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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