One Straw Revolution

David Hague 

Professor Santos  

4/9/2018 

One Straw Revolution Book review 

In "The One Straw Revolution" by Masanobu Fukuoka, he talks about mankind's knowledge about food and agriculture. Fukuoka explains why he believes people aren't farming the proper way and the challenges behind it. He really doesn’t agree with human intelligence when it comes to farming because he believes farmers shouldn’t be using chemicals and other kinds of substances on their crops. Fukuoka states, " The irony is that science has served only to show how small human knowledge is (29). Fukuoka believes that doing very little or even nothing at all helps the crops even more than the chemicals being used today. 

I personally believe that this book has a couple of great strengths such as his word choice, and the way he explains his personal beliefs. The way he explains his issues with farming practices is very simple and anyone can follow along with his viewpoint on his topics. Another strength this book portrayed was it made a lot of valid points, such as why crops are best left alone, and how it's better that way. However, this does lead me to the big weakness in the book. In my opinion it was very one sided because he didn’t give the people who support chemicals their side of the story, and he only focused on what he thought was best and ignored other methods.  

I would personally recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about farming or if you even have a small garden, because Fukuoka will teach anyone the proper way to tend to your farm or a garden. Most people believe that using chemicals on the crops is the best way because the crops grow at a faster rate. However, nature works amazingly on its own and there isn't any need to be using all these chemicals. The crops will do just fine on their own, the only difference is that mankind will just have to deal with the crops growing a little longer. That is my opinion on "The One Straw Revolution".