Few books written in our soulless times have succeeded in transforming people’s minds, spirits and lives as completely as Masanobu Fukuoka’s One Straw Revolution.
Struck by the manner in which modern agriculture and its methods were destroying the soil, Fukuoka opted out of his techinacal career (he had been trained as an agricultural scientist) and returned to his village home. Here he resumed traditional farming and refined it so that his methods required less labour and minimal disruption of nature. His techniques helped generate crop yields as good as those on neighbouring fields mutilated by tractors and heavily dosed with synthetic fertilisers and pesticides.
In The One Straw Revolution, Fukuoka – today considered one of the most outstanding organic farmers of our century-describes the events that led to the development of his natural farming methods and the impact these have had on his land, on himself and on the thousands of people who have learnt from his technique. In the process, he has left the very foundations of modern agriculture in splendid disarray.
Fukuoka demonstrates how the way we look at farming influences the way we look at health, the school, nature, nutrition, spiritual health and life itself. He joins the healing of the land to the process of purifying the human spirit and proposes a way of life and a way of farming in which such healing can take place.
This book-an all-time classic-is a clarion call to all of us to abandon modern agriculture and it's destructive methods and poisons, and to return to our far richer heritage of working closely and simply with the land.
First OIP Edition: 1992
Thirty First Impression: 2019
Published by: Other India Press
Marathi Translation by Venu Palshiker