There is unease over the crusader of natural farming, Subhash Palekar, for renaming the technique after himself
MORE THAN 40 years ago, a Japanese farmer upended conventional thinking on agriculture with his path-breaking book, The One-Straw Revolution. In the book published in 1975, Masanobu Fukuoka advocated a return to natural farming, that is, applying the laws of nature to agricultural practices. It was a revolutionary concept that showed farming needed no external inputs at all. Fukuoka’s idea was simple: leave the Earth alone. No ploughing, no tilling, no use of chemicals or prepared fertilisers. Nor did he flood his rice fields as farmers in Asia have done from time immemorial. Yet, the onetime plant pathologist stunned the world with crop yields that equalled, if not surpassed, those of Japan’s best farms.
This story is from the November 01, 2018 edition of Down To Earth.
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This story is from the November 01, 2018 edition of Down To Earth.
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