The One-Straw Revolution - Multiworld India

One Reason ThatNatural Farming Has Not SpreadOver the past twenty or thirty years this method of growing rice andwinter grain has been tested over a wide range of climates and naturalconditions. Almost every prefecture in Japan has run tests comparingyields of "direct seeding non-cultivation" with those of paddy ricegrowing and the usual ridge and furrow rye and barley cultivation. Thesetests have produced no evidence to contradict the universal applicabilityof natural farming.And so one may ask why this truth has not spread. I think that one ofthe reasons is that the world has become so specialized that it hasbecome impossible for people to grasp anything in its entirety. Forexample, an expert in insect damage prevention from the KochiPrefectural Testing Center came to inquire why there were so few riceleaf-hoppers in my fields even though I had not used insecticide. Uponinvestigating the habitat, the balance between insects and their naturalenemies, the rate of spider propagation and so on, the leaf-hoppers werefound to be just as scarce in my fields as in the Center's fields, which aresprayed countless times with a variety of deadly chemicals.The professor was also surprised to find that while the harmfulinsects were few, their natural predators were far more numerous in myfields than in22