Here the celebrated pioneer of the 'do-nothing' farming method reflects on global ecological trauma and …
Content warning forestry disaster and mismanagement, pollution
When natural scientists set up measures to counter desertification, they begin by investigating its causes and the apparent results. They conduct studies of the desert environment, the climate, the soil, and the ecology of the living organisms. Then they create a plan for reforestation. In other words, as with Western medicine, they devise a swift, localized treatment of the symptoms. But the causes they base their solutions upon are not the fundamental causes. Their countermeasures serve not to heal, but rather magnify the scope of the problem.
Let me talk for a moment about my own experiences with the pine forests in Japan.
— The Dragonfly Will Be the Messiah by Masanobu Fukuoka (Page 58)
Fukuoka goes on to describe the plight of these trees in the later decades of the twentieth century.
Pines were dying en masse. The Regional Office of Forestry responded by dousing forests with insecticide. The Office hoped to eliminate a particular species of beetle, which were reported to be infecting the pines with nematodes who would feed on fungi within the trunks until the nematodes were so numerous as to block the trees’ vascular systems, resulting in abrupt demise of the beetle‐afflicted pines.
However, Fukuoka’s research indicated that healthy pines were not nourishing enough for the nematodes to thrive within, and even when pathogenic fungi from the dying pines were introduced to the trunks of others, there was little health impact on the trees. Rather, pine physiology only became disrupted in the absence of matsutake. He hypothesised that acid rain was altering the soils, to the great detriment of matsutake for whom they had formed habitat, and that, deprived of their mycorrhizal partner, the pines lost such vigour they quickly succumbed to the onslaught of filamentous fungi who had hitched a ride to Japan on imported lumber.
‘The nematodes and beetles are not the original culprits. They are doing nothing more than clearing away the corpses of the dead and dying trees.’ he concludes ―
[…]
Of course […] there is room for error, but the point is, what the world sees as cause and effect can be deceptive. Although I speak of the cycle of cause and effect, no one really knows what is happening. Still, the Office of Forestry goes out and sprays insecticide all over the forests. Who knows what unforeseen and potentially more serious environmental disaster that may lead to?
⸻ pg. 61