Organic Social Development

In the island nation of Japan lived a legendary farmer by the name of Masanobu Fukuoka, who shocked scientists and researchers by following a method of farming that was lost to modern wisdom. Fukuoka believed that modern farming went against nature, and he slowly gave conventional practices up, going to the extent of not even plowing the land. Fukuoka believed that earthworms and other organisms in the soil were great tillers of the land. With no pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers, his approach to farming was about getting out of the way and letting nature do its magic. And, wonder of wonders, Fukuoka's yields were among the highest in Japan, without working half as much as other farmers. While his neighboring farms would often be hit by crop diseases, his farms would be protected by the many organisms in their own ecosystem that could exist because of his non-violent approach to farming.

The timeless idea of non-violent farming is seeing a resurgence in India and Sri Lanka, thanks to the efforts of the Gandhian organization, Sarvodaya. From a Sarvodaya volunteer, I heard the story of a mango farmer, Bharat Bhushan Tyagi, from Bulandsher, who would not harvest his mangoes. Instead, he'd have nets under his trees, and let nature decide when the mangoes were to be served. This farmer's mangoes, according to the volunteer, were the best he'd ever had in his life, and would also fetch the highest price in the market. While these stories make us want to experiment relaxing our egos and letting nature do its magic, a much bigger lesson in social welfare lies hidden in Fukuoka's and Sarvodaya's interest in non-violent and natural farming.

What if our society is the field in which we grow. We give the label "weed" to plants we don't like, and "pests" to animals we don't want in our farm. In society, this would be the big greedy corporations that sell harmful products and slowly suck our vitality. In order to curb them, we come up with herbicides and pesticides, in the form of regulations and taxes. But, what happens when we spray poison in our gardens and farms? The poison also gets into the "useful" plants that we end up consuming, and ultimately into us. Similarly, when we create endless regulation and taxes, we not only deter the greedy, we also deter those who want to do good.

Consider the following example. There's a neighborhood where the street alley is rather dark. A young lady who lives there considers it rather inconvenient to return home in the dark every day. She talks to her neighbors about this, and everyone criticizes the local administration, the landlord and others, but no one steps up to do anything. One night, when returning home trips and falls in the darkness and sprains her ankle. She decides that she's had it with this problem. The next morning, she hobbles up to the nearby electrician shop and hires someone there to come and install a light. She is not worried about how her neighbors will benefit from the light without paying for it (only economists worry about such things under the label of "free riders"). She needs the light for herself. And her action benefits her neighborhood and they too get the light. The history of human development has been more or less like this - when an individual could not take the pain anymore and decided to get a light to dispel the darkness for their own self and in the process ended up benefiting their society.

Now, consider a more realistic picture of our times. A utility company has a monopoly on setting up lights, and they do so only when bribed. In order to make sure that people don't have other options, they make it illegal for individuals to install lights on their own. Under the garb of public safety, installers must be licensed by the state. The license conditions would be as complicated and expensive as possible, thanks to the hand-in-glove relationship between the monopolist and the government. If our brave lady has not given up by now, she is a real survivor who must make great personal sacrifice to solve a simple problem. And if she does give up, then we, her neighbors would hear the sad tale and nod our heads in agreement and clamor for regulation to control the monopolists. If someone hears us, more regulation gets passed, leading to more poison in the ground that makes it more difficult for the weed, AND more difficult for good plants to grow. In other words, we slap ourselves hard in the face by feeding more poison to our environment, instead of asking for more freedom to level the playing field. We have chosen poison-driven farming, and forgotten that life-affirming farming is possible.

Can we really do life-affirming farming in the social field? We live as though we are not a part of nature, and get shocked when we fall sick or die, as though it should not be happening to us. This is what India's ancients called "Maya," or contradiction in our minds that makes us behave like lunatics. Every plant and animal is bound by nature, and responds to it. In non-violent farming, the emphasis is on respecting life, even those of insects and weeds who we think will harm us, for the perspective of life is much larger. It is the destiny of all living things to be eaten, including ourselves. When we die, if we are buried, the insects get us, and if we are cremated, then the plants (on land or water) get us. If this is how nature is, then we should not be troubled that some organisms eat others to survive. Indeed, non-violent farming asks us to accept the life of the weeds and insects and let them have what they need. Fukuoka's success and similar stories from Sarvodaya's active volunteers point to mounting evidence that life-affirming farming works, and works well. In India, this was the original method of farming until the so-called "green revolution" tossed them out in favor of poison-driven farming. A counter-revolution is now underway with farmers all over India moving back to their original life-affirming methods (see NPR's report: In India, Bucking The 'Revolution' by Going Organic). The time has come for us to extend the principles behind life-affirming farming to the social field.

How should we do life-affirming farming in the social field? First, we have to abandon our restless mindset that requires instant gratification. Fukuoka's experiment took years and as many farmers can testify, turning a conventionally-farmed land into a non-violent organic one can take time. When the fruits come, they usually surprise everyone in their beauty and expression. Second, although the fruits are an inevitable result of the following of a set of universal life-affirming principles, our eyes must stay focused on the principles, for we only control our actions, not our outcomes. Third, and most important, we must clarify our understanding of these principles, which can be intuited from an organic farmer's wisdom. To my surprise, after some reflection, I have found these principles to have been elegantly captured by India's ancients through a set of positive affirmations in Sanskrit, which goes as follows:

We WILL protect each other
We WILL nourish each other
We WILL act with great heroism
We WILL undertake invigorating studies
We WILL NOT throw poison at each other

We will proceed to examine each affirmation in light of our discussion so far.

We WILL protect each other
An important aspect of the farmer's attitude is respecting life, even the life of those creatures that we might think are harmful to us. Who would have guessed that the scary earthworm that we'd rather kill with chemicals can be the heroic land tiller who saves much time for the human farmer by just going about its daily life burrowing holes in the earth. We can protect not just those we like but also those we don't know how to deal with, through a variety of methods. One of the most powerful methods is to do no harm, which we will touch upon later. Another is by direct nourishment, which we will discuss in the next affirmation. The heart of this affirmation is to adopt the mindset of the protector, for that is what the farmer really is - a protector of life.