One Straw Revolution Evaluation

Betsey Walsh

Professor Santos

ENGL 102_037

09 April 2018

One Straw Revolution Evaluation

            One Straw Revolution, by Masanobu Fukuoka, was the third and final book we were assigned to read this semester. It is about natural farming, eating, human beings and their relationship with it and more. While reading this book, I learned about how he viewed human beings and nature. One quote that stood out to me was “Born without knowing the reason only to close one’s eyes and depart for the infinite unknown – the human being is indeed a tragic creature” (160 Fukuoka). This quote was one example that Professor Santos put on the board one day in class and write about what you think they meant by this and if we agree or disagree about what they are talking about. For this quote, I believe that it meant that human beings are born without knowing what they will accomplish in life and type of person they would be. They do not know if they will succeed or fail, if they will amount to anything, or if they will a multimillionaire or a serial killer. Also, when he talks about when we close our eyes and depart, he is talking about death. When we die, we do not know what happens and no one will know unless they are dead. And once you are dead, you can really say anything about it. I agreed with this because you really do not know the reason why you are born and what happens once you die, and that is very sad. Fukuoka also talks about how we as human beings do not appreciate nature. For example, we are too eager to harvest the crop and eat it before it is even ready to be picked. This was a common theme in not only this book, but the other 2 books we read this semester as well: humans not appreciating nature and all it does for us.

            I would recommend this book to people who are interested in learning more about agriculture and Fukuoka’s point of view about it. I really enjoyed reading and learning more about agriculture!