One-Straw Revolutionary

Long, long ago, hip folks in the Beatles era were jabbering about Masanobu Fukuoka’s book, The One-Straw Revolution.  It explained how he grew healthy food via natural farming, a low budget, low impact approach.  On his farm in Japan, Fukuoka was growing grain, fruit, and vegetables without plowing, cultivating, chemicals, compost, fertilizer, fossil energy, erosion, pruning, or regular weeding.  He farmed like this for more than 25 years, and his yields were comparable to those at conventional farms.

The Japanese edition of his book was published in 1975, at a time when oil shocks had spurred interest in energy efficiency.  When the English version was published in 1978, it was an international smash hit, and Fukuoka became a celebrity.  Larry Korn was the book’s translator.  He’s a California lad who worked on Fukuoka’s farm for more than two years.  Now, in 2015, Korn has published One-Straw Revolutionary, which is the subject of this review.  It describes Fukuoka the man, and his philosophy, with glowing praise.

Korn detests conventional industrial farming, because it has so many drawbacks.  A bit less troublesome is organic farming done on an industrial scale.  At the positive end of the spectrum, he sees Fukuoka’s natural farming as very close to the ideal, both environmentally and philosophically.  A bit less wonderful than natural farming are permaculture and old-fashioned small-scale organic farming.

The ideal is something like the California Indians that were fondly described in M. Kat Anderson’s book, Tending the Wild.  They were wild hunter-gatherers who included wild plant seeds in their diet.  They devoted special care to the wild plant species that were important to their way of life.  Most folks would consider this to be mindful foraging — tending, not farming.

These Indians did not till the soil, and were not warlike.  Nobody owned the land.  There were no masters or servants.  There was no market system or tax collectors.  They had a time-proven method for living, and this knowledge was carefully passed from generation to generation.  The Indians were wild, free, and living sustainably — in the original meaning of the word.  When the Spanish invaders arrived, they saw these Indians as lazy, because they worked so little.

Fukuoka, on the other hand, resided in a densely populated industrial civilization, which was eagerly adapting American style industrial agriculture.  While the Indians foraged in a healthy wild ecosystem, Fukuoka worked on an ecosystem that had been heavily altered by centuries of agriculture.  He raised domesticated plants and animals.  Fukuoka was experimenting with radically unconventional methods, and had no traditions or mentors to guide him.

He practiced natural farming on one acre (0.4 ha) of grain field, and ten acres (4 ha) devoted to a mix of fruit trees and vegetables.  When Korn arrived in 1974, Fukuoka was assisted by five apprentices, who were not at all lazy, and rarely had a day off.  Cash had to be generated to purchase necessities and pay taxes, so surplus food had to be produced.  Food shipped off to cities carried away phosphorus, potassium, and other minerals that never returned to the farm’s soil.  Thus, his natural farming was quite different from California tending.

On the plus side, Fukuoka’s experiment benefitted from rich soil and generous rainfall — especially during the growing season.  Vegetables could be grown year round in the mild climate, and two crops of grain could be harvested each year.  On the down side, few succeeded in duplicating his success, even in Japan.  It took years to get the operation working, requiring extra servings of intuition and good luck.  Korn warned, “In most parts of North America and the world the specific method Mr. Fukuoka uses would be impractical.” 

In the natural farming mindset, the strategy should not be guided by intellect; nature should run the show.  Fukuoka talked to plants, asking them for guidance.  When he planted the orchard, he added a mixture of 100 types of seeds to wet clay, made seed balls, and tossed the balls on the land.  Seeds included grains, vegetables, flowers, clover, shrubs, and trees.  Nature decided what thrived and what didn’t.  Within a few years, a jungle of dense growth sorted itself out.  But sometimes nature gave him a dope slap.  In the early days, Fukuoka allowed nature to manage an existing orchard, and he was horrified to watch 400 trees die from insects and disease.

My work focuses on ecological sustainability, at a time when the original meaning of sustainability has largely been abandoned, and replaced by sparkly marketing hype.  I go on full alert when I see “sustainable agriculture.”  In my book, What is Sustainable, I took a look at what Korn calls “indigenous agriculture,” which is often imagined to be sustainable.

California tending was far different from the intensive corn farming on the other side of the Rockies, which led to soil depletion, erosion, population growth, health problems, warfare, and temporary civilizations like Cahokia.  In his book Indians of North America, Harold E. Driver estimated that less than half of North America was inhabited by farmers, but 90 to 95 percent of Native Americans ate crop foods, indicating that farm country was densely populated.  In corn country, defensive palisades surrounded many villages.

