The One-Straw Revolution

Sarah Kelley

4/9/2018

Melissa Santos

In “ The One-Straw Revolution” by Masanobu Fukuoka he talks about agriculture and humans knowledge about food.  Fukuoka talks about the challenges and what he believes us as human are doing wrong when it comes to farming. Fukuoka does not really look at human intelligence highly and even says “ The irony is that science has served only to show how small human knowledge is (29).”  He talks about how sometimes doing nothing or very little is better for the plants since they know what to do, we should not be adding those harmful chemicals to the plants that most farmers do. He talks a lot about humans and how we think we hold the answer to everything. Later on in the book Fukuoka even talks about how humans do not know why they are on earth and it is hard for them to actually live because they try to fulfil their lives.

I think that Fukuoka’s word choice was a strength in his book. The way he stated his option made me really think about what he was saying and make me side with him more. I think that another strength was how he used a lot of numbers to show how much things work or do not work when it comes to food and the growth of it. It helps get his point across more and shows that he knows what he is talking about. I do think that one of the weakness was how optionatied it was. He really did not say anything about the other side of his arguments he only talked about what he thought was wrong with our food and what he thought we should be doing.

I would recommend this book to people that want to know about farming and what it takes for it to work right. I think that this book is really helpful in making people realize that we do not have all the answer and that sometimes we need to let nature do what it is supposed to do. A lot of people think that those chemicals that we add and the things we do for our plants are helpful because it usually makes them grow fast or larger. This book would help those realize that we do not have to do a lot of the things that we do and that nature works in amazing ways it just might take longer than we are use to.