The pineapple farm, aRong Nature Farm, utilizes the philosophy of "nature farming", originated by Mokichi Okada, to plant their fruits. Nature farming's three major concepts to follow are: no fertilizer nor pesticide, sequential cropping, and produce and plant your own seeds. However another very important principles is to only plant what is suitable for the land and your heart. According to this philosophy, any fertilizer, even natural ones, can harm the land. Farmers who believe in nature farming wish to best maintain the cycle of growth and the balance between land, crops and the farmers’ needs. They'd rather let the crops themselves scramble for what nutrition they can receive from the land and the surrounding environment. What is more, the farmers don’t even get rid of weeds. The concept of sequential cropping and using your own seeds is meant to support the cleaning of the land that has been infected with previous chemical fertilizers and allow for the growth of healthier and more natural crops.
One of the farmers that aRong wife introduced explained to me their transition from traditional farming to organic farming, and finally to nature farming.
With organic farming, the amount of produce they yielded per harvest was, on average, 12,000kg. The first year they switched from organic to nature farming, they saw a reduction in quantity to 8,000 kg. However by the second year, the soil had lost much of the remains of organic fertilizers and the produce quantity dropped significantly to only 528kg. It was devastating and saddening when you see most of your crop got destroyed by all the pests. However, after 3-6 years following nature farming principles, the soil starts to adapt to the environment. During those years, the crop yield grew to 1,200kg. Just last year, after seven years of nature farming, the yield grew to 3,900kg. The aRong farmers say that seed and soil have memories; they can remember and understand what kind of seeds they are, whether they require fertilizer as nutrition, pesticide as some kind of immunization, or nothing and grow naturally.
What is most important, is that farmers should always remain positive, and have confidence, patience, and love for their crops because this can really affect the end result of their labours. An analogy might be that a pregnant lady’s health and mood can easily alter her babies’ wellbeing.
I only had a short talk with lots of information that the farmer can further explain in more details; yet due to time constraint, I only get to walk horse watch flower…I mean briefly understand a small part of a larger process. They no longer perform merely agriculture, but the beauty of the cycle, recycle and the art of life.
