The Heroic and Humble Life of Masanobu Fukuoka
Reflections on a Japanese farmer’s prophetic thoughts on health, purpose, and dissent
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The book One Straw Revolution tells the humble and heroic life of Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka. Humble because his only luxury was the fruit of his manual labor. Heroic because he lived a dignified life centered on his convictions despite the naysayers. What I love about One Straw Revolution is that it challenges my views on health and science. Having read it several times in the past 10 years, I find the life of Fukuoka as instructive as his philosophical teachings; they are one and the same. And Fukuoka’s observations are broadly applicable, far beyond the subject of farming rice and citrus trees.
Masanobu Fukuoka grew up on the island of Shikoku, where his family has likely farmed for over 1000 years. As a young man, Fukuoka left his hometown and worked as a microbiologist, inspecting plants for disease. He increasingly found this work spiritually unsettling for unclear reasons. He attempted to reconcile his feelings by wandering at night. It reached the point that he experienced “an agony of doubt about the nature of life and death”. Drained by these thoughts, he collapsed on a bluff during a nighttime stroll. The next morning, he awoke under the tree with a feeling that “everything [he] had held in firm conviction…was swept away with the wind”.
Fukuoka had the sudden epiphany that humanity knew little. And this was not something to mourn or resist. Perhaps it was a reason to celebrate. Fukuoka exuberantly quit his laboratory job and returned to his family farm.
Fukuoka made it his life's work to put this epiphany to practice. He set out to farm in a way that honored the insignificance of human knowledge against the vast mystery of the universe. Rather than seeing nature as something to overcome or outsmart, he abstained from modern agricultural innovations: prolonged flooding of rice fields, tillage, pesticides, and herbicides. He called this method "do nothing" farming:
I believe that Gandhi’s way, a methodless method, acting with a non-winning, non-opposing state of mind, is akin to natural farming. When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized. The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.
Initially, the application of this philosophy does not go smoothly. He let his father's pruned citrus orchard grow untouched, which led to disease and the loss of several acres of trees. But he was certain his "do nothing" approach would save time and money while building soil fertility. Over several decades he refined his techniques to the point that his rice paddocks were equally, if not more, productive than fields utilizing contemporary methods.
When word got out about Fukuoka’s defiant approach, Japanese farmers, news crews, and academics paid visits to the farm. They were surprised to learn about his competitively productive fields that utilized a “natural”, perhaps counterintuitive, approach. "Do nothing" suggests some degree of carelessness. Instead, Fukuoka’s methods required precise seeding, cover cropping, and mulching techniques. This was indeed a radical step away from commercial farming practices on the rise. But in reality, Fukuoka simply realigned his approach with those practiced for many centuries in Japan.
One Straw Revolution is about more than farming. It is about human health, ecology, and finding purpose in life. Interestingly, Fukuoka takes direct jabs at doctors and scientists. He proclaims broad shortcomings in science’s ability to uncover truth. On this side of my medical training, these criticisms land differently. But I agree no less. Fukuoka argues that the pursuit of knowledge should never distance itself from honor of the unknown. After all, science is conducted and interpreted by fallible human beings.
Misleading Science
Masanobu Fukuoka is not only concerned about the ecological impact of tillage, pesticides, and herbicides. He doubts that these technologies produce a net benefit at all. The gravity of this accusation is worth slowing down to contemplate. Is it possible that such widespread scientific beliefs could be based on narrow or incomplete thinking? Is it possible that scientists misinterpret their own data?
To explore this idea, Fukuoka explains his early insecticide laboratory research. He counted rice stalks killed by stem borers in fields untreated and treated with insecticides. Treated fields had fewer diseased rice stalks. But Fukuoka discovered that crop yields were actually higher in untreated fields. Perhaps stem borers thinned weak rice plants, allowing the remaining plants to grow stronger. Today, we call the counting of rice stalks a surrogate measure: proxy data that we assume to be relevant to a primary outcome of interest. In this case, Fukuoka’s lab assumed that fewer rice stalks meant less rice. But this was not the case. Sometimes, surrogate outcomes lead to accurate conclusions. But often, this is not the case.
Today, many scientists understand the shortcomings of surrogate measures. Nevertheless, they are used in high-profile clinical trials, even when not needed. To give just one recent example, I love this discussion on Sensible Medicine about the Paraglide-HF trial, which is supposed to demonstrate the utility of sacubitril-valsartan in HFpEF (heart failure with preserved ejection fraction). The use of an unvalidated surrogate measure (BNP) makes it impossible to draw conclusions. Regardless, the trial will fool at least some doctors, possibly leading to increased prescribing. The trial suggests the drug might improve heart failure, but relevant outcomes (like death or exacerbations) are not studied!
One Straw Revolution enumerates other problems with contemporary science. Fukuoka suggests that biases prevent the objective publication of scientific data. In his experience, it is more likely for favorable herbicide data to be published than unfavorable data. Again, this is a widespread problem in medicine, well documented in Bad Pharma by Bed Goldacre. For a multitude of reasons, positive data is disproportionately published, creating the false impression that certain interventions are more effective than they really are.
45 years later, Fukuoka’s misgivings about science have been more than confirmed. The most cited article on PLOS Medicine is “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” by John Ioaniddis. This is not the lamentation of a conspiracy theorist. John Ioaniddis is perhaps the most prolific meta-research analyst in the world. In this article, Ioaniddis extrapolates that research more often portrays prevailing bias, rather than truth. This conclusion is not speculative, it is the testimony of mathematical models he also elaborates upon in this podcast episode. While Ioaniddis is skeptical of the validity of much research, he genuinely believes research can unveil exciting findings. But the majority of the time, it is not designed well enough to draw sound conclusions.
I am fascinated by the precision and resilience of Fukuoka’s criticisms after his brief stint at the laboratory bench. Fukuoka does not suggest that we forsake all science. He merely suggests we interrogate the limits of knowledge.
Medical and Agricultural Conservatism
Farmers are uniquely equipped to speak to the multifaceted consequences of innovation. At their best, farmers intimately understand how their decisions affect local ecosystems and soil fertility. Multigenerational farmers might also understand the effect of agricultural innovation on community and culture. Fukuoka’s genius comes from his understanding that the vast complexity of nature is beyond human comprehension. Parallel to this, he recognizes that the multifaceted consequences of innovation are often overlooked, if not unfathomable.
Since World War II, farming has become more mechanized and industrialized. For the past 100 years in the United States, small-scale farmers have been told by businessmen and elected officials to "get big or get out". This is a call to arms to take on debt to purchase more land, heavier machinery, and more petrochemicals. Technological innovation invaded the American countryside, making casualties of rural communities. This is a trend well documented by The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry. Similarly, Fukuoka remarks that “after the War, between 70% and 80% of the people in Japan were farmers.” Today, this number stands at 2%.
It is notable that these demographic shifts have largely occurred in silence. For the past 100 years, it was largely assumed that rural places, and the people living there, were expendable. There existed little political debate about whether people should be replaced with machines. To this day, the status quo is to celebrate and adopt every innovation that seems to make life better. And when innovation turns out to be culturally and economically destructive, technology advocates suggest that future innovation will outrun the damages inflicted. Fukuoka understands that innovation often leads to an outward spiral of unintended consequences:
“To the extent that trees deviate from their natural form, pruning and insect extermination become necessary; to the extent that human society separates itself from a life close to nature, schooling becomes necessary. In nature, schooling has no function.”
Fukuoka might have called himself an agricultural conservative. In the medical field, there are a few individuals who identify as medical conservatives. Medical conservatives acknowledge that scientific knowledge is limited, research methods are imperfect, and certain medical interventions might do more harm than good. In my medical practice, I find myself increasingly leaning towards these tendencies. What might we gain by employing conservatism when the consequences of innovation are not clear?
Might we still have thriving rural American communities that share history, heritage, and place-based culture?
Would we focus primarily on our basic needs and our relationships?
It seems technological conservatism is not a natural tendency. The uniquely curious and innovative human spirit led to fire, cooking, rituals, song, dance, literature, and scientific discovery. It is hard to imagine how bland the world would be in the absence of human ingenuity. But this same innovative spirit has led to immense destruction: inequality, war, and mass extinction of unfathomable proportions. We have harmed ourselves and the natural world to a degree that no other species has achieved.
How do we reconcile our craving for innovation and our tendency to be destructive? Fukuoka has a few thoughts to share.
A Philosophical Framework for Understanding Health & Nature
“Before researchers become researchers they should become philosophers. They should consider what the human goal is, what it is that humanity should create. Doctors should first determine at the fundamental level what it is that human beings depend on for life.”
Fukuoka’s proposition here is simple, yet intimidating. He proposes we focus not only on fighting disease, but that we attempt to understand what health even is. How would our “healthcare” system transform if we committed to understanding and prioritizing what humans require for health? Why are we plagued by diseases of modernity and deaths of despair? Will humanity ever achieve a state of widespread health?
I think a genuine quest for answers in our modernized world requires a huge dose of intellectual humility. It is difficult for answers to be found. Part of the trouble is that science leads to the compartmentalization of knowledge. Even the “gold standard” of scientific inquiry, the randomized controlled trial, is prone to this shortcoming. What if instead, we considered evolution the highest form of science?
Compared to modern scientific methods, evolution's efficacy and track record over billions of years is unparalleled. Nature is incapable of designing flawed clinical trials, employing surrogate endpoints, or concealing data. Evolution represents randomized genetic variation that occurs over eons. It operates without bias or hidden agendas. Genetic data that promotes survivability is perpetuated in future generations. And nature spontaneously interprets genetic data without human intervention. Genetic data is alive, adaptive, and more relevant than every computer byte combined.
I am not proposing that we abandon all medicine. Like Fukuoka's pruned orchard, the abandonment of an existing intervention leads to catastrophe. Medicine, when used well, undoubtedly saves and improves lives. But I do worry that modern medicine is becoming a crutch to keep humans contributing to a modern economy that creates and perpetuates disease.
How do we use our bodies well? What would a local and global economy look like that allows this to happen? Fukuoka is just one individual who relentlessly pursued these questions. What is frustrating is that Fukuoka’s life cannot be easily replicated. His methods cannot be copied and pasted. Living well means something different based on the context of one’s world and unique abilities. Living a life aligned with nature looks different, depending on where you are. We have to find the way ourselves.