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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] TWO AGRICULTURES, NOT ONE, By John Michael Greer

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: Dieter Brand <diebrand@yahoo.com>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] TWO AGRICULTURES, NOT ONE, By John Michael Greer
  • Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 01:05:18 -0700 (PDT)

I have had some involvement with Natural Farming as it is practiced in Japan.
Fukuoka is only one of many. Most Natural Farmers in Japan practice
zero-input farming, in other words, only the residues of plants that have
grown on a field may be returned to that same field. In addition to kitchen
scraps etc. these are mostly rice and wheat straw as well as the hulls and
shavings that remain after hulling and polishing the rice. It is true that
many small Natural Farmers produce mainly for their own consumption, but
there are a number commercial Natural Farms that do sell produce off the land
or operate like CSAs. And produce from Natural Farms can be purchased at a
few shops or via the Internet. Rather than depleting the soil, 20 to 30
years of experience have shown that Natural Farming can actually enriched
soil without any external inputs.

This has to be qualified, however, by noting that farming soils in Japan are
better than soils in most parts of the World. Plentiful rains during the
main growing season in the summer have produced plenty of biomass each year
ever since the formation of land on this planet. This cannot be achieved by
a few years of soil-building. Recent studies have shown that levels of
mycorrhiza in many Japanese farming soils are 5 to 10 times higher than in
most farming soils in the US. In the poor soil of arid regions the
“zero-input field” is impossible. All we can hope to achieve is the
“zero-input farm”.

Dieter Brand
Portugal









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