Cultivating human beings : natural farming in South Korea

Although having achieved an unprecedented rise in food production, the ecological, social and health impacts of industrial agriculture have led numerous scholars and activists to question its desirability. Regarded as a type of industry, industrial farming is grounded in the reductionist and mechanistic metaphysics of the modern Western thinking tradition, regarding humans as separated and superior to nature. Natural farming, as articulated by the Japanese philosopher and farmer Masanobu Fukuoka, offers an alternative, bridging the human and natural world in a search for unity, that has been relatively unexplored in academic agricultural research and discourses. This exploratory research, adopting grounded theory as a framework, is based on participant observation on seven farms practising natural farming in South Korea and on interviews with the farmers inhabiting them. Studying the relation between the understanding of self in the world, perception and practices, as informed by natural farming philosophy and principles, this research suggests that the processes of: 1) directly experiencing the fields through the senses, 2) adopting and striving to reach a holistic, non-dualistic and relational perception, 3) establishing relationships with nonhuman living beings, fosters the development of an ‘ecological self-in-relation’ based on a realistic appreciation of one’s place within the world, which informs practices in a dialectical way. I argue that natural farming, through metaphors of inner growth, relation, unity, sacredness and balance, can contribute to the development of a coherent and comprehensive philosophy supporting sustainable agriculture.M-A