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tahir
Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45674
Location: Essex
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bagpuss
Joined: 09 Dec 2004
Posts: 10507
Location: cambridge
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Ebyss
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 50
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cab
Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429
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 Posted: Wed May 18, 05 2:40 pm Post subject: |
 
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| Ebyss wrote: |
Umm.. actually, for the past 30 years his crops have been at the highest end of yields in all of Japan. He must report his yields to the agricultural organisation in the Ehime Prefecture, as must every farmer. He consistently gets these yields year after year. His data is well documented, some of it can be found in "The Natural Way of Farming". His yields are more than "sufficient", they surpass 99% of all other farms in Japan.
He uses quite a small amount of chicken manure too.. I wouldn't go so far as to say he "maintains" his yields with this, it's merely a small part of a big picture. |
If any of that is true then he's the worst self publicist in the world, I've never found any evidence that, bang for buck (effort for yield) his methods are all that much cop.
As for how much manure he puts on, it's shedloads. See:
https://essenes.net/FukuokaFarming.html
He's applying WAY more chicken manure than others might, and he's doing that instead of adding artificial fertilisers. It's basically organic agriculture, nothign terribly special.
His orchrds aren't unlike old, grown out orchards in terms of the ground cover. Grass and other wild plants tend to take over, and the yields will be okay as long as the plants get access to some ground water, but a wee bit of mulching probably won't go amiss. Nothing really revolutionary there.
Where his methods get really interesting is when he co-cultures a nitrogen fixing crop with a nitrogen guzzling cereal. That's really interesting, but he makes nothing of it.
As for his assertion that plant diseases don't exist... I wonderif he can tell me where all the elm trees went? |
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Milo
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 342
Location: Oop North-ish.
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Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator
Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism
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joanne
Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 7100
Location: Morecambe, Lancashire
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Ebyss
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 50
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| Posted: Wed May 18, 05 9:33 pm Post subject: |
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| cab wrote: |
| Ebyss wrote: |
Umm.. actually, for the past 30 years his crops have been at the highest end of yields in all of Japan. He must report his yields to the agricultural organisation in the Ehime Prefecture, as must every farmer. He consistently gets these yields year after year. His data is well documented, some of it can be found in "The Natural Way of Farming". His yields are more than "sufficient", they surpass 99% of all other farms in Japan.
He uses quite a small amount of chicken manure too.. I wouldn't go so far as to say he "maintains" his yields with this, it's merely a small part of a big picture. |
If any of that is true then he's the worst self publicist in the world, I've never found any evidence that, bang for buck (effort for yield) his methods are all that much cop.
As for how much manure he puts on, it's shedloads. See:
https://essenes.net/FukuokaFarming.html
He's applying WAY more chicken manure than others might, and he's doing that instead of adding artificial fertilisers. It's basically organic agriculture, nothign terribly special.
His orchrds aren't unlike old, grown out orchards in terms of the ground cover. Grass and other wild plants tend to take over, and the yields will be okay as long as the plants get access to some ground water, but a wee bit of mulching probably won't go amiss. Nothing really revolutionary there.
Where his methods get really interesting is when he co-cultures a nitrogen fixing crop with a nitrogen guzzling cereal. That's really interesting, but he makes nothing of it.
As for his assertion that plant diseases don't exist... I wonderif he can tell me where all the elm trees went? |
I don't think he ever asserted that plant diseases don't exist, more that they can be dealt with using natural methods as opposed to spraying with chemicals. At least, that's what he refers to in his books. I agree that is a decent amount of chicken manure, but he also counsels against using too much... and goes on to say
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| "However, from the standpoint of natural farming, it would be preferable and much easier to release ten ducklings per quarter-acre on to the field when the rice seedlings have become established. Not only do the ducks weed and pick off insects, they turn the soil." |
I wouldn't call that shedloads of manure.
