by John Haberern, President of the Rodale Institute

Mr. Haberern gave this speech at the Shinji Shumeikai of America’s Pasadena Center on August 9, 1998.

Back about two years ago, something very special happened. I was privileged to meet a great man named Mr. Togo and, along with that meeting, I was introduced to a global agriculture, art, and spirituality leadership organization from Japan known as Shinji Shumeikai. It was a simple, seemingly inauspicious meeting but one which generated a powerful, perhaps spiritual, force between two organizations igniting a partnership which will have the ultimate effect of bringing lasting peace, health, and unity to our world for this and generations yet unborn.

The odd thing about all of this is that I actually did not want to go to this meeting. I was sitting in my office one day, when the phone rang, with a call from our outreach program coordinator. She said that there was a Japanese group coming to visit the Rodale Institute Experimental Farm and would I spend some time with them.

Now I get a lot of calls with requests just like this and I usually take as many as I can because I enjoy talking about the work of the Institute and our staff and the successful programs we have around the world helping people understand the relationship between healthy soil, healthy food, healthy people. But on the particular day Mr. Togo and the Shinji Shumeikai group came to the Institute, I had many things on my schedule. I did say I would come out for about an hour to talk with the group. Well that hour turned into almost three-quarters of a day. Something invisible, a sort of chemistry, a spiritual thing, held me there. A fire began to burn inside of me yearning to learn more about what I was hearing about your organization and the good work you were doing in natural agriculture and how you were going about doing it. But there was something more than that, something that is hard to explain. Something that came to me through the words, the facial expressions, the sincerity and conviction expressed by Mr. Togo. Throughout the meeting there was a bonding between the two of us, something that was real and mutually respectful. It was like a magnet drawing each of us together.

As the day progressed, I said to myself, we must work together. The mission Shinji Shumeikai and Rodale Institute have set for themselves is just too similar, too immense, too challenging and too big for any one organization to do alone. I suddenly had the feeling that there was a reason that Mr. Togo and his group came to Rodale Institute. There was a reason why I decided to come to this meeting. There was a reason Mr. Togo and I had a special bonding, a special chemistry between us.

I was already thinking about what our partnership could do to help people around the world improve their health, regenerate natural resources, and make this world truly a paradise on earth. Exactly what our founder, J. I. Rodale, and your founder, Mokichi Okada, wanted so desperately to happen. And here we were in a meeting together setting the tone for a global partnership which I know for sure will go a long way toward making the dreams of our founders and our dreams right now become a reality.

I often think about this meeting and the good work we are doing together and the challenge we have taken on together to help introduce natural and regenerative agriculture into Japan and around the world in places like Senegal, West Africa, for example. This makes me very happy and I feel fortunate to have as our friends and partners you the members of Shinji Shumeikai and your leadership headed by Ms. Koyama. At Rodale Institute, we have been at our work for 50 years and I can tell you the road has always been smooth. But when you go down challenging, bumpy roads together with organizations and the people behind the organizations like Shinji Shumeikai, it makes the task a lot easier. God has given us an immense task to perform and through invisible ways, he is helping us join our hands to help us help others toward the goal of heaven on earth and true happiness.

Let me talk about these invisible ways - perhaps the reason Mr. Togo and his group came to Rodale Institute. The Very Reverend James Morton of the Interfaith Center of New York in his paper given at the Shinji Shumeikai Symposium on Art, Spirituality, and the Environment last April put it this way. "The second way (to reach our goal of true happiness) is invisible. It is the mode of energy, the way of Spirit. It comes from inside. It is the life force. The God force, the Spirit force that makes creation alive. The Spirit is the life of life, the insight and energy that makes us run." He calls on all of us to make the invisible on the inside of us become the visible outside of us. That is what spiritually is all about. "Bringing the light, love, and healing power inside of us outside in service to our neighbors - our fellow humans, our fellow trees and rivers, everything that is sick we can help cure. We were created to serve and heal."

That is exactly what the founders of Shinji Shumeikai and Rodale Institute have asked us to do. And we are doing it through our work in agriculture, health, art, and spirituality. That also was the reason I believe Mr. Togo and I clasped hands in friendship. That invisible Spirit, I believe, was working almost 50 years ago in bringing together Mokichi Okada and J. I. Rodale. In 1947, J. I. Rodale started the Soil & Health Foundation forerunner of today's Rodale Institute to "conduct and encourage scientific research, teaching, training, and educating the public (by operating farms, schools, laboratories, experimental stations, and publishing houses) on soil, food, and the health of humans - and their relationship to each other."

A few years later, a very special correspondence took place between J. I. [Rodale] and Mokichi Okada - a meeting of the minds so-to-speak, which no doubt laid the foundation for our partnership today. In September 1951, J. I. Rodale wrote to Mr. Okada suggesting that he would like to cooperate with Mr. Okada to enhance what he saw as similar ideas and concepts concerning the relationship between soil, food, and health. Mr. Okada told the members who gathered at his office in Atami that he too would like to work together. At that meeting one of Mr. Okada's members asked him to write more details about some of the negative effects of chemical fertilizer upon human health, and the relationship between soil health and human health. Mr. Okada answered as follows: "I haven't written about this yet, have I? Then I will write more strongly next time. However, I feel what Mr. Rodale wrote in his book Pay Dirt is enough. Don't you think so..."

