The One-Straw Revolution_ An Introduction to Natural Farming - Masanobu Fukuoka [34]
I stood up and suggested that we take joint action to set up, then and there, a concrete plan to deal with pollution. Would it not be better to talk straightforwardly about discontinuing the use of the chemicals which are causing the pollution? Rice, for example can be grown very well without chemicals, as can citrus, and it is not difficult to grow vegetables that way either. I said that it could be done, and that I had been doing it on my farm for years, but that as long as the government continued to endorse the use of chemicals, no one else would give clean farming a try.
Members of the Fisheries Bureau were present at the meeting, as were people from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Agricultural Co-op. If they and the chairman of the conference, Mr. Ichiraku, had really wanted to get things going and had suggested that farmers throughout the country should try growing rice without chemicals, sweeping changes could have been made.
There was one great problem, however. If crops were to be grown without agricultural chemicals, fertilizer, or machinery, the giant chemical companies would become unnecessary and the government's Agricultural Co-op Agency would collapse. To put the matter right out front, I said that the Co-ops and the modern agricultural policy-makers depend on large capital investment in fertilizer and agricultural machinery for their base of power. To do away with machinery and chemicals would bring about a complete change in the economic and social structures. Therefore, I could see no way that Mr. Ichiraku, the Co-ops or the government officials could speak out in favor of measures to clean up pollution.
When I spoke out in this way, the chairman said, "Mr. Fukuoka, you are upsetting the conference with your remarks," shutting my mouth for me. Well, that's what happened.
A Modest Solution to a Difficult Problem
So it appears that government agencies have no intention of stopping pollution. A second difficulty is that all aspects of the problem of food pollution must be brought together and solved at the same time. A problem cannot be solved by people who are concerned with only one or another of its parts.
To the extent that the consciousness of everyone is not fundamentally transformed, pollution will not cease.
For example, the farmer thinks that the Inland Sea* is of no concern to him. He thinks that it is the officials of the Fisheries Bureau whose business it is to look after fish, and that it is the job of the Environmental Council to take care of ocean pollution. In this way of thinking lies the problem.
The most commonly used chemical fertilizers, ammonium sulfate, urea, super phosphate and the like, are used in large amounts, only fractions of which are absorbed by the plants in the field. The rest leaches into streams and rivers, eventually flowing into the Inland Sea. These nitrogen compounds become food for algae and plankton which multiply in great numbers, causing the red tide to appear. Of course, industrial discharge of mercury and other contaminating wastes also contribute to the pollution, but for the most part water pollution in Japan comes from agricultural chemicals.
So it is the farmer who must shoulder major responsibility for the red tide. The farmer who applies polluting chemicals to his field, the corporations who manufacture these chemicals, the village officials who believe in the convenience of chemicals and offer technical guidance accordingly—if each of these people does not ponder the problem deeply there will be no solving the question of water pollution.
As it is now, only those who are most directly affected become active in trying to cope with pollution problems, as in the case of the local fishermen's struggle against the big oil companies after the oil spill near Mizushima. Or else some professor proposes to