No Work Farming

"The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops,
but the cultivation and perfection of human beings."

-Masanobu Fukuoka

The merging of traditional sustainable practices from the east and west is gaining relevance in development strategies for a sustainable future. Masanobu Fukuoka was at the forefront of merging the two. He was a radical farmer, activist and teacher who developed natural farming methods for what he called ‘the road back to nature'. Fukuoka had a uniquely dualistic East/West perspective of food production and a vision of people and nature co-existing in the farming system. He worked in the sciences as a plant pathologist, but when recovering from a severe attack of pneumonia he realized he had to work to put humans back in harmony with nature. He then quit his job, returned to his family's farm and devoted his life to small-scale natural farming systems, using natural rhythms of the land without tilling, weeding or applying pesticides and fertilizers.

Fukuoka’s vision and action for a world in which civilization and nature can peacefully coexist was carefully documented. He was the author of several books including 'The One Straw Revolution' with great influence on farmers and activists around the world. Fukuoka also wrote: The Road Back to Nature and The Natural Way of Farming. The resources available online are from the Fukuoka Farming Website, Mother Earth News, One Straw, and Natural Farming.

Learning from the apprentices and farmers following Fukuoka’s way of natural farming can be done all over the world. The Center for Sustainable Community offers workshops by Larry Korn who studied with Fukuoka.

Give Organic a Chance

"I don't want you just to sit down at the table.
I don't want you just to eat, and be content.
I want you to walk out into the fields
where the water is shining, and the rice has risen.
I want you to stand there, far from the white tablecloth.
I want you to fill your hands with the mud, like a blessing."
-Mary Oliver

Organic agriculture has recently gained a bad name in some circles but it deserves a fresh look. Organic is often criticized because many products available in the supermarket are from large organic corporations with single bottom line ethics. Industrial organic production and global shipping are unsustainable practices and do not exactly meet the IFOAM Principles of Organic Agriculture. With giant organic corporations the fundamental notions at the heart of organic are lost. As Michael Pollan pointed out many times in his 2007 publication Omnivore’s Dilemma organic is not the end-all-be-all of ecologically sound farming practices. In fact many small farmers are doing away with the label altogether opting instead for a better relationship with the customer. When buyers are also owners and farmhands, as in the Japanese Teikei and the US Community Shared Agriculture (CSA), the need for an organic or fair trade label goes away altogether.

For more information and resources about Teikei and CSA check out A Visit to the Home of Teikei by the Rodale Institute and Local Harvest.

The solution to getting back at the heart of organic is to start producing organic food on your own. Resources for small personal production are available from Overcoming Consumerism and Garden Organic as well as from your local farmer. Find the organic farmer nearest you through Local Harvest, Serve Your Country Food and through the IFOAM Organic World Directory. Show up and lend a hand, this is a great way to learn how to do the work in your own garden or greenhouse and to share the work of animal production. Small, local organic farmers need your help. They are struggling despite the relatively high market value of organic food the competition is fierce with industrial organic bringing market prices down.

For more resources and information linking you to local farmers check out the 100 Mile Diet, Locavores, and the Eat Local Challenge.

Encourage young farmers, the average age of a farmer is increasing every day, meanwhile the responsibility of global production goes onto the shoulders of fewer and fewer of them. Young farmers are gathering their resources and networking around the world to make good food for local people (Crop Cooperative, Greenhorns and Freshman Farmer) . Learn more about how to support them by looking through the Terra Madre resources.

Small is Beautiful

"In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely."
- Henry David Thoreau

“Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility.”
- EF Schumacher

When the economist E. F. Schumacher published ‘Small is Beautiful’ in 1973 he was working with the premise that sustainable economies are possible. Schumacher believed in an economy of enough, an economy which supports social and natural syatems in a sustainable way. Many economists and political theorists since have supported his notion that the econmy must benefit people and the environment rather than degrade it. The Italian writer, activist and ‘Good Clean and Fair’ advocate Carlo Petrini is chief among them. Carlo Petrini has proposed that small and slow economies are not only possible they help us eat better food, have better health, create stronger communities and live better lives.

Visit the EF Schumacher Society and Slow Food International to learn more about the philosophy and work of these two visionaries.

The best way to support the slow economy is to start in your own home and community. Economy and ecology share the same greek root oikos which means home or community. Focusing energy on the local community and economy can help to create a more sustainable future worldwide. Go to the yard sales and markets, get to know the farmers and craft-workers in your village. It is possible to get the things you want from a local crafts-person just look around and see what you find. Global artisan networks like the Women's Global Artisan Network and Ten Thousand Villages can help you research local connections.