I'm not sure why you seem to think his self publicity matters, he doesn't have to tell anyone about his work, he just does. It's up to the individual person to find out for themselves after reading the books whether they want to follow this route or go a different way. His yields are printed in the books, they are tables taken from the Ehime Prefecture's agricultural report. The yields are consistently high. What can be better self publicity than letting your yields speak for themselves? Does it work? Yes. How do we know? The data is right there, yield numbers are printed for all to see. Effort for yield? 3-4 hours a day sounds good to me for a full time farmer. If it's hard manual labour, so what? Nothing wrong with that.
No one ever said it was anything remarkable or "terribly special". It's in fact staggeringly ordinary. |
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Milo
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 342
Location: Oop North-ish.
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| Posted: Wed May 18, 05 9:49 pm Post subject: |
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* It is all very well having a high moral standpoint
Thankyou for that!
* but unless you have answers to all the arguments you really don't have a leg to stand on
Of course I do and I will apply just as much thought to any issues raised as and when I wish to do. In any order I wish. And when I have the time to do so.
E-nattering on forums is a hobby.
Not a job.
At the moment I'm thinking about this:
If a beetle or a spider runs across your floor, do you stomp on it, or do you pick it up and put it outside? Do you think it would be cruel to stomp on it? It's done you no harm. If you put that insect alive into your garden, was that because you knew that killing it was unnecessary and you felt some compassion for it?
If you saw a man kick a dog in the head once and kill it, do you phone the Police? The man had no need to kick the dog, did he. Do you feel any compassion for the dog?
Unless it is suffering from an incurable medical condition, is killing any animal in any way compassionate? Meat is nothing without the death of the animal which becomes the meat. Meat is reduced to invisibility, ungendered and generally forgotten in order for it to become meat.
Without ifs and buts, which is these two people is being the least compassionate?
A walks through a wood and shoots a roe deer dead. He did not need to do this.
B walks through a wood, sees a roe deer, but doesn't shoot it because he doesn't want, or need to shoot it. |
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nettie
Joined: 02 Dec 2004
Posts: 5888
Location: Suffolk
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| Posted: Wed May 18, 05 10:48 pm Post subject: |
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| Milo wrote: |
| Meat is nothing without the death of the animal which becomes the meat. Meat is reduced to invisibility, ungendered and generally forgotten in order for it to become meat.. |
Only if you buy intensively farmed stuff unquestioningly from supermarkets IMHO. For my own part, and for many here that I know of, plus a growing band of the public who are becoming more aware, there are many of us who have the utmost respect for animal welfare and are keen for the animal to have had a good and happy life, as it affects the quality and safety of what we choose to eat.
| Milo wrote: |
Without ifs and buts, which is these two people is being the least compassionate?
A walks through a wood and shoots a roe deer dead. He did not need to do this.
B walks through a wood, sees a roe deer, but doesn't shoot it because he doesn't want, or need to shoot it. |
You seem to omit person C who wants it for good quality, ethically raised, chemical free food.
Milo your passion is admirable. My particular passion is for food and as God made me an omnivore then that includes the best (and healthiest, for me and the animal concerned) meat. |
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Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator
Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism
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joanne
Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 7100
Location: Morecambe, Lancashire
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cab
Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429
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| Posted: Thu May 19, 05 8:21 am Post subject: |
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| Ebyss wrote: |
I don't think he ever asserted that plant diseases don't exist, more that they can be dealt with using natural methods as opposed to spraying with chemicals. |
Quoting him directly:
"Insect Pests Do Not Exist: The moment the problem of crop disease or insect damage arises, talk turns immediately to methods of control. But we should begin by examining whether crop disease or insect damage exist in the first place. A thousand plant diseases exist in nature, but in truth there are none. It is the agricultural specialist who gets carried away with discussions on disease and pest damage."
A heck of a lot of people died in the Irish Potato famine of something imagined up by some agricultural specialist (or, as I believe they were called back then, 'farmers').
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At least, that's what he refers to in his books. I agree that is a decent amount of chicken manure, but he also counsels against using too much... and goes on to say
| Quote: |
| "However, from the standpoint of natural farming, it would be preferable and much easier to release ten ducklings per quarter-acre on to the field when the rice seedlings have become established. Not only do the ducks weed and pick off insects, they turn the soil." |
I wouldn't call that shedloads of manure. |
I quote him directly again:
"Following the rice harvest, spread 650-900 pounds of chicken manure per quarter-acre either before or after returning the rice straw to the fields. An additional 200 pounds may be added in late February as a topdressing during the barley heading stage.
After the barley harvest, manure again for the rice. When high yields have been collected, spread 450-900 pounds of dried chicken manure before or after returning the barley straw to the field. Fresh manure should not be used here as this can harm the rice seedlings. A later application is generally not needed, but a small amount (250-450 pounds) of chicken manure may be added early during the heading stage, preferably before the 24th day of heading. This may of course be decomposed human or animal wastes, or even wood ashes."
Being dried chicken manure, that's absolutely shedloads; there ain't that much left when you dry the water out of it. Thats a lot of dry organic matter to be adding. He's basically doing organic farming, using chicken manure as his main fertilizer; there's nothing special about this, I've seen just the same done on allotments all over the place. Many old timers swear by it, and apply chicken manure in similar quantities.
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I'm not sure why you seem to think his self publicity matters, he doesn't have to tell anyone about his work, he just does. It's up to the individual person to find out for themselves after reading the books whether they want to follow this route or go a different way. |
There I differ from you fundamentally; he's the one making the claims, it's up to him to provide supporting evidence. That's how the world has always worked and always should work.
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His yields are printed in the books, they are tables taken from the Ehime Prefecture's agricultural report. The yields are consistently high. What can be better self publicity than letting your yields speak for themselves? Does it work? Yes. How do we know? The data is right there, yield numbers are printed for all to see. Effort for yield? 3-4 hours a day sounds good to me for a full time farmer. If it's hard manual labour, so what? Nothing wrong with that.
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Yes, so it's labour intensive organic farming, which has been shown to produce wonga yields all over the world; the problem is that the cost is high in terms of labour, land and money.
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No one ever said it was anything remarkable or "terribly special". It's in fact staggeringly ordinary. |
His claims are deceptive; he's taken a lot of people in with the concept that what he's doing is very special when, in fact, it isn't. |
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cab
Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429
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| Posted: Thu May 19, 05 8:34 am Post subject: |
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| Milo wrote: |
If a beetle or a spider runs across your floor, do you stomp on it, or do you pick it up and put it outside? Do you think it would be cruel to stomp on it? It's done you no harm. If you put that insect alive into your garden, was that because you knew that killing it was unnecessary and you felt some compassion for it? |
Do you eat oysters Antoninus? Do you eat snails? Do you consider the eating of oysters to me morally better than the eating of snails? Of course not, it's a matter of choice... (sorry, ignore that, went all Spartacus for a minute there).
If I find a bug in the house, I look at it. I consider the bug, and what manner of beast it is.
If it's a predator, something likely to kill other beasts that I don't want, I either leave it where it is (many spiders die if you put them outside, and I like them to be able to do their job of butchering flies on my behalf) or I take it outside (a ladybird or a hunting beetle of any sort, for example).
If its a pest then I either squish it or I feed it to my carnivorous plants.
If it's neither, and merely lost its way, so maybe it's a big juicy moth or one of my favourite species of woodlouse (I'm a fan of Armadillium vulgaris, although Porcellio scaber comes a close second), then I'll catch it, let it out of the window, and bat it till it stops trying to get back in. Once in a while I've been known to put the big meaty moth into a spiders web outside the window; used to do that to show my netphews just how cool spiders are.
