The Road Back to Nature: Regaining the Paradise Lost

by Masanobu Fukuoka, Frederic P. Metreaud (Translator)

Discusses global ecology, destructive farming practices, desertification, deforestation, and the repair of ecological damage

Genres: Agriculture, Gardening, Nonfiction, Ecology, Nature, Environment

377 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Masanobu Fukuoka was born in 1914 in a small farming village on the island of Shikoku in Southern Japan. He was educated in microbiology and worked as a soil scientist specializing in plant pathology, but at the age of twenty-five he began to have doubts about the "wonders of modern agriculture science."

While recovering from a severe attack of pneumonia, Fukuoka experienced a moment of satori or personal enlightenment. He had a vision in which something one might call true nature was revealed to him. He saw that all the "accomplishments" of human civilization are meaningless before the totality of nature. He saw that humans had become separated from nature and that our attempts to control or even understand all the complexities of life were not only futile, they were self-destructive. From that moment on, he has spent his life trying to return to the state of being one with nature.

At the time of his revelation, Fukuoka was living in a Japan that was abandoning its traditional farming methods and adopting Western agriculture, economic and industrial models. He saw how this trend was driving the Japanese even further from a oneness with nature, and how destructive and polluting those practices were. As a result, he resigned his job as a research scientist and returned to his father's farm on Shikoku determined to demonstrate the practical value of his vision by restoring the land to a condition that would enable nature's original harmony to prevail.

Through 30 years of refinement he was able to develop a "do-nothing" method of farming. Without soil cultivation such as plowing or tilling, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, weeding, pruning, machinery or compost, Fukuoka was able to produce high-quality fruit, vegetables and grains with yields equal to or greater than those of any neighboring farm.

In his 60's, Fukuoka sat down to document what he had seen and done. In 1975 his first book "One Straw Revolution" was released and has had a profound impact on agriculture and human consciousness all over the world. "One Straw Revolution" was followed by "The Natural Way of Farming" and then by "The Road Back To Nature."

Since 1979, Fukuoka has been touring, giving lectures and sowing the seeds of natural farming all over the world. In 1988 he was given Deshikottan Award, and the Ramon Magsaysay Award. In 1997 he received the Earth Council Award.

from http://fukuokafarmingol.info/fintro.html

Reviews

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This classic is a delight to read. Fukuoka expresses the wisdom of many hundreds of years' experience in permaculture farming. He sees healthy, sustainable land management as not just a key to successful farming but as a benefit for the whole surrounding environment. For example, in visiting northern California he describes viewing hills of redwood forest to his right, and pale mountainsides of dry grass to his left: “Here, under identical climatic conditions, was an expanse of green on one side and a desert on the other. Why?” Fukuoka claims the increased reflection of sunlight from cleared and overgrazed ground drives up the local temperature: “If the temperature is thirty degrees C. (86 F.), the heat reflected from this ground surface raises it to forty degrees (104 F.).” The hot air over such land rises in an updraft, nudging aside most drifting rain clouds. If such conditions kill the grass, things get worse.

[Marie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this book, as opposed to the others is simply a rant. Why everyone is balls, and why the Fukuokan way is the best. I dont think rants are particularly useful. Pressure and damage to the landscape is a fact, I think seeking the positive solutions are more important than pointing out why people are shit. Alleging all Americans like fake nature and all Europeans have imprisoned themselves is a bit simplistic. Colonialism, poverty, starvation, slavery, feudalism, all have played a part. Blaming individuals is never useful, vilifying people, or looking to blame is never useful. Identify the solutions in a culturally sensitive manner and get on with it, that works.
Sorry I hated this book.

[Mostadam Eco-Design · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wise farmer's insight on the world and humans as he saw them after 50 years of starting his spiritual/practical path of natural farming. His remarkable reflections on what he saw in America, Europe, Africa from talks about crops to food to culture to clothes to agricultural pathologies and international food-production competition and more.

Fukuoka played/playing a major role in changing the agriculture in this world. Not only by inspiring people but also with his agricultural impact, Japan for example deeply feared that his seeds would get into the hands of Americans. A very large scale American farmers of rice adapted his methods, Somalian desert regreening, different impacts on European and American agriculture rehabilitation.

He doesn't try to act nice to anyone, he doesn't attempt to make friends in this book, specially not Japanese friends!!. He criticises anything he disagreed with, including himself who he describes as "..a disagreeable presence..". That explains why he didn't get the attention he deserved while alive, specially that he also requires the human being to get rid of the ego along with the reliance on science/knowledge which is extremely hard for most people today in a world of materialistic advancement.

My surprise was the preface to Japanese edition, Fukuoka writes very honestly about himself not having a single day at peace.

His noble dream is to regreen the desert which is the subject of his next and last book "Sowing Seeds in The Desert".

Agriculture wouldn't be ever the same without Fukuoka.

[Missy LeBlanc Ivey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you ever read a book and felt that you had found a kindred spirit. This author did it for me. Back in the 1980's, Masanobu Fukuoka was watching his fellow Japanese and the U.S. way of farming remove itself from God, from the essence of nature. He had a lifelong dream of creating and/or restoring nature in desertous places. He practiced what he preached and lived his life in line with his beliefs. He is Christian. He did believe in a lot of the same philosophies as the Buddhist. But, as a Christian, he sure didn't believe God only lived in a church building, and neither do I, for that matter.

He was also a certified agricultural scientist who found science research inconsistent and lacking in truly discovering nature and how it works. Most everything he brought to light in this book is speculative, but he reinforces his thoughts with things he has observed throughout his travels. His life has been centered around living very close to nature, and letting nature guide his work instead of him trying to alter nature to work for him....because, in the end, it can't be done. You destroy nature, you destroy mankind because God is the essence of nature and man! They are one! It’s like turning your back on God when you destroy nature.

Think about this! In the beginning was God. God breathed life into nature (trees, flowers, earth, space, etc...), and God breathed life into man. We are all "a part of God". This must be the reason why I feel so close to God when I’m getting my hands dirty in the garden. In the years that I don’t do any gardening, I feel very disconnected, not only from God, but from life itself!

The author believed man has created the problems we see today in nature by clear cutting, the large amount of meats we consume, the thousands of single-crop acreages now grown to feed animals and run cars (instead of growing a variety of nutrient dense foods to feed the people), to applying chemical fertilizers and pesticides, even rototilling and compacting the soil with heavy farm equipment are all root causes of our erosion and decline in today's agriculture. He believed agricultural practices were actually going backwards. We may be creating more food, but at the expense of nutrition and soil health. Scientists are continuously trying to create the next best chemical fertilizers, pesticides and machinery to harvest those thousands of acres of genetically modified (GMO) crops full of pesticides to stay atop of the ever growing agricultural problems that we have created. The bottom line is our farming soils that the world depends on is completely depleted. Natural farming will be key to bring back the health of our soil, and ultimately the health of nature itself. This book just barely touches on the process of natural farming. I'm hoping to read more about the process in his other book, "The Natural Way of Farming".

I can't believe it, but he actually expressed in written words what I have always questioned about who determined, for example, that the way of Indian worship was wrong and un-Christian. It is very possible that everyone, the Indians, the Jews, the Muslims (not the radicals) Japanese, Buddhist, Monks, and the Christians are actually worshipping the same God, but just in their own "language" per say...in their own culture and manner. We all have our statues resembling what we believe to be our cultural image of God (or Jesus). Japanese have their Buddhas, Indians have their totem poles, Muslims have their rugs, candles and cows as a sacred image, and Americans and English have Jesus and Mary statues. We all look up into the same sky worshipping God. But they may call God something different and describe him differently. Yet, we may all be expressing ourselves to the same entity. Who deemed MY way of worship as the ONLY way to worship God? Man? Well, man is very limited in his visions and many man-made religions also like to put God in a box.

[Gautham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man with technology has always tried to tame the nature around him and understand it in the process, while in this book we see a man who is ardently advocating the idiocy of man in seeing nature as something separate from him. Road Back to Nature is essentially a book that dips deep into the philosophy of 'nothing' and treads with nature's erratic flow towards a world where there is plenty for all at least effort.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

a mixture of philosophy, humor, the apocalypse, and spirituality. what more could you want?

[Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

!!! We can do it -- growing smaller and more precious, more valuable to the world as a whole.

[Rakesh · Rating 4 out of 5]

മലയാളം പരിഭാഷയാണ് വായിച്ചതു . ധ്യാനാത്മകമായൊരു അനുഭൂതി ഉളവാക്കുന്ന പുസ്തകം. പ്രകൃതിയുമായി സൗഹൃദത്തിലാഴ്ന്നു നമുക്ക് വേണ്ടത് കൃഷി ചെയ്യുന്ന ഒരു വേറിട്ട രീതിയെ കുറിച്ച് അറിയാൻ കഴിഞ്ഞു. Zen ദർശനങ്ങൾ നമ്മുടെ കർമ്മപഥങ്ങളിൽ നടപ്പിലാക്കുന്നത് വഴി ജീവിതത്തിൽ സന്തോഷങ്ങളുടെ വാതായനങ്ങൾ തുറക്കപ്പെടും എന്ന സിദ്ധാന്തത്തെ മസനോബു ഫുകുവൊക കാണിച്ചു തരുന്നു.

[Jenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only wish every human had to read Masanobu’s books. What a better place the world would be.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only skimmed it--what a long book! I read and really enjoyed the practical parts. Fukuoka would probably be disappointed, but there is a lot of overlap with his other books, which I read cover to cover.

[Jaya Kumar K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tamil translation of the great book 'The Road Back to Nature - Regaining the Paradise Lost' by Masanobu Fukouka.

A great book that raises questions on our understanding of life.

A good translation from V. Jeevanandham.