Natural Farming

I've been coming across a lot of information on this style of farming lately. Today, via Reddit, I found this article on Natural Farming practices in Hawaii - and before that, I read up on Fukuoka's "One Straw Revolution" which he started back in the 1070s. (Also read Mother Earth News' article on Building Fertile Soil). These and others are advocating less human intrusion in the growing process, and allowing nature (and soil microbes/worms/etc) to do the majority of the work. There are only a few times in the growing cycle that humans need to be involved in, but they must be done at just the right time and the right way, for the crops to be successful. It's very specific to each region as well - the methods and cycle that work in one area is not really directly transferable to other areas - so you have to take the ideas and adapt them to your local area.

I really love the idea of stepping away from the process and allowing this underground network to do most of the "heavy lifting". And best of all, this is a "no-till" system! It's a rather radical change from the way we've been doing farming, but with comparable yields to modern farming and NO pesticides, it seems to be something really worth looking at! Check out those articles, they're great reads.