In principle, practitioners of natural farming maintain that it is not a
technique but a
view, or a way of seeing ourselves as a
part of nature, rather than separate from or above it. Accordingly, the methods themselves vary widely depending on culture and local conditions. Rather than offering a structured method, Fukuoka distilled the natural farming mindset into five principles: • No
tillage • No
fertilizer • No
pesticides or
herbicides • No
weeding • No
pruning File:Production still from "Final Straw, Food, Earth, Happiness" shows rice harvesting on a natural farm.jpg|alt=A young man helps harvest rice by hand at a natural farm in a production still from the film "Final Straw: Food, Earth, Happiness"|thumb|A young man helps harvest rice by hand at a natural farm, in this production still from the film "Final Straw: Food, Earth, Happiness" Though many of his plant varieties and practices relate specifically to Japan and even to local conditions in
subtropical western
Shikoku, his philosophy and the governing principles of his farming systems have been applied widely around the world, from Africa to the
temperate northern hemisphere. Principally, natural farming minimises human labour and adopts, as closely as practical, nature's production of foods such as
rice,
barley,
daikon or
citrus in biodiverse agricultural
ecosystems. Without
plowing,
seeds germinate well on the surface if site conditions meet the needs of the seeds placed there. Fukuoka used the presence of
spiders in his fields as a
key performance indicator of
sustainability. Fukuoka specifies that the ground remain covered by
weeds,
white clover,
alfalfa,
herbaceous legumes, and sometimes deliberately sown
herbaceous plants.
Ground cover is present along with grain, vegetable crops and
orchards. Chickens run free in orchards and
ducks and
carp populate rice fields. Periodically ground layer plants including weeds may be cut and left on the surface, returning their nutrients to the soil, while suppressing weed growth. This also facilitates the sowing of seeds in the same area because the dense ground layer hides the seeds from animals such as birds. For summer rice and winter barley grain crops, ground cover enhances
nitrogen fixation.
Straw from the previous crop
mulches the
topsoil. Each grain crop is sown before the previous one is harvested by
broadcasting the seed among the standing crop. Later, this method was reduced to a single direct seeding of clover, barley and rice over the standing heads of rice. The result is a denser crop of smaller, but highly productive and stronger plants. Fukuoka's practice and philosophy emphasised small scale operation and challenged the need for mechanised farming techniques for high productivity, efficiency and
economies of scale. While his family's farm was larger than the Japanese average, he used one field of grain crops as a small-scale example of his system. == Yoshikazu Kawaguchi ==