I’d long heard of this one. It rang multiple of my bells. It’s by a Japanese guy, it’s about farming, and it’s about organic philosophy. Sweet.

Sadly, I have to report that more accurately it’s by a smug, crotchety Japanese guy, it’s about grain farming, and it’s about how everyone else is dumb. It reminds me a bit of Steve Solomon in its misanthropic tone.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like most people. Americans in some large numbers elected George Bush to the presidency twice (thrice if you count the old man). Diane Feinstein, Ann Coulter, Fox News, Scientologists, Deists, Homophobes, and on and on…

Still. We’re all people. We’re collectively responsible (sorry, Josh) for the “way things are.” You can’t hate everyone anymore than you can absolve everyone of responsibility for our collective footprint. But I digress. My point is that I’ve known a bunch of people like this old coot. They’ve got it figured. If everyone would just do things the way that he does, it’d all be great, but nooooo…

He tells a story about some conference he goes to where he stood up and, I’m sure, made some strawman non-sequitur argument about why everyone doesn’t immediately agree to whatever his suggestion was. By his own account, they told him to shut up. So he did. It’s like those kids wearing wacky costumes at the IMF meetings. “We’re, like, so against… the poverty… and… like… globalization… and it’s so totally… wrong, man!”

They (and he) have very valid points, which they conveniently wrap in cuckoo feathers with a foil cap. THEN WE PLAY THE BONGOS!!! It’s, like, so totally, whatever!

My main gripe with Fukuoka’s book is his self-certain anecdotal evidence of the superiority of his “method.” He gets lots of rice from his land. OK. Could be that he’s getting more than anyone else in the world. Uh… sure… let’s say he is just to avoid one of those coot-scenes. That proves exactly not very much. It maybe proves (sort of) that he’s doing pretty well with his rice on that particular plot of land. Now, let us play the bongos.

He says ‘humans know nothing’ and ‘let nature do what it does’, and yet, he rolls his seeds in clay balls and sprays machine oil on his trees. It strikes me that if you’re going to let nature do its thing, petrochemical emulsion sprays aren’t part of the deal. For that matter, the moment you arrange for something to grow where it wouldn’t have, the “do-nothing” method has become “do-something.” He asserts confidently that what he’s doing isn’t doing anything, but what everyone else is doing is doing something.

Furthermore, if I read another review about how this book changed someone’s life, I’m going to retch. It’s got some interesting thoughts in it. I’ll take false-humility self-righteousness over DDT fog and feedlots any day. But, it’s not realistic for 99% of readers. Mr. Farmer, stop pruning your grapes! They’ll be fine! Just let your apple trees shoot straight into the sky and drop its bitter little spitters on your head. That’s how nature intended it.

Nature’s balance is gone here in Oregon. Leave her to her devices and you’ll have 30 ft. wild clematis and Siberian blackberry draping a lovely mat of English Ivy over 90% of your property in a couple of years. Believe me, I ripped out multiple 20 yd. dumpsters of the stuff the first year we lived here. Compost does wonderful things to our thick clay, and it does it faster if it’s tilled in.

Fukuoka doesn’t want to hear this. He wants to force a zen no-mind philosophy on something that doesn’t care if he thinks it ought to work like Mother Nature intended. Maybe it would have if we’d all said ‘no thank you’ to the wheel when B.C. first rolled up on it… with his feet on those two pegs sticking out the side. How did he ride like that, anyway?

Wifey just asked if I liked the book because I’m ranting. Well, it has some very interesting ideas in it. I like anything that questions the status quo. It’s Japanese, which gets it bonus points just because it’s the Olde Country. So, sure, I liked it. I just get a little skeptical about anything that sounds suspiciously like an almost religious fanaticism on the basis of only his own life’s experience… or a selective interpretation of it.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite