Elmer did me honor asking a regular letter about natural farming for our website. I will try to satisfy him and, I hope, the readers, sending a short paper about our favorite way of farming. Why not starting with the history and the place of the natural farming inside the different types of farming? There are some variations and sometimes it is not easy to differentiate sustainable agriculture, nature farming or permaculture.

One way to classify all these types of farming which look close together is to consider two axes (see the picture): one defines the orientation to philosophy or spirituality and the other, completely at the opposite, the more or less orientation towards the market. Our father in natural farming, Masanobu Fukuoka was a real Japanese philosopher of farming and the market was not his first preoccupation. But the Buddhist sect Santi Asoke is probably the one which pushed farer the spirituality in farming: no matter to kill one insect even if it destroys the entire crop! More scientifically, it is true that each one, including bad boy insects has his place in the ecological chain. So science and gods are not enemies!

Mokichi Okada is another Japanese great name of our story and defines the basic of nature farming. Some Japanese teachers, influenced by Okada will transmit their knowledge to a certain Han Kyu Cho from Korea at the origin of the name and the practice of the natural farming we know. Dr Cho and Okada have at least one common point: they use only indigenous microorganisms (IMO) as recommend our friends Andry and Jojie Lim who have also their place in this story. Meanwhile, Dr Cho is more market-oriented and practice Natural farming to produce and sell fruits, vegetables and livestock.

In 1980, something important happens, the first clash: Dr Teruo Higa separates from the Sekai Kuysei Kyo directly inspired by Okada and creates the Kyusei Nature farming: Effective Microorganism (E.M.) are promoted to replace IMO. The sect is so angry that they create the M.O.A. (Mokichi Okada Association) and DO NOT accept E.M. I think we can give the middle place in our graph to Teruo Higa who has a spiritual approach… but not too much, and a market approach … may be too much as the EM solution is a little expensive!

In the Philippines the two techniques are present with Andry for the IMO and Keith Mikkelson for the E.M. (read for free is excellent book: Sustainable agriculture (link here).

Of course, organic agriculture has a very low level of spirituality and is definitively market oriented (especially in West countries). And conventional farming out of the scale!

Note: I know, there is nothing about biodynamic farming. I have a problem with this type of farming and I will speak about that another day.

Daniel Collot