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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.

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
Years
Early
Incorrect
Think
Succeed
Farming
Thinking
Mistake
Discoveries
Natural
Mets
Often
Discovery
Important
Expectations
Made
Products
Mind
Lead
Unrealistic

More quotes by Masanobu Fukuoka

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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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Farming is not just for growing crops, it is for the cultivation...o f 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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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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I believe that even 'returning-to-nature' and anti pollution activities, no matter how commendable, are not moving toward a genuine solution if they are carried out solely in reaction to the over development of the present age.
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Unless people can become natural people, there can be neither natural farming nor natural food.
Masanobu Fukuoka
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Weeds play an important part in building soil fertility and in balancing the biological community . . .
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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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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.
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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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If a farmer does abandon his or her tame fields completely to nature, mistakes and destruction are inevitable.
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I believe that a revolution can begin from this one strand of straw. Seen at a glance, this rice straw may appear light and insignificant. Hardly anyone would believe that it could start a revolution. But I have come to realize the weight and power of this straw. For me, this revolution is very real.
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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.
Masanobu Fukuoka
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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.
Masanobu Fukuoka
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If we throw mother nature out the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork.
Masanobu Fukuoka
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There is no time in modern agriculture for a farmer to write a poem or compose a song
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.
Masanobu Fukuoka
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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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The real path to natural farming requires that a person know what unaltered nature is, so that he or she can instinctively understand what needs to be done - and what must not be done - to work in harmony with its processes.
Masanobu Fukuoka