Sowing Seeds in the Desert

by Fukuoka, Masanobu; Korn, Larry

• ISBN13: 9781603584180
• ISBN10: 1603584188
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-05-28
• Publisher: Chelsea Green Pub Co

Summary

The earth is in great peril, due to the corporatization of agriculture, the rising climate crisis, and the ever-increasing levels of global poverty, starvation, and desertification on a massive scale. This present condition of global trauma is not "natural," but a result of humanity's destructive actions. And, according to Masanobu Fukuoka, it is reversible. We need to change not only our methods of earth stewardship, but also the very way we think about the relationship between human beings and nature.Fukuoka grew up on a farm on the island of Shikoku in Japan. As a young man he worked as a customs inspector for plants going into and out of the country. This was in the 1930s when science seemed poised to create a new world of abundance and leisure, when people fully believed they could improve upon nature by applying scientific methods and thereby reap untold rewards. While working there, Fukuoka had an insight that changed his life forever. He returned to his home village and applied this insight to developing a revolutionary new way of farming that he believed would be of great benefit to society. This method, which he called "natural farming," involved working with, not in opposition to, nature.Fukuoka's inspiring and internationally best-selling book, The One-Straw Revolutionwas first published in English in 1978. In this book, Fukuoka described his philosophy of natural farming and why he came to farm the way he did. One-Strawwas a huge success in the West, and spoke directly to the growing movement of organic farmers and activists seeking a new way of life. For years after its publication, Fukuoka traveled around the world spreading his teachings and developing a devoted following of farmers seeking to get closer to the truth of nature. Sowing Seeds in the Desert, a summation of those years of travel and research, is Fukuoka's last major work-and perhaps his most important. Fukuoka spent years working with people and organizations in Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the United States, to prove that you could, indeed, grow food and regenerate forests with very little irrigation in the most desolate of places. Only by greening the desert, he said, would the world ever achieve true food security.This revolutionary book presents Fukuoka's plan to rehabilitate the deserts of the world using natural farming, including practical solutions for feeding a growing human population, rehabilitating damaged landscapes, reversing the spread of desertification, and providing a deep understanding of the relationship between human beings and nature. Fukuoka's message comes right at the time when people around the world seem to have lost their frame of reference, and offers us a way forward.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xi
Editor's Notes	p. xxix
About the Illustrations	p. xxxiii
The Call to Natural Farming	p. 1
My Return to Farming	p. 4
Challenges During Wartime	p. 6
The True Meaning of Nature	p. 8
The Errors of Human Thought	p. 9
No God or Buddha Will Rescue the Human Race	p. 13
The Dragonfly Will Be the Messiah	p. 14
A Life of Natural Culture	p. 15
Reconsidering Human Knowledge	p. 21
The Birth of Discriminating Knowledge	p. 21
Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection	p. 23
Understanding True Time and Space	p. 25
The Rising and Sinking of Genes	p. 27
An Alternative View of Evolution	p. 29
Naturally Occurring Hybrids in My Rice Fields	p. 31
Abandoning What We Think We Know	p. 34
Healing a World In Crisis	p. 41
Restoring the Earth and Its People	p. 42
In Nature, There Are No Beneficial or Harmful Insects	p. 43
Eastern and Western Medicine	p. 44
The Fear of Death	p. 47
The Question of Spirit	p. 49
The Money-Sucking Octopus Economy	p. 50
The Illusion of the Law of Causality	p. 56
The Current Approach of Desertification Countermeasures	p. 60
Global Desertification	p. 69
Lessons from the Landscapes of Europe and the United States	p. 70
The Tragedy of Africa	p. 75
Sowing Seeds in an African Refugee Camp	p. 79
Revegetating the Earth Through Natural Methods	p. 85
Agricultural "Production" Is Actually Deduction	p. 88
Commercial Feedlots Will Destroy the Land, Cultured Fish the Sea	p. 90
Sowing Seeds in the Desert	p. 92
Creating Greenbelds	p. 95
The Revegetation of India	p. 99
Notes from an International Environmental Summit	p. 113
Travels on the West Coast of the United States	p. 121
Farmer's Markets	p. 124
Urban Natural Farms	p. 128
People Sow and Birds Sow	p. 129
Rice Growing in the Sacramento Valley	p. 134
From Organic Farming to Natural Farming	p. 136
Two International Conferences	p. 141
Japanese Cedars at the Zen Center	p. 145
Appendices
Creating a Natural Farm in Temperature and Subtropical Zones	p. 151
Making Clay Seed Pellets for Use in Revegetation	p. 161
Producing an All-Around Natural Culture Medium	p. 166
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