COUNTRY OF ORIGINNatural Farming - Clay pellets to grow agro food products and revegetate deserts
What problem does it solve?
Natural farming has three main goals: to create a rich, fertile soil; to control soil erosion and to create balance or harmony in order to solve the problems of diseases and insect attack. The key to achieve these three goals at once is a big variety of plants and living beings living together, that is the big biodiversity.
We can grow two kinds of grains in the same field, year after year, that is a winter grain (wheat, barley, rye or oats) and a summer crop (rice, corn, millet etc.) in a continuous rotation. Fukuoka had managed to produce from 600-800 kg of barley and up to 1 ton of rice per year per 1000m square, thanks to his high-yield varieties of rice, which he called “Happy Hill”, creating at the same time a rich soil.
Speaking about vegetables we can establish a rotation of two or three different types of vegetables thus producing more and improving the soil. As far as the fruit trees are concerned we can establish an orchard where forest trees, fruit trees, vegetables and green manure plants growing underneath live in harmony together.
The natural farming method tries to solve the problems caused by scientific farming. In his last book: The revolution of God, Man and Nature, Fukuoka wrote:
“To put it very briefly, my theory is that human knowledge and actions have destroyed nature, and thus, if we abandon them and leave nature to nature, nature will recover on its own. This does not, however, mean non intervention. In the case of places like the desert, which have lost their regenerative power, we must mix seeds and microorganisms of every variety in clay pellets and scatter them from the air. In India there are more than 500 varieties of trees that bear edible nuts and 500 varieties of fruit trees. In addition, we should sow among them a mixture of 500 varieties of grains, vegetables, and green manure plants, ideally on the Deccan Plateau and in the desert. My supposition is that, no matter how bad the conditions, there will be some seed varieties suited to that place that will germinate. Even though some will wither and die from extreme dryness and heat, if we sow various green manure plants, vegetables, and grasses along with drought and salt-resistant plants, a number of them will survive. If for even a short time the surface of the earth is covered with vegetation, its temperature will be lowered. The role of the pilot plants is to aid in creating conditions that will allow other plants to germinate.
A second purpose in sowing a variety of plants and microorganisms is to awaken the sleeping earth. Among deserts, there are deserts of sand that have lost the ability to support life and have died, but most savannas are young clay deserts in which the nutrients needed by plants are only sleeping. In order to cause chelation, in other words, to rouse the earth and bring about the rebirth of life, a variety of seeds of lower plant forms and microorganisms are necessary.
The earth will not come back to life if we only plant a number of useful trees in the desert. A plant cannot grow up in isolation. To grow, a hundred-meter tree needs enough soil for one hundred meters of roots. Also, trees of seventy, forty, and twenty meters are necessary. Furthermore, trees are needed to protect the base of the tall trees, and beneath them, undergrowth vegetation and microorganisms are necessary. Only with the aid of all these, can a tree grow to a height of one hundred meters. Life does not exist in isolation, and a large tree is the crystallization of the cooperation of numerous living things. When a large forest is created, and the degree of nature or density of vegetation is high, then rain will begin to fall. Clouds will form over the mountains and rise up from the valleys. The principal actors in the forest are not just the tall trees. Ferns, moss, and fallen leaves all have roles to play.
Rather than trying to secure water and cause rain to fall using human knowledge, we should stop ignoring the mind of nature. Then the earth will naturally be covered with lush green vegetation. The mind of nature is the core or heart of nature. If we do not know the heart of nature, the fundamental source of the creation of the cosmos, then no matter how much we observe the outer aspect of nature, the recovery of nature will be impossible.”
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