The One-Straw Revolution_ An Introduction to Natural Farming - Masanobu Fukuoka [42]
Meat and other imported foods are luxuries because they require more energy and resources than the traditional vegetables and grains produced locally. It follows that people who limit themselves to a simple local diet need do less work and use less land than those with an appetite for luxury.
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. The absurd idea has swept in from somewhere that a change from rice-eating to bread-eating indicates an improvement in the everyday life of the Japanese people. Actually this is not so. Brown rice and vegetables may seem to be coarse fare, but this is the very finest diet nutritionally, and enables human beings to live simply and directly.
If we do have a food crisis it will not be caused by the insufficiency of nature's productive power, but by the extravagance of human desire.
* Watercress, shepherd's purse, wild turnip, cottonweed, chickweed, wild radish, and bee nettle. Illustrated on pg. 121.
** Although most meat in North America is produced by feeding field crops such as wheat, barley, corn, and soybeans to animals, there are also large areas of land best used when rotated regularly into pasture or hayfields. In Japan, almost no such land exists. Almost all meat must be imported.
A Merciful Death for Barley
Forty years ago, as a result of increasing political hostility between the United States and Japan, importing wheat from America became impossible. There was a general movement throughout the country to grow wheat domestically. The American wheat varieties being used require a long growing season and the grain finally matured in the middle of Japan's rainy season. Even after the farmer had taken such great pains to grow the crop, it would often rot during the harvest. These varieties proved to be very unreliable and highly susceptible to disease, so the farmers did not want to grow wheat. When ground and toasted in the traditional way, the taste was so terrible that you almost choked and had to spit it out.
The traditional varieties of Japanese rye and barley can be harvested in May, before the rainy season, so they are comparatively safe crops. Farmers had wheat cultivation forced upon them nonetheless. Everyone laughed and said there was nothing worse than growing wheat, but they patiently went along with the government policy.
After the war, American wheat was again imported in large quantities, causing the price of wheat grown in Japan to fall. This added to the many other good reasons to discontinue wheat growing. "Give up wheat, give up wheat!" was the slogan propagated nationwide by the government's agricultural leaders, and the farmers gladly gave it up. At the same time, because of the low price of imported wheat, the government encouraged the farmers to stop growing the traditional winter crops of rye and barley. This policy was carried out and the fields of Japan were left to lie fallow through the winter.
About ten years ago I was chosen to represent Ehime Prefecture in NHK television's "Outstanding Farmer of the Year" competition. At that time I was asked by a member of the screening committee, "Mr. Fukuoka, why don't you give up growing rye and barley?" I answered, "Rye and barley are easy crops to raise, and by growing them in succession with rice we can produce the greatest number of calories from Japan's fields. That's why I don't give them up."
It was made clear that no one who stubbornly goes against