In 2015, humankind is temporarily in extreme overshoot, as the cheap energy bubble glides toward its sunset years, and the climate change storms are moving in.  Obviously, feeding seven billion sustainably is impossible.  At the same time, highly unsustainable industrial farming cannot continue feeding billions indefinitely.  It’s essential that young folks have a good understanding of ecological sustainability, and our education system is doing a terrible job of informing them.

The California Indians provide an important example of a vital truth.  When voluntary self-restraint was used to keep population below carrying capacity, people could live sustainably in a wild ecosystem via nothing more complex than hunting and foraging.  They had no need for farming, with its many headaches, backaches, and heartaches.

Korn’s book got exciting near the end.  Farming was just one facet of Fukuoka’s dream.  As a young man, he attended an agriculture college, and then endured a dreary job as a plant inspector.  His mind overloaded, his health fell apart, and he nearly died.  In 1937, he had a beautiful vision, quit his job, and went back home to the farm. 

In his vision, he suddenly realized that all life was one, and sacred.  Nature was whole, healthy, and perfect — and nothing our ambitious intellects imagined could improve this harmonious unity in any way.  Humans do not exist in a realm outside of nature, no matter what our teachers tell us.  Heaven is where your feet are standing.

The world of 1937 was a filthy, crazy, overpopulated train wreck, and this was largely thanks to science, dogmas, and philosophies.  Intellect alienated us from our “big life” home.  Civilization had created a dysfunctional world that was far too complex.  The lives of most people were no longer intimately connected to the natural world.

In agriculture, the herd of experts insisted that plowing, pruning, cultivating, chemicals, and weeding were mandatory for success.  One after another, Fukuoka abandoned these required tasks, made some needed adjustments, and didn’t crash.  His farm got simpler and healthier.

No other animals harm themselves by pursuing science.  Fukuoka realized that people should be like birds.  “Birds don’t run around carefully preparing fields, planting seeds, and harvesting food.  They don’t create anything… they just receive what is there for them with a humble and grateful heart.”  Bingo!

How can we reorient to nature?  “For most of us, that process begins by unlearning most of the things we were taught when we were young.”  The healing process requires abandoning many, many beliefs and behaviors that our culture encourages.  We need to waste less, spend less, and earn less, take only what we need, and nothing more.  “Wearing simple clothing, eating simple food, and living a humble, ordinary life elevates the human spirit by bringing us closer to the source of life.”

Korn, Larry, One-Straw Revolutionary, Chelsea Green, White River Junction, Vermont, 2015.

The End of Plenty

Nothing is more precious than balance, stability, and sustainability.  Today, we’re hanging by our fingernails to a skyrocket of intense insane change, and it’s the only way of life we’ve ever known.  Joel Bourne has spent his life riding the rocket.  He grew up on a farm, and studied agronomy at college, but sharp changes were causing many farmers to go bankrupt.  Taking over the family farm would have been extremely risky, so he became a writer for farm magazines.  Later, he was hired by National Geographic, where he has spent most of his career.

In 2008, he was assigned to cover the global food crisis, and this project hurled him into full awareness of the big picture.  The Green Revolution caused food production to skyrocket, and world population doubled in just 40 years.  Then, the revolution fizzled out, whilst population continued to soar.  Demographers have told us to expect another two or three billion for dinner in 2050.  Obviously, this had the makings of an excellent book, so Bourne sat down and wrote The End of Plenty.

The subtitle of his book is “The Race to Feed a Crowded World,” not “The Race to Tackle Overpopulation.”  A growing population thrills the greed community, and a diminishing herd does not.  Overpopulation is a problem that can be solved, and will be, either by enlightened self-restraint, by compulsory restraint, or, most likely, by the vigorous housekeeping of Big Mama Nature.  Feeding the current population is thrashing the planet, and feeding even more will worsen everything, but this is our primary objective.  We are, after all, civilized people, and enlightened self-restraint is for primitive savages who live sustainably in roadless paradises.

As incomes rise, the newly affluent are enjoying a more luxurious diet.  To satisfy this growing demand, food production must double by 2050.  “We’ll have to learn to produce as much food in the next four decades as we have since the beginning of civilization.”  Meanwhile, agriculture experts are not bursting with brilliant ideas.  “Producing food for more than 9 billion people without destroying the soil, water, oceans, and climate will be by far the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced.”  Bourne’s book describes a number of gigantic obstacles to doubling food production — or even maintaining current production.

