by Masahiko Iwashita

I thought that Natural Agriculture’s respect for nature and avoidance of fertilizers and chemicals was a wonderful teaching. I had previously had doubts about the use of such potentially toxic substances. My parents are farmers and I had seen these additives applied to the soil for many years. I started utilizing the techniques of Natural Agriculture at my family's farm in 1992, when Kaishusama encouraged us to do that. Even in the first year the taste of vegetables I grew was totally different from the vegetables grown by my parents using conventional methods. Since I had poor farming skills, I tried to attend various workshops on Natural Agriculture and now my wife, Tomoko, and I grow both rice and vegetables using these methods.

Initially, the produce was not always successful but the reason I kept on doing Natural Agriculture was because my daughter had suffered from skin disease since she was three. Sometimes her body was covered with blood and she went repeatedly from hospital to hospital. The doctor had started to give her steroids, which had strong side effects, so I started to focus on improving her diet. My daughter went through a tough time because she couldn't eat what she wanted. Thinking of her, I couldn't stop practicing Natural Agriculture, because I wanted to give her safe rice. Gradually the harvest grew bigger and bigger. By 1994, my daughter's skin disease was so improved that I became convinced that the cause of the disease had been her diet.

When I attended the workshop at the Rodale Institute in June 1999, the Kimberton Farm touched my heart. I thought it would be nice if everywhere - just like there - parents and children could practice farming and harvesting together, could experience chickens running in the farm and the beauty of flowers as well as the business of farming. Now in our field there is a hut for children to play in. Actually, when I took my children to the rice field they found out how to play by themselves in nature without any toys. For instance, they made a broom using dried corn silk. They came up with amazingly creative ideas and they became very observant of nature, discovering various kinds of insects.

Through their experience of our Natural Agriculture produce, our three children have come to understand how wonderful the taste of naturally grown food is. When our second child entered first grade, she asked us to prepare a box lunch to substitute for the school meals. My child's will was so strong that the teacher had to approve what she wanted. Although I didn't talk to our children about school meals especially, they already realized the school meals were not good for them physically due to the difference in taste. I realized that when parents are highly conscious about their eating habits, it can strongly affect our children. This experience strengthened my desire to share safe food with not only our children, but with other students.

When my children's teacher visited our home, my wife suggested that we would like to have the children experience rice planting at school, but the teacher didn't show any positive reaction. Nonetheless, our feeling was so strong that we couldn't give it up. Then we found an article about students trying to grow rice plants in their school garden, in the magazine called "Modern Farming". According to the article, the principal and some parents were against one teacher's proposal at first, but the teacher's enthusiasm was so great that it changed their minds. As a result, the students were very pleased to be able to do practical studies. We were impressed by the article, so I presented it to my children's teacher. With the support of the principal the idea finally became a reality. On the day of rice planting thirty-eight people participated, including the vice-principal, the science teacher, students and their regular teacher. The reaction of the students was terrific. That impressed the vice-principal a lot. Their teacher even took some rice seedlings home in order to show the family. Afterwards at a village meeting the grandfather of one of the students expressed his gratitude to me for how the student felt about the rice seedlings. Even though the parents of the student are farmers, they never let their children help them. Through this rice planting experience the children's interest in growing rice became strong and they looked forward to harvesting the rice. So all the students were willing to take part in harvesting the rice. This time the principal did as well! The principal was really impressed, saying that, " today's children have no chance to see rice and vegetables grow". The students made rice balls for their parents with the rice they had grown. Parents and children ate together and, as an accompaniment my wife offered pickled cucumbers harvested from our field. The taste was so good that everyone was really impressed. At this event, the mother of one of my child's classmates shared her appreciation: her child had brought rice seedlings home and raised them in a bucket. Hearing this was really a precious experience for us.

At first my wife and I only had the intention of placing on our table food grown by the methods of Natural Agriculture, and to offer our family safe food. Now our intention has changed. As you can see by the history of my daughter's skin disease, the cause was diet — her disease healed only when her normal diet was replaced with pure, nutritious food. So my wife and I would like to offer safe food to a lot of people in order to extend to them the gift of a healthy life, especially to children who are the key to our future.

FROM SHUMEI MAGAZINE, VOL. 227, MAY/JUNE, 2000