At the time when the modern agriculture was first taking a strong foothold into Japan, and the prevailing philosophy was the more the 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 field. Fukuoka stopped ploughing altogether. He didn't use any chemical fertilizers, 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.