In the ensuing years, both organizations moved strongly forward building programs and helping people around the world based on the philosophy and mission of their founders. Robert Rodale, son of J. I. Rodale, building upon his father's organic vision, envisioned the concept of regenerative gardening and agriculture as an attempt to encourage natural tendencies in farming practices. He recognized the ability of safe, non-destructive and biologically fitting methods to improve and enhance the soil not only for current use but for future generations as well. But in addition, these methods embraced the union of agriculture, conservation, and health to create an integrated and enhanced system of production and consumption.

Robert Rodale also saw the potential for people to use regenerative methods to improve more than just their land. Regenerative gardening and agriculture empowers people to reshape their lives in tandem with their environment. This concept has become a reality through the pioneering work of Rodale Institute. In the US, Guatemala, Senegal, Russia, and China, Rodale Institute has established programs based on regenerative methods to achieve social, economic, and environment change and progress.

Now Anthony Rodale is taking regenerative agriculture into the 21st Century using the Institute's Experimental Farm as the focal point for education, training, and enterprise activities geared at reaching the general public, especially children. "Children are our future," Anthony emphasizes. "Their influence and understanding are immense. They led the fight for cleaner air and recycling. They'll help lead the way to cleaner soil and a healthier future, also."

Since its founding, Shinji Shumeikai has also focused on a true integration and union of art, spiritualism, and natural agriculture as the basis for the enhancement of human and environmental health and well being. We believe that Shinji Shumeikai has much to offer the global regenerative agriculture movement. The approach of integrating agriculture with other dimensions of human life, such as the appreciation of beauty and spiritual development, needs to be communicated to those in the regenerative agriculture movement as well as the proponents of conventional agriculture. Our biggest hope resides in young people. Above all, we need to help children feel the spirit of regeneration. Regeneration is internal, almost as Dr. Morton believes invisible. The best and most powerful things come from inside ourselves. And that is exactly what is happening today between our two organizations, our leadership, and most importantly our members. It was started by Mokichi Okada and J. I. Rodale. We took a second giant step when Mr. Togo came to visit us at Rodale Institute. And recently we took another giant step when we signed the Memorandum of Understanding between Shinji Shumeikai and Rodale Institute.

We are united in our desire to protect nature and the bounty she has shown us throughout the history of humankind. We must respect nature; not try to dominate her. We are as one in our concern over the need to feed a hungry world with a rapidly increasing population and diminishing cropland. We feel strongly that the challenge to agriculture has never been greater. We also feel strongly that by combining the strengths of Shinji Shumeikai and Rodale Institute, not only in the agriculture field but by integrating the precepts and the workings of nature and by respecting and understanding the interconnections of art, spirituality, and natural agriculture we are building a formula for success. One that will tie farmers and the global food system directly into the healing and health of plants, land, and people worldwide -- the health of the planet itself.

Mokichi Okada writing in the Book of Holy Teaching explained, "thus the principle of the natural agriculture method is an overriding respect and concern for nature. Nature can teach us everything."

J. I. Rodale in his book Pay Dirt said, "that a whole new era of agriculture research is in the making, one that will more nearly help to create healthy society and keep it in close touch with the land from which it gets its strength and sweetness." Again, he insisted that agriculture is the base or foundation for the transformation from which to build, as he says, "a country of prosperous farms and a healthy, vigorous people creating a fine, new community life "in their pursuit of happiness."

But why put this responsibility on the shoulders of agriculture? "Agriculture after all, is not just an industry," according to Bob Rodale. "It is a way of life -- a link between people and the earth. The foundation for the social and political stability of the world." Regenerative agriculture provides a human link to nature. So together we are linking our two organizations and the earth. As friends and partners we will go forward and make our partnership a way of life for all of us now and into the future. We will work with you and share with you our blueprint for success that is based on listening to the needs and capacities of our partners. We have developed a model of on-farm participatory research, demonstration, and technology transfer that can be applied in any community of farmers. All of this is done by working in partnership with farmers, governments, and private and public funding agencies. These same principles will be implemented in serving and enhancing the goals of Shinji Shumeikai and the Rodale Institute - Shinji Shumeikai partnership. We will work together on research, farmer network activities with active farmer involvement, farmer training, on-farm demonstrations, marketing, and education. We will partner with government agencies, universities, and other non-profit organizations. And finally, we will work together on educational activities aimed at agriculture professionals as well as gardeners and farmers. But perhaps most importantly we will focus on the general public, with a heavy emphasis on children.

We need to celebrate the friendships, the partnership, and yes the challenges and hard work ahead. But none of this will ever be accomplished without true friendship, and mutual respect and trust among the people who make up our organizations. I truly believe that that friendship exists and will continue to build in strength and impact. Through the years, we have accomplished so much. But truly the best - and most needed - is yet to come.

FROM SHUMEI MAGAZINE, VOL. 216, SEPTEMBER, 1998