Automobiles are more addictive than crystal meth.  Europeans guzzle biodiesel made from palm oil.  Americans are binging on corn ethanol.  The 2005 Energy Tax Act mandated the addition of biofuels to gasoline.  From 2001 to 2012, the ethanol gold rush drove corn prices from $1.60 to $8.28.  Not coincidentally, in 2008 food riots erupted in twenty countries.  The Arab Spring revolts began in 2011, a year of record harvests and record prices.  Today, almost 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop is being fed to motor vehicles — enough corn to feed everyone in Africa.  Experts predict that we’ll need four times more land for biofuels by 2030.

Crops require cropland, and almost all places ideal for farming are already in use, buried under roads and cities, or have been reduced to wasteland.  Every year, a million hectares (2.4 million acres) of cropland are taken out of production because of erosion, desertification, or development.  So, 90 percent of the desired doubling in food production will have to come from current cropland.  At the same time, the farm soils still in production have all seen better days.  Agriculture is an unsustainable activity that normally depletes soil quality over time.

Another obstacle is yield, the amount of food that can be produced on a hectare of land.  Between 1961 and 1986, cereal yields rose 89 percent, due to the Green Revolution.  But per capita grain production peaked in 1986.  Since then, population has been growing faster than yields.  Crop breeding experts are wringing their hands.  A number of indicators suggest that we are heading for “agricultural Armageddon,” but the experts remain silent, praying for miracles.  The biotech industry is focused on making huge profits selling seeds and poisons, not boosting yields.

Agriculture guzzles 70 percent of the water used by humans.  Irrigated fields have yields that are two to three times higher than rain fed fields.  Demand for water is projected to increase 70 to 90 percent by 2050, but water consumption today is already unsustainable.  “Over the next few decades, groundwater depletion could cripple agriculture around the world.”

Crop production is already being affected by climate change.  Research indicates that further warming will take a substantial toll on crop yields.  If temperatures rise 4°C, maybe half the world’s cropland will become unsuitable for agriculture.  Rising sea levels will submerge large regions currently used for rice production.

Meanwhile, population continues to grow, and some hallucinate it will grow until 2100.  In a nutshell, our challenge is “to double grain, meat, and biofuel production on fewer acres with fewer farmers, less water, higher temperatures, and more frequent droughts, floods, and heat waves.”  This must be done “without destroying the forests, oceans, soils, pollinators, or climate on which all life depends.”

Ladies and gentlemen, this is an outstanding book, and easy to read.  Most people have blind faith that innovation will keep the supermarkets filled forever.  Those who actually think a bit are focusing on stuff like solar panels, wind turbines, and electric cars.  Food is something we actually need, and it gets far less attention than it deserves.  By the end of the book, it’s impossible to conclude that everything is under control, and that our wise leaders will safely guide us through the storm.  Surprisingly, a few additional super-threats were not discussed in the book.

Bourne mentions that insects and weeds are developing resistance to expensive GMO wonder products, but stops there.  Big Mama Nature is the mother of resistance.  She never tires of producing new forms of life that are resistant to every toxin produced by science: insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, rodenticides, antibiotics.  Every brilliant weapon we invent will only work temporarily.  In terms of breeding new varieties of plants that are resistant to the latest biological threat, there are only so many tricks available.  The low-hanging fruit has already been used.  Just three plants enable the production of 80 to 90 percent of the calories we consume: corn, rice, and wheat. 

The global food system is heavily dependent on petroleum fuels, which are finite and nonrenewable.  There is no combination of biofuels or alternative energy that will come anywhere close to replacing oil.  In the coming decades, we will be forced to return to a muscle-powered food system.  We are entirely unprepared for this, and the consequences will be very exciting for people who eat food.

There is a similar issue with fertilizer.  Of the three primary plant nutrients, reserves of mineral phosphorus will be depleted first, and this will blindside conventional agriculture — no phosphorus, no life.  A hundred years ago, Chinese farmers used zero commercial fertilizer.  Every morning, long caravans of handcarts hauled large jugs of sewage from the cities to the fields.

In the end, readers are presented with two paths to the future.  One path looks like a whirlwind of big trouble, and this is not just a comic book doomer fantasy — it’s already blowing and rumbling.  The other path is happy and wonderful.  Humans will discover their legendary big brains, turn them on, shift industrial civilization into reverse, speed down the fast lane to genuine sustainability, and live happily ever after.  Place your bets. 

Bourne, Joel K., The End of Plenty: The Race to Feed A Crowded World, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2015.

For more information:  Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, Against the Grain, Topsoil and Civilization, Farmers of Forty Centuries, The Coming Famine, Cadillac Desert, Pillar of Sand.