Right Mind, Right Pruning

The Enduring Magic of Masanobu Fukuoka & Natural Farming

After my recent visit to Japan, I decided to reread One Straw Revolution as well as his other book The Natural Way of Farming¹. Without a doubt Masanobu Fukuoka’s true masterpiece on the philosophy of Natural Farming was One Straw Revolution. Although the book is now 50 years since its first publication, much of what he wrote about in regards to modern, scientific farming then is still true today - in fact, in many respects, the situation² has become much worse. There is always hope, and the positiveness that comes with a new generation of farmers and foodies, a path of resilience, is one where nature still provides farmers with a light at the end of the tunnel. But, as he wrote in Natural Farming, we need to transcend the here and now and begin to see the world from the broader, cosmic perspective.

Although 50 years has passed since One Straw Revolution was published³, we’re still having many of the same discussions, facing the same problems, and proposing many of the same solutions. Yet, the problems aren’t the same, therefore nor are the solutions. The Earth’s population has increased by 120% since 1970. Climate change and global warming is no longer a theory. Soil loss, biodiversity loss, and the despoliation of the planet is accelerating despite all of the advances and knowledge-gain we’ve made. And now we have to contend more deeply with the politics of global despoliation - the destruction of Nature. Perhaps we’re tilting at windmills, but we have to work towards nature and not away from it if there is to be a sustainable future.

Masanobu Fukuoka practiced his style of “do nothing“ agriculture/farming for almost his entire life. Much of what he did, wrote about, and taught others has been practiced, translated, and re-translated into many times over. Even the approaches and philosophies of today’s regenerative agricultural movement cohere to what he preached and how he farmed. There is nothing really new about this approach.

Fukuoka’s style of farming was not something he dreamt up one day. It was based on how he saw and experienced the world around him. He was witnessing, as many others were at that time, the despoliation of Nature in favor of destructive practices foisted upon farmers through the false pretenses of chemicals, machinery, technology, fossil fuels, and false promises.

His ‘do nothing’ philosophy countered this unwinding of Nature and was built on a foundation of farming a particular way in Japan and Asia for thousands of years. ‘Do Nothing’ farming is based on four principles: i) no tillage, ii) no weeding, iii) no pesticides, and iv) no fertilizers⁴. But it took Fukuoka years to get to a point where he could call his style of farming “Natural.” He failed many times. To be sure, there are no overnight sensations in farming. We all fail, its the getting up part that’s important.

Scientific farming, a term he used and what we call industrial farming today, and is an approach where the farmer is totally disconnected from nature. He also referred to this a discriminatory farming. Mahayana farming - an advanced Buddhist approach - was the highest level of natural farming one could achieve, one where the farmer was totally connected to the world or Nature around them. He also referred to this as non-discriminatory farming. Hinayana farming was a middle road approach. Where one sought out and practiced a nature-based farming approach but still utilized some discriminatory thinking and practices. I suggest that most holistic growers I know are on the middle path - more Bodhisattvas⁵ than Buddhas.⁶ The diagram below gives an idea of how Fukuoka viewed the four methods⁷ in terms of yield.

from The Natural Way of Farming: The Theory and Practice of Green Philosophy. Masanobu Fukuoka. Published 1985, Bookventure, India

I can’t tell you that there’s one discrete thing from One Straw Revolution or any of his other works that applies better today than any other. It’s the unfortunate truths that are still true and his philosophical approaches interwoven with practical ideas that need to be picked up by farmers everywhere. But that doesn’t mean trying to apply a philosophy for farming rice on a quarter acre of land in Japan to farming 10,000 acres of wheat in North Dakota will work. No, in fact he based much of his work on the production of rice, a staple crop in Japan, as well as citrus. The thrust of his work was to catalyze a mindset shift and encourage the right-sizing of agriculture so that more people are farming with Nature on smaller pieces of land once again. And though I’d like to think that we are starting to see a shift here in the US, on the whole we’re still too attached to the financial-economy part of agriculture, and not focusing on the nature economy. In following a “do nothing“ path of agriculture, progress can be made in a way that benefits all of humanity.

What Does This Have to Do with Radical Pomology?

For everything that’s still true from One Straw Revolution, there’s is also plenty that’s not. Times have changed. People have changed. The tools have changed. Our ability to understand the world around has increased several magnitudes from Fukuoka’s time. But what hasn’t changed, and what he essentially was warding us away from was our love affair with secular or scientific farming and our disconnection with Nature.

Fukuoka was not wrong, though he was at times seemingly contradictory in his writings. Pruning, for example, is one area where he describes the practice as resulting in a confused tree. And in another area he wrote that pruning was a necessity to avoid a confused tree. What he was really saying is that if you start out early in a tree’s life by pruning it, you’ll be pruning it its entire life. Allowing a tree to come into its natural form naturally and observing his growth habits, you’'ll understand its true form and therefore “know” better how to prune the tree more naturally for health, productivity, and longevity. He put pruning, as he did many other orchard practices, within the context of being conscious of the tree’s natural form and habits, thereby knowing whether it’s growing true, and how best to prune it. But by leaping in before knowing anything, or simply by using bad technique, you cause problems that will be with the tree for years.

The bottom line is that despite his seeming contradictions there is basically nothing in his writings that I can find, even if interpreted under current times and conditions, is blatantly wrong. When it came to pruning and other things with natural farming he not just encouraged, but required us to be observant and to be conscious in a way that transcends time and space in order to see the true nature of the whole and the beauty of the universe⁸. In this way, we can come back to the physical manifestation of that cosmic oneness in becoming better farmers. Not by “doing nothing,” but by applying our connections with the natural world in the “right” way to the benefit of the tree, the orchard, the entire farmscape ecosystem. Right mind, right pruning. Fukuoka may have said ‘do nothing’, but he really meant to do as little as possible - Nature will take care of the rest.

1. The Theory and Practice of Green Philosophy

2. Loss of soils, biodiversity; the effects of climate change; technology creep; loss of farmer autonomy; etc. has all become more dire.

3. And to be sure, it was based on his experiences and observations 60, 70, and 80 years ago,

4. and for fruit trees: “no pruning.”

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva

6. #FieldNotes006: The Fukuokan Metaphysics of Farming

7. The fourth method he described was Liebig’s Law of Minimum.

8. The Tao of Tree?