightening, especially in the face of the emerging Genetic Revolution and the New Biotechnology. Rather than trying to improve upon nature, Fukuoka gives the reader approaches which allow him or her to co-exist with nature. As such, his approach demands one to lead a more subdued, simple, and austere lifestyle. In the book, he tells the reader how he came to embrace his variety of natural farming, which he has termed a do-nothing approach to agriculture, and the worldview that he has developed from his lifelong pursuit of natural farming.

I myself value this text because he correctly points out that your food is your medicine and that those of us who persist in unhealthy diets will as a result become unhealthy. To him, food and farming are opposite sides of the same coin. Some may regard him as being anti-science, but I myself regard him as being critical of relying solely on science and intellect. Granted, while science and intellect serve as good starting points, they also need to be balanced with philosophy/spirituality and the environment. Although this smacks of so-called 'New Age' thinking, many in academia and industry are slowly coming to realize that our single-minded quest for higher yields, minimal cost, maximum return, and larger scale is grossly at odds with a clean environment and sustainable development.

Thus, his approach is not a blueprint for farming for profit so much as it is a guide to farming for well-being- both physical and mental. In sum, as Mr. Fukuoka asks his reader, "Could there be anything better than living simply and taking it easy?"

I read this book years ago when it was first published and it has been a magor influence on me and my gardens for all these years. I've followed Fukoka's ideas as much as closely I can living in a city and have had wonderful results. He is right, let nature do the work. My garden is the most beautiful in the neighborhood, and without any pesticides, fertilizers, tilling, or backstrain. Buy this book, Gaia's Garden, and Forest Gardening. They all follow the naturalistic, symbiotic, permaculture mode that mother nature has been evolving for a billion years - just plug into the natural order and start growing!

This book isn't just for farmers or environmentalists. It will open your eyes and make you see the world differently. Suddenly it will become all one world, living and breathing and entirely whole. I bought this book from Mother Earth News years ago and had no idea that just seeing things from this man's point of view would change me so much. I loaned it out to people, and each time the reaction was the same. Everyone was enthralled. I lost my book to someone who never returned it, so someday I'll have to shell out the dough to replace it. It awakens you to a perspective so precious that you don't ever want to risk forgetting it. We're all part of this great being we live on. I wish the entire world could view themselves with the same eyes a person gets upon reading this book. We'd all be transformed.

I've been meaning to read this book for a long time. Maybe if I'd read when I was first starting out in organic gardening or became interested in sustainable food production, I would have been as taken with it as the huge number of "absolutely fabulous" reviewers apparently are. The thing is that I came to this book after 25+ years of organic gardening and years of trying various methods of growing various plants sustainably, so pragmatism is coloring my review.

The methods outlined in this book will not be helpful to most people trying to grow food sustainably in North America. I am not talking about the rejection of chemical ferts and pesticides. I am there with him on that totally. I'm not talking about his focus on growing small, either--he discusses growing food sufficient for a family on 1/4 acre, but he is limiting it to grains (he grows veggies in a large citrus orchard). I am talking about the use of nothing but hand tools, the use of straw as a mulch, the focus on growing three grain crops which depend on a frost-free winter, and the use of flooding for irrigation. I think anyone who has made even a stab at growing food in North America on a small scale can see the problems with this. So there's that.

There's also the problem of Mr. Fukuoka's unpaid help. I think it is great for people to go and learn from someone like him, but they work for no pay and live in unheated huts without electricity or running water. In terms of practicality, how many of us are going to have help like that? People seem to not notice this.

Finally, I found Mr. Fukuoka's philosophy of nothing means anything and nothing human beings do makes any difference in the grand scheme of things to be despressing in the extreme.

The central idea--that you can grow sufficient food sustainably in a small plot--makes sense to me, although in my opinion we have not yet arrived at models that are truly flexible and workable. But outside of that idea, this book's value is mostly in the depiction of one guy's struggle to make people think differently about agriculture in Japan.

Fukuoka comes out of an experience of environmental endagerment (Post-WWII Japan). This work shows the basics of a workable lifestyle that is kind to both nature and people. It is one of the very best of the low-tech/low-work, back-to-the-land guides. This formula is the first of the practical endeavors at post-Post-Modern living- where people have to do for themselves.

Fabulous book. Inspiring look at how not to mess around with Mother Nature. Nature is not the enemy we have been led to believe! I love this book, and it was one of the first to make an indelible impression about changing one's philosophy of how to possibly go about organic farming (I was an organic farmer later on). Poses searching questions (and one man's answers) that every gardener and farmer should look for the answers to, regarding how much we need to interfere with natural processes to produce food. Also a thoughtful look at balancing nutritional needs with what is seasonally available. Vital reading for anyone interested in permaculture, sustainable agriculture, or just a soul-lifting antidote to modern, corporate food production.

Though I had heard a little bit about Fukuoka and his practice, I was not prepared in the least for the way that this book would touch me. It was like a ray of light piercing through the murky cloudiness that was my mind; all the more remarkable because I stumbled on it by chance at the public library while glancing through the gardening books. He does an excellent job of demonstrating how much extra work we have all created for ourselves, how our scientific solutions all require further solutions, and that it is an endless cycle as long as we are straying from nature and its example. This book managed to eloquently lay out a great many ideas that had been lying dormant in my head: the overemphasis on specialization vs. generalism in our society, the break between modern urbanized lives and natural agrarian lives, the definition of 'enough' and how desire leads us ever farther away from that baseline. Fukuoka discusses all these topics and more--and in a style that is far more effective than anything I can write to explain it. It is philosophy, agricultural method, and cultural criticism wrapped up into an effective unity. A shame that it appears to be out of print right now.

I bought and read this book years ago, and it was a light in the darkness even then. I can't even begin to tell the readers how deep an effect it had. It drove home the point so poignantly that we can't separate all the aspects of ourselves. From the universe within to the universe without, we are all entwined in the dance of life. One can't move a little without affecting the other. I loaned this book out time and again, and everyone was deeply affected, one so much so that I never got my book back and have been waiting ever since to afford a hardcover copy before they are gone forever. It's not that big a book, but it is, to me, a book that hit me as hard as any I have ever read.