MASANOBU FUKUOKA (1913 – 2008) lived on the Japanese island of Shikoku. He was the son of a rice farmer who was also the local mayor. Fukuoka studied plant pathology and worked for three years as a product inspector at the customs office in Yokohama. During World War II, he worked for the Japanese government as a researcher in food production. After the war, he returned to his hometown to devote himself wholeheartedly to agriculture. And in 1975, distressed by the effects of Japan’s postwar modernization, Fukuoka wrote the book “The One Straw Revolution.” “We humans had actively created the food shortage we claimed to fear. We fed (and still feed) more than a third of the world’s grain to livestock, which returns only a fraction of those nutrients to us. Why would a species disrupt the source of its own nourishment, its very survival?” Fukuoka’s book had the courage to reject the conventional wisdom that lab science driven by narrow profits was the salvation of agriculture. Instead, it taught that the best methods of growing food are those that align with nature, which in practical terms means minimal soil disturbance (no tilling or weeding) and no application of chemicals (whether fertilizers or pesticides).