Throwing some seeds over a cleared piece of land may seem a haphazard method of farming, a negative person may say it’s doomed to failure, but proof to the contrary is here – a happy plant-filled field that will produce a great yield. It may seem like beginner’s luck that the rice paddy growing so happily, when actually it is an ancient secret that man is starting to be willing to see evidence of again.
The cultivator in Gabriel Guhr’s video cites his very simple methods – throwing seeds across the land, covering them with straw from the grass removed when clearing the land and walking over the straw to trample the seeds into the ground. No tilling, no carefully measured placement of seeds, just a well chosen location and allowing life to do what it does best. As the speaker in the video states “It’s a very efficient planting method.” But what method is that, exactly?
Do-Nothing Farming
The speaker in the film states that his plan was to imitate as best as possible the methods of Masanobu Fukuoka, the man who wrote extensively on and pioneered the Fukuoka method, which is translated directly into English as Nature Farming, previously referred to as Natural Farming. This method came about after Masanobu felt he could no longer reconcile himself with the agricultural methods that were being promulgated around the 1930’s. Trained as a microbiologist and agricultural scientist but choosing to break away from the methodologies he had been studying, he became the creator of “Do-nothing farming” or Nature Farming.
This method is related to traditional methods of cultivation used by indigenous cultures and has the same objectives as that of permaculture created by Bill Mollison, but functions under a different, more spiritual philosophy. Fukuoka’s philosophy is that human intellect and intervention has no place in the natural order of harmonious flora and fauna communities, while permaculture functions on the principle that human intellect can be used in the right way to control or work with nature for human benefit. Despite the almost polar opposite philosophies, the results are strikingly similar, as are many of the methods. Fukuoka’s work such as the book The Last Straw has influenced and informed Bill’s theories too, especially in relation to the cultivation of grains.
Nature farming requires no tilling, no weeding, no pesticides and no herbicides. Instead, intercropping is used to promote healthy plant and crop growth while controlling or suppressing weeds and boost nitrogen fixation. This is also achieved by the perfectly natural method of fertilization Fukuoka has very little to do with, other than throwing it over the field – the straw from the last crop. In this way the nutrients that are taken out of the ground are returned to it, and because of the natural distribution of the straw, the next grain crop is able to grow through the straw, while most weeds are not.
This leads into another interesting point as Fukuoka’s soil is distinctive because the quality of the soil increases in richness and nutrient levels over the years instead of decreasing. This is all because he allowed plant life to do what it does naturally and return to where it came from. A natural balance of insect and animal life is also allowed to symbiotically and harmoniously co-exist. Intervention of any kind is only done after careful observation, and perhaps that careful observation is where the two philosophies of Permaculture and Nature Farming are perfectly in tune with each other – if man is willing to learn from nature and allow nature to follow it’s own well-chosen path, harmony and perfectly sustainable symbiosis can be achieved.
Nature Farming in Action
Going back to the earlier video of some very healthy Cateto rice plants in Mantiqueira, Brazil, we can see an excellent example of Fukuoka’s methods being employed. Careful observation of the location was made, and the land was chosen due to the very tall grass that was growing on the land prior to intervention. Because all grains are essentially different types of tall grass, this was a great location to grow the rice.
The second step was experimentation, which is intrinsic to Fukuoka’s methods. He would try things and carefully observe the results so that each year his minimal actions would only boost and benefit the hard work his crops were doing. In this example, a test area of about a square meter or 1.7 square feet of the land was cleared of the previous grass, then Cateto rice thrown over it and straw was thrown over that. The rice sprouted well, so the field was cleared with a brush cutter and the roots removed with a hoe in order to repeat the process over the entire field.
Again, the seeds were not sown, they were thrown. The straw was not carefully placed over the seeds but chucked over it in a more natural manner, and then all of this was trampled on while the straw was being distributed. By observing the natural patterns Fukuoka moved away from sowing rice seeds in spring, and rather did so in autumn when they would naturally fall to the ground, after which there would be some unorganized scattering of dry grass leaves that would fall to the ground, providing cover and returning nutrients to the soil. As the season would go from wet to dry, more animals would move over the land and trample the seeds into the ground.
One could say that do-nothing farming is essentially copying – carefully observing nature and copying what has worked well for millennia in order to benefit from it. This may be the best application of human intellect when it comes to cultivation and agriculture, to copy and promote natural cycles instead of trying to reinvent the process that developed over millennia without any human intervention to begin with.