The Next Step; Leaving IFOAM and Germany

The IFOAM Growing Organic internship is nearly over here in Bonn and I am just now starting to clean up from my nine months of work. These nine months I've written and published several articles in Ecology and farming, made a website, sent thousands of emails, proofread countless documents and attended agricultural conferences around the world. The wrap up includes writing more emails, writing guidelines for the next person to take over my work and general clean up and organization of posts, wikis, and networking. This makes for long days and and necessitates ample espresso consumption. Thank you Rapunzel for supplying the office with fair-trade, organic and tasty espresso grounds.

Next stop is Amdermatt, Switzerland where I hope to spend time learning from the Mountains again. Too much time as an 'office environmentalist' has left me a skinny, weak and pale landlubber.

IFOAM's Growing Organic Web Pages (www.ifoam.org/organic) Information and Resources for Developing Sustainable Agriculture

Growing Organic www.ifoam.org/growingorganic


I have been working for the past eight months on this exciting project for the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements Head Office in Bonn, Germany. This has been an incredibly educational and grounding experience. The work is now essentially complete and I am now working on promoting it. Please help me get the word out, have a look and see if the work applies to you and where you feel it might best be promoted.

The web pages I built are a source of information for developing organic sectors of all kinds, even growing organic food and composting in the backyard. They represent the cumulative knowledge and experience of IFOAM, the umbrella organization for Organic Agriculture, and are a community resource designed to represent and serve global Organic movements. I like to think of them as a kind of Organic Wikipedia.



These web pages provide comprehensive information for everyone from grassroots organizers engaged in advocacy to trainers and smallholders (Training Platform www.ifoam.org/training). They are also full of recommendations and options for the successful growth through networking, strategic relations, and partnerships.

Searching these pages you can learn more about the history of Organic Agriculture, lessons learned through case studies and research from all around the world, and specifics on how to produce and promote Organic Agriculture. Here you will also find information on the whole process of developing organic sectors, from policy making to market development (www.ifoam.org/markets).

These pages address common criticisms/ misconceptions, and offer arguments in favor of Organic Agriculture through the publications and works of IFOAM and Global Organic Movements.

I hope you like it.

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Here is a regularly updated list of other things Cory writes

Al Gore and the Purpose-Driven Web

In a recent speech in San Francisco Al Gore pointed out the elephant in the living room once more. “Now is the time to really move swiftly" he said, urging internet companies to use the web as a tool for positive change. The purpose of the internet has to be transformed for doing good:

“The purpose, I would urge all of you — as many of you as are willing to take it up — is to bring about a higher level of consciousness about our planet and the imminent danger and opportunity we face because of the radical transformation in the relationship between human beings and the Earth,” (read the New York Times Article)

He shows us how this can be done in his Taking 'An Inconvenient Truth' To Congress website and the WE can Solve It campaign.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.” 

― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Promoting Organic Agriculture

Organic Agriculture deserving of a fresh look by governments and 'development' specialists and decision makers. - We should all help and find time to do more work linking the benefits of local and organic to other environmental causes. - Organic is being criticized because aspects of it have occasionally been taken up by large corporations with a single bottom line ethics, as a money making scheme. Granted organic CAFOs and intensive chicken factories, as well as shipping Organic foods to far away places, are also unsustainable practices and do not exactly meet with the IFOAM Principles or Organic Agriculture but they are still much, much, much better than their conventional counterparts.

The Environmental Benefits of Organic Agriculture are astounding.

Organic deserves recognition as an important way to help mitigate climate change!



Here is a poem by W.D. Ehrhart 'The Farmer' that feels appropriate for the topic.

Each day I go into the fields

to see what is growing

and what remains to be done.

It is always the same thing: nothing

is growing, everything needs to be done.

Plow, harrow, disc, water, pray

till my bones ache and hands rub

blood-raw with honest labor—

all that grows is the slow

intransigent intensity of need.

I have sown my seed on soil

guaranteed by poverty to fail.

But I don’t complain—except

to passersby who ask me why

I work such barren earth.

They would not understand me

if I stooped to lift a rock

and hold it like a child, or laughed,

or told them it is their poverty

I labor to relieve. For them,

I complain. A farmer of dreams

knows how to pretend. A farmer of dreams

knows what it means to be patient.

Each day I go into the fields.