The One-Straw Revolution

by Masanobu Fukuoka

I could only think of this concept of non-usefulness as being of great benefit to the world, and particularly the present world which is moving so rapidly in the opposite direction.

By opposite, does he mean that everything is meaningful and has value, and that everything leaves from nothingness? Or nothing is meaningless or without value, and nothing returns to nothingness? These are all difficult statements that are anti-consumer, property, individual, and science.

My father was shocked. He said I must rediscipline myself, perhaps take a job somewhere and return when I had pulled myself back together. At that time my father was headman of the village, and it was hard for the other members of the community to relate to his eccentric son, who obviously could not get along with the world, living as he did back in the mountains.

This very description and action captures me in this moment. (HK, a day before 36, waiting for my contract from Meetup.)

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 techniques 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?"—that was my way of thinking. I ultimately reached the conclusion that there was no need to plow, no need to apply fertilizer, no need to make compost, no need to use insecticide. When you get right down to it, there are few agricultural practices that are really necessary.

Although computing is entirely involved with a conceptual and technical space of man's creation, our own creations and their many interfaces all share the same world and resource constraints. The "do-nothing" mindset can be found in approaches to programming like "no dependency," "single data structure" or even "defaults only." Maybe. This may be pushing the simile too far.

In general, people are only concerned with whether this kind of farming is an advance into the future or a revival of times past. Few are able to grasp correctly that natural farming arises from the unmoving and unchanging center of agricultural development.

The focus on the "natural" belies "agriculture" as an unnatural technology.

When solutions develop in this way, they only sow the seeds for second- and third-generation pollution problems which will be more difficult than the previous ones, and more widespread.

Conservation of Problems

To say it in a word, until there is a reversal of the sense of values which cares more for size and appearance than for quality, there will be no solving the problem of food pollution.

If people continue to eat meat and imported food, within ten years it is certain that Japan will fall into a food crisis. Within thirty years, there will be overwhelming shortages.

No.

In my opinion, if 100% of the people were farming it would be ideal. There is just a quarter-acre of arable land for each person in Japan. If each single person were given one quarter-acre, that is 1 1/4 acres to a family of five, that would be more than enough land to support the family for the whole year. If natural farming were practiced, a farmer would also have plenty of time for leisure and social activities within the village community. I think this is the most direct path toward making this country a happy, pleasant land.

Fukouka and Jefferson, with his ideal of the yeoman farmer, share much in ideologies. However, Fukouka's calculations only account for the needs of that single generation. Japan's population has not grown; but, in this philosophy, it cannot grow.

Extravagance of desire is the fundamental cause which has led the world into its present predicament. Fast rather than slow, more rather than less—this flashy "development" is linked directly to society's impending collapse. It has only served to separate man from nature. Humanity must stop indulging the desire for material possessions and personal gain and move instead toward spiritual awareness.

This static viewpoint has been echoed in all cultures through the ages. It's rooted in societies without excess energy and resources to grow. If humanity found itself in this situation again, would the static mindset for self-cultivation rise again?

There is no time in modern agriculture for a farmer to write a poem or compose a song. The other day I was surprised to notice, while I was cleaning the little village shrine, that there were some plaques hanging on the wall. Brushing off the dust and looking at the dim and faded letters, I could make out dozens of haiku poems. Even in a little village such as this, twenty or thirty people had composed haiku and presented them as offerings. That is how much open space people had in their lives in the old days. Some of the verses must have been several centuries old. Since it was that long ago they were probably poor farmers, but they still had leisure to write haiku.

Did they? Were farmers then literate?

The narrow view of natural farming says that it is good for the farmer to apply organic material to the soil and good to raise animals, and that this is the best and most efficient way to put nature to use. To speak in terms of personal practice, this is fine, but with this way alone, the spirit of true natural farming cannot be kept alive. This kind of narrow natural farming is analogous to the school of swordsmanship known as the one-stroke school, which seeks victory through the skillful, yet self-conscious application of technique. Modern industrial farming follows the two-stroke school, which believes that victory can be won by delivering the greatest barrage of swordstrokes.

Is that a pun?

Just playing or doing nothing at all, children are happy. A discriminating adult, on the other hand, decides what will make him happy, and when these conditions are met he feels satisfied.

"If you did nothing at all the world could not keep running. What would the world be without development?" "Why do you have to develop? If economic growth rises from 5% to 10%, is happiness going to double? What's wrong with a growth rate of 0%? Isn't this a rather stable kind of economics? Could there be anything better than living simply and taking it easy?"

My initial criticism in concise form.

The farmer became too busy when people began to investigate the world and decided that it would be "good" if we did this or did that. All my research has been in the direction of not doing this or that. These thirty years have taught me that farmers would have been better off doing almost nothing at all. The more people do, the more society develops, the more problems arise. The increasing desolation of nature, the exhaustion of resources, the uneasiness and disintegration of the human spirit, all have been brought about by humanity's trying to accomplish something. Originally there was no reason to progress, and nothing that had to be done. We have come to the point at which there is no other way than to bring about a "movement" not to bring anything about.

Ignoring, of course, the bones of strivers he walks upon. Talk about a strongly conserved worldview. Why not full primitivism?

"It's because the role of the scientist in society is analogous to the role of discrimination in your own minds."