Masanobu Fukuoka and Mokichi Okada: Japan's Two Natural Farming Pioneers

Illustrated portraits of Masanobu Fukuoka holding a clay seed ball and Mokichi Okada holding a handful of soil

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I’ve been doing natural farming for 25 years, but I’ve never tried Fukuoka’s methods myself. I have watched videos of his seed balls, though. You wrap seeds in clay, toss them onto the land, and whatever comes up is what suits that place. If pumpkins grow, you know pumpkins will do well there next year. That makes real sense to me, and I admire how he used it to help people overseas.

The natural farming I practice, based on Okada’s ideas, feels different. Okada watched closely how nature works, in the soil and in the roots, and put what he saw to use.

Fukuoka let nature choose. Okada learned from nature and worked with it. Same name, two different paths.

If you have ever looked into natural farming, you have probably come across The One-Straw Revolution. Masanobu Fukuoka’s book has inspired farmers and gardeners around the world for decades.

But Fukuoka was not the only Japanese thinker who questioned modern farming. In the same era, another man was asking similar questions — and he gave his method the very same name.

His name was Mokichi Okada.

Who Was Masanobu Fukuoka?

Masanobu Fukuoka was born in 1913 in Ehime Prefecture, on the island of Shikoku. He trained as an agricultural scientist and worked as a plant inspector at the customs office in Yokohama.

In 1937, while recovering from pneumonia, he went through an experience that changed the way he saw the world. He began to doubt modern agricultural science, left his job, and went home to his family’s farm.

During World War II, he worked at an agricultural research station in Kochi Prefecture. In 1947, after the war, he returned to natural farming, growing rice and barley without plowing the fields.

His method rested on four principles: no plowing, no prepared fertilizer or compost, no weeding by tilling or with herbicides, and no pesticides.

In 1975, he published The One-Straw Revolution. The English edition came out in 1978, and the book has since been translated into more than 20 languages.

Later in life, he took his ideas abroad. Using clay seed balls — seeds wrapped in small balls of clay — he worked to bring green back to dry, damaged land in several countries. In 1988, he received the Ramon Magsaysay Award, often called Asia’s Nobel Prize. In 2008, he passed away in his hometown in Ehime, at the age of 95.

Another Pioneer in the Same Era

Mokichi Okada (1882–1955) began growing crops without fertilizer in the mid-1930s, around the same time Fukuoka reached his own turning point.

By 1951, Okada had been practicing his method for more than ten years. That year, he published a small booklet to share it with more people. Japan was short of food after the war, and he presented natural farming as a way to grow more.

At the heart of his idea was the soil. Okada believed that soil has its own natural power to grow healthy crops. Fertilizer may bring good results for a while, he wrote, but over time the soil comes to depend on it. He saw pests as a sign that the soil had become impure. To bring out the soil’s strength, he said, the first step is to make it clean.

In English, Okada’s method is sometimes called “Nature Farming.”

Same Name, Different Paths

Both men called their method shizen nōhō — Japanese for “natural farming.” Yet research suggests the two developed their ideas separately.

They had a lot in common. Both gave up chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Both questioned the direction modern farming was taking. And both trusted nature more than human control.

But their paths were different.

Fukuoka chose to let nature show the way. He looked at common farm work — plowing, making compost, weeding — and asked whether each step was really needed. Whatever nature could do on its own, he left to nature.

Okada, on the other hand, watched closely how nature works and then put what he learned to use.

Take weeding. In a 1949 essay, Okada wrote that he grew most of his vegetables simply by sowing the seeds and weeding now and then — and still got excellent vegetables. Asked about weeding rice fields in 1951, he said it was not a problem: do it whenever it seems right. Without fertilizer, he explained, the rice grows stronger and the weeds grow weaker, so weeding becomes easier.

Compost shows the same attitude. For Okada, compost was never a substitute for fertilizer. In talks he gave in 1953, he explained that when the same crop is grown in a field year after year, the soil gets used to it — like a worker who becomes skilled — and the harvest improves over time. Adding compost only gets in the way. In truth, he said, it is best to add nothing at all; that is how the soil’s own strength grows.

Compost had one job: to improve the condition of the soil where it tends to harden, stay cold, or dry out. Even then, he wanted it fully rotted, almost like soil. For hard red clay, he said, mixing it in for the first two or three years is enough. Some farmers treated compost like fertilizer, piled it on, and failed.

Why care so much about soil that hardens? For Okada, the most important part of growing any plant was the tips of the roots. The aim was to help the fine roots stretch out, and for that, he wrote, the soil must not be allowed to pack down hard.

Okada also paid attention to the farmer’s frame of mind. He wrote that plants are alive, and he saw the soil itself as a living thing.

You could put it this way: Fukuoka asked how far farmers could trust nature to do the work. Okada asked how nature works, and how farmers could put that to use.

Where to Begin with Okada’s Natural Farming

Fukuoka’s ideas are easy to find in English. On this site, we introduce Okada’s writings on natural farming in English, one by one.

If The One-Straw Revolution opened your eyes to natural farming, Okada offers another way into the same idea. Start with the introduction below, then follow the series.