The One Straw Revolution - Masanobu Fukuoka used hardcover book First Edition

THE ONE STRAW REVOLUTION

An Introduction to Natural Farming

by MASANOBU FUKUOKA

with a preface by Wendell Berry, edited by Larry Korn

For more Permaculture and Sustainability books by Bill Mollison and others click here

Used hardcover book with dustjacket in very good condition, 183 pages. First Edition / First Printing, published by Rodale Press 1978. Dustjacket is price clipped, has some minor chipping at edges. Boards and book are excellent. Inscription inside front cover, no other writing, marks, tears, loose or missing pages. Very clean copy, appears unread.

Also included with this book is a full-page review by Bill Mollison, which was published in the Nation Review newspaper, September 15 - 21, 1978. The review begins: It is rarely, these days, that a book really knocks me out, but this one did it. And later in the article he mentions Permaculture, 'his own immature effort in the same direction'.

Masanobu Fukuoka’s book about growing food has been changing the lives of readers since it was first published in 1978. It is a call to arms, a manifesto, and a radical rethinking of the global systems we rely on to feed us all. At the same time, it is the memoir of a man whose spiritual beliefs underpin and inform every aspect of his innovative farming system.

Equal parts farmer and philosopher, Fukuoka is recognized as one of the founding thinkers of the permaculture movement. But when he was twenty-five, he was just another biologist taking advantage of the unprecedented development of postwar Japan. Then a brush with death shattered his complacency. He quit his job and returned to his family farm. Over the decades that followed, Fukuoka perfected his so-called “do-nothing” technique, a way of farming that dispenses with both modern agribusiness practices and centuries of folk wisdom, replacing them with a system that seeks to work with nature rather than make it over through increasingly elaborate - and often harmful - methods. Fukuoka developed commonsense, sustainable practices that all but eliminated the use of pesticides, fertilizer, tillage, and the wasteful effort associated with them - and his yields matched those of neighboring factory farms. His farm became a gathering place for people from all over the world who wished to adapt his ways to their own local cultures.

About the author

Masanobu Fukuoka ( February 2, 1913 - August 16, 2008) was born in a small farming village on the island of Shikoku in southern Japan. He is the author of The One-Straw Revolution, The Road Back to Nature and The Natural Way Of Farming. He was one of the pioneers of no-till grain cultivation. His revolutionary method of sustainable agriculture is referred to as "natural farming", no-till cultivation, Fukuoka Farming, or the Fukuoka Method.

Fukuoka trained as a microbiologist in his native Japan and began his career as a soil scientist specializing in plant pathology. At age 25, he began to doubt the wisdom of modern agricultural science. He eventually quit his job as a research scientist, and returned to his family's farm on the island of Shikoku in Southern Japan to grow organic mikans. From that point on he devoted his life to developing a unique small scale organic farming system that does not require weeding, pesticide or fertilizer applications, or tilling.

The timing and circumstances of Fukuoka's conversion from Western agricultural science, parallels the new movement in the 1940s to organic farming and gardening in Europe and the US, led by pioneers like Lady Eve Balfour, Sir Albert Howard, and J.I. Rodale (founder of Rodale Press). However Fukuoka himself believed that he was going a step further than organic farming:

"The problem, however, is that most people do not yet understand the distinction between organic gardening and natural farming. Both scientific agriculture and organic farming are basically scientific in their approach. The boundary between the two is not clear." (The Road Back to Nature page 363). He received the Deshikottan and the Ramon Magsaysay awards in 1988, and the Earth Council Award in 1997.

At age 92, Fukuoka still managed to lecture when he could, such as at the Expo 2005 in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. Fukuoka passed away at the age of 95 on August the 16th 2008, at his home in Iyo, Ehime Prefecture, Japan.

The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka