At the time when the modern agriculture was first
taking a strong foothold into Japan, and the prevailing
philosophy was more better Fukuoka, instead of asking “what
if we try this, what if we try that?” would ask, “what if I don’t
do this? “what if I don’t do that?” So when the neighboring
farms were buying a heavy
machinery to plough the fields.
Fukuoka stopped ploughing
altogether. He didn’t use any chemical fertilizer, herbicides and
pesticides. And as a raised farmer, he even abandoned the
ancient practice of flooding the rice fields. But he had the
result that was compliable or even superior to neighboring farms who invested a huge sum of money in heavy machinery,
fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.