If there's an advantage to be had in the bug dying (educational pest control) then I'm entirely happy doing that. If there isn't then the creature will live.
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| If you saw a man kick a dog in the head once and kill it, do you phone the Police? The man had no need to kick the dog, did he. Do you feel any compassion for the dog? |
Yes, I do. He has, I believe, broken the law; if he kicks the dog hard on the head to kill it in one stroke to put it out of its misery after some incurable injury, then I marvel at the fact that he's managed to do that and worry about how he did so, because canine anatomy being what it is that's just got to be a bloody hard thing to do. But if it was needless then I call the police.
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| Unless it is suffering from an incurable medical condition, is killing any animal in any way compassionate? |
Unless you kill the animal showing no compassion and are needlessly cruel, why must killing it be a sign of lack of compassion?
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| Meat is nothing without the death of the animal which becomes the meat. Meat is reduced to invisibility, ungendered and generally forgotten in order for it to become meat. |
Rubbish. I know our beef supplier, I know her stock. I know my butcher, and I know what our rabbits look like. I agree that many people are divorced from their food production, but don't extend that generalisation to include me.
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Without ifs and buts, which is these two people is being the least compassionate?
A walks through a wood and shoots a roe deer dead. He did not need to do this.
B walks through a wood, sees a roe deer, but doesn't shoot it because he doesn't want, or need to shoot it. |
Neither A nor B is a good analogy for someone willing for an animal to die to eat it, nor is either a good analogy for someone willing to shoot deer to control their population in a habitat which artificially has no predation. |
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Ebyss
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 50
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| Posted: Thu May 19, 05 2:27 pm Post subject: |
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| cab wrote: |
| Ebyss wrote: |
I don't think he ever asserted that plant diseases don't exist, more that they can be dealt with using natural methods as opposed to spraying with chemicals. |
Quoting him directly:
"Insect Pests Do Not Exist: The moment the problem of crop disease or insect damage arises, talk turns immediately to methods of control. But we should begin by examining whether crop disease or insect damage exist in the first place. A thousand plant diseases exist in nature, but in truth there are none. It is the agricultural specialist who gets carried away with discussions on disease and pest damage."
A heck of a lot of people died in the Irish Potato famine of something imagined up by some agricultural specialist (or, as I believe they were called back then, 'farmers'). |
With all due respect Cab, I think he's talking in a philosophical sense here. In the same way there's no such thing as weeds in nature, there are no such thing as pests when everything is in balance. He saying pests are only pests when viewed from a human, agricultural perspective, and that nature makes no such distinctions. This is made clear in his books, and the article you refer back to simply paraphrases a very small part of "The Natural Way of Farming" and out of context it doesn't quite have the same meaning. He's not saying that plant diseases don't exist, just that don't exist from nature's point of view. Each living organism has a job to do : survive. Where that becomes a problem for us (and thus a pest) is when it competes directly for something we need or want.
| Quote: |
I quote him directly again:
"Following the rice harvest, spread 650-900 pounds of chicken manure per quarter-acre either before or after returning the rice straw to the fields. An additional 200 pounds may be added in late February as a topdressing during the barley heading stage.
After the barley harvest, manure again for the rice. When high yields have been collected, spread 450-900 pounds of dried chicken manure before or after returning the barley straw to the field. Fresh manure should not be used here as this can harm the rice seedlings. A later application is generally not needed, but a small amount (250-450 pounds) of chicken manure may be added early during the heading stage, preferably before the 24th day of heading. This may of course be decomposed human or animal wastes, or even wood ashes."
