LoneWolf23
First Post
Just saw "Secrets of Nature" on the Discovery Channel, which introduced me to Masanobu F_ukuoka, the japanese inventer of the philosophy and technique of Natural Farming, and the first thing that came to mind when I saw how his techniques worked was... "Holy spit.. This is how Elves would farm!"
Basically, the principles of F_ukuoka farming involve returning to a "Do-Nothing" approach to handling nature, allowing nature to take it's course even as you try to guide it to produce the crops you want.
It works based on four methods derived from a single fundamental principle:
Soil is created by living plants working with microorganisms, and by the plants' residues and the microorganisms' corpses after their death.
Soil is drained of nutrients by cultivation, NOT by plants.
Tilling and cultivation of any sort diminishes the natural fertility of the soil in three ways:
· Mechanical grinding of the soil particles reduces their size and smooths them. This greatly reduces the size and number of micro-cavities between the particles, which are the habitats of balanced bacteria breathing out gases essential to mineral absorption and plants' health.
· Tilling kills vital microorganisms in the soil by exposing them to excessive oxygen in the air.
· And tilling exposes the organic matter in the rhizosphere (soil around the roots) to the atmospheric gases, precipitating the combustion of the humus turning it into soluable mineralized nutrients . This provides a quick fertilizer for the plants, but at the cost of destroying permanently the texture and tilth of the organic, humic, rich soil, which accellerates erosion as well as contamination of the watertable with nitrates.
Minerals and trace elements, although present in soil, may not be accessible to plants due to the absence of the microorganisms (killed by tilling, pollution, or the use of herbicides or pesticides) that participate in the plant's mineral nutritional process. Just as microflora in our own digestive systems are needed so that our bodies can absorb and use the nutrients of the ingested food, microorganisms in the soil perform the same function for plants.
In crops, if the edible parts of a plant are harvested and the rest left to return to the soil, the organic mass left by the decaying plants will be superior to the volume of nutrients taken from the soil.
A plant gets up to 95% of all the nutrients it needs from the sky (gases and sunlight), NOT the soil. Of the 5% taken from the soil, half of it is the essential nutrient nitrogen, which, if the plant is grown in combination with a legume, can also come from the air.
ONLY 2 1/2% of the total nutrition of a plant IS COMING EXCLUSIVELY FROM THE SOIL in the form of soluable minerals and trace elements.
Having understood this principle, the four methods are:
No cultivation (Meaning no plowing, no shifting around of the soil, no digging)
No fertilizer
No weeding
No pesticides
Basically, the approach to it is understanding nature, and raising crops in a method as naturally and with as little an impact on nature as possible. Using these techniques, he's matched the crop yield of farmers using more traditional methods.
And as I look at all of it, I can't help but think that his philosophy and methods are all but perfect for Elves.. All this time, folks like us have been debating about how Elves could build large communities without using the same farming techniques we human use, and all this time one human innovator's been developping farming techniques involving unity with nature.
A more in-depth analysis of the f_ukuoka Farming Method can be found here: F-ukuoka Farming Method
(the url in the link got messed up by the censorship program. You might want to do it manually..)
Basically, the principles of F_ukuoka farming involve returning to a "Do-Nothing" approach to handling nature, allowing nature to take it's course even as you try to guide it to produce the crops you want.
It works based on four methods derived from a single fundamental principle:
Soil is created by living plants working with microorganisms, and by the plants' residues and the microorganisms' corpses after their death.
Soil is drained of nutrients by cultivation, NOT by plants.
Tilling and cultivation of any sort diminishes the natural fertility of the soil in three ways:
· Mechanical grinding of the soil particles reduces their size and smooths them. This greatly reduces the size and number of micro-cavities between the particles, which are the habitats of balanced bacteria breathing out gases essential to mineral absorption and plants' health.
· Tilling kills vital microorganisms in the soil by exposing them to excessive oxygen in the air.
· And tilling exposes the organic matter in the rhizosphere (soil around the roots) to the atmospheric gases, precipitating the combustion of the humus turning it into soluable mineralized nutrients . This provides a quick fertilizer for the plants, but at the cost of destroying permanently the texture and tilth of the organic, humic, rich soil, which accellerates erosion as well as contamination of the watertable with nitrates.
Minerals and trace elements, although present in soil, may not be accessible to plants due to the absence of the microorganisms (killed by tilling, pollution, or the use of herbicides or pesticides) that participate in the plant's mineral nutritional process. Just as microflora in our own digestive systems are needed so that our bodies can absorb and use the nutrients of the ingested food, microorganisms in the soil perform the same function for plants.
In crops, if the edible parts of a plant are harvested and the rest left to return to the soil, the organic mass left by the decaying plants will be superior to the volume of nutrients taken from the soil.
A plant gets up to 95% of all the nutrients it needs from the sky (gases and sunlight), NOT the soil. Of the 5% taken from the soil, half of it is the essential nutrient nitrogen, which, if the plant is grown in combination with a legume, can also come from the air.
ONLY 2 1/2% of the total nutrition of a plant IS COMING EXCLUSIVELY FROM THE SOIL in the form of soluable minerals and trace elements.
Having understood this principle, the four methods are:
No cultivation (Meaning no plowing, no shifting around of the soil, no digging)
No fertilizer
No weeding
No pesticides
Basically, the approach to it is understanding nature, and raising crops in a method as naturally and with as little an impact on nature as possible. Using these techniques, he's matched the crop yield of farmers using more traditional methods.
And as I look at all of it, I can't help but think that his philosophy and methods are all but perfect for Elves.. All this time, folks like us have been debating about how Elves could build large communities without using the same farming techniques we human use, and all this time one human innovator's been developping farming techniques involving unity with nature.
A more in-depth analysis of the f_ukuoka Farming Method can be found here: F-ukuoka Farming Method
(the url in the link got messed up by the censorship program. You might want to do it manually..)
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