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I started natural farming after the war with just one small plot, but gradually I acquired additional acreage by taking over surrounding pieces of abandoned land and caring for them by hand.

Masanobu Fukuoka

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Masanobu Fukuoka
Age: 93 †
Born: 1914
Born: February 2
Died: 2007
Died: August 16
Agronomist
Botanist
Environmentalist
Farmer
Philosopher
Teacher
Writer
Started
Farming
Land
Acquired
Hand
Gradually
Small
Abandoned
Natural
Plot
War
Caring
Acreage
Hands
Taking
Additional
Pieces
Surrounding

More quotes by Masanobu Fukuoka

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Natural farming is just farming, nothing more. You don't have to be a spiritually oriented person to practice my methods.
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Although natural farming - since it can teach people to cultivate a deep understanding of nature - may lead to spiritual insight, it's not strictly a spiritual practice.
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People should relate to nature as birds do. Birds don't run around carefully preparing fields, planting seeds, and harvesting food. They don't create anything . . . they just receive what is there for them with a humble and grateful heart.
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One thing is all things. To resolve one matter, one must resolve all matters. Changing one thing changes all things. Once I made the decision to sow rice in the fall, I found that I could also stop transplanting, and plowing, and applying chemical fertilizers, and preparing compost, and spraying pesticides.
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There is no time in modern agriculture for a farmer to write a poem or compose a song
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We receive our nourishment from the Mother Earth. So we should put our hands together in an attitude of prayer and say please and thank you when dealing with nature.
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Left alone, the earth maintains its own fertility, in accordance with the orderly cycle of plant and animal life.
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Straw mulch, a ground cover of white clover interplanted with the crops, and temporary flooding all provide effective weed control in my fields.
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The increasing desolation of nature, the exhaustion of resources, the uneasiness and disintegration of the human spirit, all have been brought about by humanity's trying to accomplish something.
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Farming is not just for growing crops, it is for the cultivation...o f human beings!
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Life on a small farm might seem primitive, but by living such a life we become able to discover the Great Path. I believe that one who deeply respects his neighborhood and everyday world in which he lives will be shown the greatest of all worlds.
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As far as my planting program goes, I simply broadcast rye and barley seed on separate fields in the fall . . . while the rice in those areas is still standing. A few weeks after that I harvest the rice, and then spread its straw back over the fields as mulch.
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Unless people can become natural people, there can be neither natural farming nor natural food.
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Weeds play an important part in building soil fertility and in balancing the biological community . . .
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If a farmer does abandon his or her tame fields completely to nature, mistakes and destruction are inevitable.
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One of the most important discoveries I made in those early years was that to succeed at natural farming, you have to get rid of your expectations. Such products of the mind are often incorrect or unrealistic . . . and can lead you to think you've made a mistake if they're not met.
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Gradually I came to realize that the process of saving the desert of the human heart and revegetating the actual desert is actually the same thing.
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If you do not try to make food delicious, you will find that nature has made it so.
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The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.
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Of course, I have made mistakes . . . just as every grower does. However, I never really think of them as mistakes!
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