Being dried chicken manure, that's absolutely shedloads; there ain't that much left when you dry the water out of it. Thats a lot of dry organic matter to be adding. He's basically doing organic farming, using chicken manure as his main fertilizer; there's nothing special about this, I've seen just the same done on allotments all over the place. Many old timers swear by it, and apply chicken manure in similar quantities. |
Ok, I think the problem here is that you resent in some way his claim that his way is different to organic agriculture. I think a few things need to be kept in mind. (A)This guy is in his late 80's - 90's. When he wrote these books he was younger, there was no real "organic" movement to speak of in Japan. The entire country practised "modern" chemical agriculture. "Organic" just didn't exist over there. He completely changed the way he farmed rice to show that all that work was completely unnecessary. (B) He is talking largely about rice farming in his books, as that's what he knows. The books were orginally written for japanese farmers, then translated for those who are interested abroad. The difference between his methods and normal methods of rice farming are vastly different. (C) Saying "Well, lots of people have been doing that for years so it's nothing special" is kind of irrelevent. It's like saying that lots of people have been Smallholding for years, so John Seymour is nothing special. After all people were doing it way before he did. Add to that the fact that his books were also written years ago, when they may have been more relevant (or not, as the case may be).
I disagree about the amount of manure with you, simply because conventional agriculture piles on the chemical fertilizer when there's little or no need. I'm not comparing this to organic farming, I'm comparing it to conventional farming, where the inputs are far greater.
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There I differ from you fundamentally; he's the one making the claims, it's up to him to provide supporting evidence. That's how the world has always worked and always should work. |
Ah. I'm not saying he shouldn't be able to back up his work with numbers. I'm saying he does just that. The numbers are there for everyone to see in his book. He provides the numbers, as he should. I'm saying he doesn't have to shout it round the world with a megaphone just because some people don't believe him without actually having looked at the numbers themselves. The numbers are there, he has willingly printed them in his books. Why he should have to print them anywhere else is beyond me.
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Yes, so it's labour intensive organic farming, which has been shown to produce wonga yields all over the world; the problem is that the cost is high in terms of labour, land and money. |
I don't see how working 3-4 hours a day can be called "labour intensive farming". Especially when the yields equal or exceed the highest yields in the country. There are other differences between this and typical organic farming, in that this is strictly "no till", where tilling is perfectly acceptable in organic farming. It's very similar, but not exactly the same. It's not "against" organic farming, it's just different. I agree, labour, land and money are problems facing this method and organic farming. However it is very cost effective. You essentially pay with your labour (and ducks) and that's it. No tractors, no spraying, no chemical fertilizers. Very similar to organic farming. I think it would be great if more people could embrace these kinds of farming.
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| His claims are deceptive; he's taken a lot of people in with the concept that what he's doing is very special when, in fact, it isn't. |
No, again, he hasn't tried to "take anybody" in. His claims that this is something very different apply directly to his situation when he wrote the books in Japan. He has never tried to make it anything more than it is. What he does is truly different that anything else in Japan. If foreigners want to apply his method to other grains, then great (and some have tried, and succeeded), but they'll have to follow the guidelines for the rice and barley, and try to apply it to these new grains. It may not be anything "very special" now, but when he published his work, it was completely against the grain, completely different, even revolutionary, at the time he did it. Kind of like organic farming. Nothing special at all. My grandad has been gardening like that for his entire life, as he didn't like chemical pesticides or herbicides. Along comes the organic movement and calls it something "new and special". Well, it was to the huge establishment that is modern agriculture, and we still see alot of resistance to organic farming, despite the fact that it is one of the only sectors making money.
Fukuoka isn't trying to take you in, or claim that his way is magic... it's just a different way of rice farming. One that works with nature instead of against it. When he wrote One Straw Revolution, organic farming hadn't even been heard of in Japan. I only read the book this year, and when asked for information about the method, I gave it. I never claimed it was anything special either, just that I was going to give it a go because it was something I wanted to try. So though it might sound "new", it's not, its' been around for more than 30 years... it's just I've only found out about it now. |
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) to reducing their own personal footprint on the earth by ensuring they buy locally produced extensively farmed ethical produce, minimising carbon output where and whenever they can - Why is it then that so many of us still eat meat ?
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