The One-Straw Revolution_ An Introduction to Natural Farming - Masanobu Fukuoka [33]
You hear a lot of talk these days about the benefits of the "Good Rice Movement" and the "Green Revolution." Because these methods depend on weak, "improved" seed varieties, it becomes necessary for the farmer to apply chemicals and insecticides eight or ten times during the growing season. In a short time the soil is burned clean of microorganisms and organic matter. The life of the soil is destroyed and crops come to be dependent on nutrients added from the outside in the form of chemical fertilizer.
It appears that things go better when the farmer applies "scientific" techniques, but this does not mean that science must come to the rescue because the natural fertility is inherently insufficient. It means that rescue is necessary because the natural fertility has been destroyed.
By spreading straw, growing clover, and returning to the soil all organic residues, the earth comes to possess all the nutrients needed to grow rice and winter grain in the same field year after year. By natural farming, fields that have already been damaged by cultivation or the use of agricultural chemicals can be effectively rehabilitated.
Part III
One Farmer Speaks Out
There is a great deal of concern in Japan these days, and justifiably so, about the deteriorating quality of the environment and the resulting contamination of food. Citizens have organized boycotts and large demonstrations to protest the indifference of political and industrial leaders. But all of this activity, if carried out in the present spirit, only results in wasted effort. To talk about cleaning up specific cases of pollution is like treating symptoms of a disease while the root cause of the malady continues to fester.
Two years ago, for instance, a conference for the purpose of discussing pollution was organized by the Agricultural Management Research Center, together with the Organic Agricultural Council and the Nada Co-op. The chairman of the conference was Mr. Teruo Ichiraku, who is head of the Japanese Organic Farmers Association, and is also one of the most powerful figures in the government's Agricultural Co-op. The recommendations of this agency as to which crops and seed varieties should be grown, how much fertilizer should be used and which chemicals should be applied are followed by nearly every village farmer in Japan.
Because such a diversity of influential people were taking part, I attended with hopes that far-reaching action could be decided upon and put into effect.
From the standpoint of publicizing the food pollution problem, this conference could be said to have been successful. But like the other meetings, the discussions degenerated into a series of highly technical reports by research specialists and personal accounts of the horrors of food contamination. No one seemed willing to address the problem at its fundamental level.
In a discussion of mercury poisoning of tuna, for example, the representative of the Fisheries Bureau first spoke of how truly frightening the problem had become. At that time mercury pollution was being discussed every day on the radio and in the newspapers, and so everyone listened closely to hear what he had to say.
The speaker said that the amount of mercury in the bodies of tuna, even those taken in the Antarctic Ocean and near the North Pole, was extremely high. However, when a laboratory specimen taken several hundred years ago was dissected and analyzed, this fish, contrary to expectation, also contained mercury. His tentative conclusion suggested that mercury consumption was necessary for the fish to live.
The people in the audience looked at each other in disbelief. The purpose of the meeting was supposed to have been to determine how to deal with the pollution which had already contaminated the environment, and to take measures to correct it. Instead, here was this representative