Ebook: The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming

"Call it Zen and the Art of Farming or a Little Green Book, Masanobu Fukuoka's manifesto about farming, eating, and the limits of human knowledge presents a radical challenge to the global systems we rely on for our food. At the same time, it is a spiritual memoir of a man whose innovative system of cultivating the earth reflects a deep faith in the wholeness and balance of the natural world. As Wendell Berry writes in his preface, the book 'is valuable to us because it is at once practical and philosophical. It is an inspiring, necessary book about agriculture because it is not just about agriculture'. Trained as a scientist, Fukuoka rejected both modern agribusiness and centuries of agricultural practice, deciding instead that the best forms of cultivation mirror nature's own laws. Over the next three decades he perfected his so-called do-nothing technique: commonsense, sustainable practices that all but eliminate the use of pesticides, fertilizer, tillage, and perhaps most significantly, wasteful effort."--Book cover.;Introduction -- Preface -- Editor's Introduction -- Notes on the translation -- PART I. Look at this Grain -- Nothing at All -- Returning to the Country -- Toward a Do-Nothing Farming -- Returning to the Source -- One Reason Natural Farming Has Not Spread -- Humanity Does not Know Nature -- PART II. Four Principles of Natural Farming -- Farming Among the Weeds -- Farming with Straw -- Growing Rice in a Dry Field -- Orchard Trees -- Orchard Earth -- Growing Vegetables like Wild Plants -- The Terms for Abandoning Chemicals -- Limits of the Scientific Method -- PART III. One Farmer Speaks Out -- A Modest Solution to a Difficult Problem -- The Fruit of Hard Times -- The Marketing of Natural Food -- Commercial Agriculture Will Fail -- Research for Whose Benefit? -- What is Human Food? -- A Merciful Death for Barley -- Simply Serve Nature and All is Well -- Various Schools of Natural Farming -- PART IV. Confusion About Food -- Nature's Food Mandala -- The Culture of food -- Living by Bread Alone -- Summing up Diet -- Food and Farming -- PART V. Foolishness Comes Out Looking Smart -- Who is the Fool? -- I Was Born To Go to Nursery School -- Drifting Clouds and the Illusion of Science -- The Theory of Relativity -- A Village Without War and Peace -- The One-Straw Revolution.