Natural Farming
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Transcript of Natural Farming
NATURAL FARMINGA low-input, high-yield, nature-healing way of growing food.
Chinmay Soman
SCALE AND COMPLEXITY
Energy is captured most efficiently on the smallest scale
Complex biological systems are stable and productive
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TOWARDS ‘NATURAL’
A natural farm
Is a complex, self-regulating, designed ecosystem.
Contains a large variety of interdependent plants, animals, insects, birds and microorganisms
Requires no chemical inputs and minimal physical intervention
Utilizes and enriches local natural resources
Produces high yields with minimal inputs
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ORIGINS
Natural Farming
Masanobu Fukuoka
Japanese plant pathologist
“How about not doing this? How about not doing that?”
Developed during 1945-1975
Permaculture
Bill Mollison
Australian naturalist
Design “food forests” with interacting components
Developed during the ‘70s
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NATURAL FARMING
No Tilling No SowingNo Fertilizers No Pesticides
When you get right down to it, there are few
agricultural practices that are really necessary.
The reason that man's improved techniques seem to be
necessary is that the natural balance has been so badly
upset beforehand by those same techniques and the land
has become dependent on them.
-Masanobu Fukuoka, in ‘The One Straw Revolution’
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NO TILLING
Saves labor, energy, and time
Prevents nutrient leeching and soil erosion
Reduced CO2 and NOx emissions
Weeds can’t take hold
Soil is loosened, aerated and mixed by organisms
Permanent ground cover improves soil quality
Heavy equipment is avoided - the soil stays loose naturally
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NUTRIENT REPLENISHMENT
Conventional farming continuously removes nutrients from the soil
Permanent ground cover of white clover fixes nitrogen
All organic matter is returned to the field to decompose naturally (no active composting)
Animal and bird manure is used as a supplement
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BROADCAST SEEDING
Sowing protects seeds from birds etc.
Cover crop and straw provide protection - seeds can be simply broadcast by hand on the field
For extra protection, seeds can be enclosed in ‘Seed Balls’. (Red clay, compost, seeds, water)
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CONTROL LIFE WITH LIFE
Monoculture has many unoccupied niches where weeds and insects thrive
Insecticides kill natural predators, opening up more opportunities for insect population explosion
The variety of plants (including a few weeds) promote predator and food diversity
The absence of toxins enables natural predators to exist, and control insect population
Ground cover and straw hold weeds in check
Fungal infections are rare in the healthy ecosystem
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OTHER TECHNIQUES
Summer rice/Winter wheat system
Crop rotation to further replenish soil nutrients
No pruning of fruit trees
Orchards also have leguminous ground cover
Vegetables and shrubs under trees
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PERFORMANCE
Fukuoka consistently got yields equal or better than those on chemical farms.
Natural farming has been adapted and practiced successfully in various regions, including the temperate zone and the tropics.
Due to the extremely low labor and capital requirements, profitability is much higher than conventional farming.
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PERMACULTURE
Permaculture design is a method of assembling conceptual,
material, and strategic components in a pattern which functions
to benefit life in all its forms.
Each component should function in many ways, and serve the
needs and accept the products of other components.
The mature system should require the least possible maintenance,
and should produce a net surplus of energy over its lifetime.
- Bill Mollison, paraphrased from ‘Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual’
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DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Goals
Observation
Resources
Patterns
Cycles
Connections
Diversity
Stability
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UTILIZING RESOURCES
Small earthworks to trap and store water
Fertility is in the biomass, not in the soil
‘Weed’ plants continuously mulched to provide nutrients
A variety of plants to occupy all niches and harvest maximum sunlight
Small animals control pests, provide fertilizers, and produce extra food
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OCCUPYING ALL NICHES
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THE ZONE SYSTEM
0 The Home 1 Vegetables Garden
2 Orchard, Beehives 3 Commercial Crop
4 Semi Wild, Foraging 5 Wilderness
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PERFORMANCE
Has been demonstrated in all climates
Increasingly popular sustainable land use method
Permaculture Centers are being established all over the world to train more people
Academic and quantitative reports are required
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WHY STILL UNPOPULAR?
Inertia
Commercial force behind input-heavy traditional methods
Eschews reductionism - not popular academically
Requires experimentation to optimize for local conditions
Non-control
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Perhaps we cannot raise the winds. But each of us can put up the sail, so that when the
wind comes we can catch it.
E. F. Schumacher
Small Is Beautiful
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CREDITS
Chinmay Soman has created this presentation in iWork ’09, and released it under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. This means that you are free to use and adapt components of this presentation for noncommercial purposes, but are required to release resulting work with a similar license, as well as attribute the components used to this author. The original work is available by request.
For more resources and current information, visit the blog at sustainable-farming.blogspot.com
The following people created the Creative Commons licensed photos/graphics used in this presentation:
Slide 1: Permaculture Research Institute, DreamingKayaker
Slide 2: Hideyuki Kamon, Andrea Bellamy, Youthkee
Slide 3: Gene Wilburn, IRRI, Björn Hermans, Autan
Slide 5: Permaculture Research Institute
Slide 7: Ecoagriculture Partners
Slide 8: Hideyuki Kamon, Kasper Manz
Slide 9: Andrea Bellamy
Slide 10: Parrhesiastes, Jeff DelViscio, Youthkee, Stavros Markopoulos
Slide 11: DreamingKayaker
Slide 14: Permaculture Research Institute
Slide 15: Graham Burnett (via Wikimedia Commons)
Slide 16: Cecilia Macaulay
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