THE ORIGIN STORY OF MASTER CHO AND KOREAN NATURAL FARMING [i]
MASTER CHO’S TEACHERS
Han-Kyu Cho, known as Master Cho, developed his system of Natural Farming over many decades in diverse places all over the world. He began as a peasant chicken farmer and traveled to Japan frequently.
Cho’s first teacher was Yamagishi Myojo, who founded Yamagishism. “Farming to him was a reality and life itself.” His primary concern was honoring the basic rights of chickens as living entities. Yamagishi was famous for his saying, “Do not act without observing and do not say without acting.” His teachings emphasized the mind instead of technology and management practices. His teachings “became a wake-up call to scholars who thought they can handle living organisms with analytic and mechanical engineering disciplines.”
Cho’s second teacher was Shibada Genshi, who wrote “The True Meaning of Enzymes.” Research into enzymes and microbiology was widespread in Japan at the time and the farming method was the maximum utilization of the regional resources aimed at enhancing crop harvest. Genshi’s focus was on how to utilize the native microorganisms and enzymes in the region. Watching the amazing results of this work, Master Cho said, “I even pinched myself wondering if I was only dreaming or visiting the spirits.”
Master Cho’s third teacher was Oinoue Yasushi, creator of the first Kyoho cultivars (grapes) in Japan and author of “Theoretical System of New Cultivation Technology.” His straightforward logic on the physiological and behavioral patterns of plants led Master Cho to develop his theory of “the nurturing cycle,” now referred to as the Nutritive Cycle.
This is a key insight that Cho talks about every time he gives a lecture or writes about Natural Farming:
“When a woman is pregnant, she is suffering from morning sickness. Why is this the case? The phenomenon occurs because the balance of nutrition is broken since another living organism in her body is nurtured and different kinds of nutrition are needed for her baby, but she cannot provide enough of them at once. What pregnant women need and like to eat is something sour (acidic) and this belongs to phosphoric acid (P).”
He then realized that flower bud differentiation in plants is the same phenomenon as morning sickness. In experimenting with adding phosphoric acid (P) using this concept, he found that in eggplants and peppers, he could get four to five fruits per node where only one grew before and that the production duration of plants could be lengthened.
MASTER CHO’S SYSTEM OF NATURAL FARMING
Master Cho’s system of Natural Farming is based on these three ideas, and full on the love of Nature, which was profoundly expressed by all three teachers.
His reason for choosing and developing Natural Farming technology is “because I wanted to survive and regain the sovereignty of farmers,” that they cannot be sustained “following the paths of the existing contemporary agricultural policies and agricultural-economic theories.”
Master Cho developed his theories and methods by experimenting in different climates in Korea, and then the world. He worked and experimented in over 40 countries for over 40 years. He found that his systems could be adapted to climates and conditions anywhere. He has done significant work in India, the Philippines, and China. He was able to grow trees in the Gobi Desert, where there was no measurable rainfall, with a near 100% success rate, with equal success in the wet tropics and the temperate climates of his home, Korea.
In the beginning, he was prosecuted for his work. He was arrested and beaten multiple times. At one point, his wife was called by the police to arrange for her to pick up his body, but thankful he was not actually dead. Now he has demonstrated his success. He is now celebrated in Korea and worldwide. All the farmers in the county where he lives practice his methods on their family farms, are successful economically, and live good lives with plenty of free time. This is in contrast to most farmers globally who struggle with having enough time and money.
LEARNING CHO’S NATURAL FARMING
It is difficult to learn from Master Cho. He is quite elderly now and no longer actively teaching. When he was teaching (I started learning from him in Hawaii in early 2010), it was difficult to learn from him for two reasons.
The first reason is obvious. Translations can lead to misunderstandings. The second reason is that, like many people with deep knowledge of a subject, he tends to explain his material in ways that make sense to him, but this doesn’t always make a lot of sense to people who know nothing of the subject matter.
The result has been that Cho’s method of Natural Farming, now referred to as Korean Natural Farming, or KNF, is considered to be complicated. And while it does have many moving parts, it is actually straightforward. I refer to this as Cho’s conundrum: It sounds complicated, but when the concepts are clarified, it becomes accessible.
KNF is now being touted as being expensive as well, even though it was developed specifically to be used by farmers with little to no resources. The beliefs that KNF is complicated and expensive are both false myths.
I have spent the last 15 years exploring the methods taught by Master Cho Han-Kyu by direct training, reading his work, experimenting, and collaborating with others. I have made adaptations to make his systems work for my land. Adaptation is actually part of his system, although many try to adapt the system before they understand how it functions. I have also experimented with how to teach others in ways that clarify and simplify his system of Natural Farming.
So, why Natural Farming? Why was Master Cho willing to die for what he was trying to bring into the world? In his words, “As I became conscious of the realization, I decided to practice Natural Farming to save people from harmful food, and to save the environment from destruction.”
In a seminar in Seoul, he remembers a Japanese scholar boldly claiming that “organic farming is a pipe dream and is a nation-ruining farming method.” However, if there are no problems in current agricultural technology, why is there such a demise of farmers and farm land?
I add one final quote from Master Cho:
“I think the time has come to cultivate continuously the farming of enjoying life and culture with a guaranteed revenue while obeying the natural way of living within the nature.”
In other words, we should be farming food in ways that allow people to live healthy lives filled with joy while also earning profits and enhancing our natural environment.
KOREAN NATURAL FARMING SUMMARY
Master Cho was nearly killed to bring to the world a way to grow food that was based on love of Nature over profit. Yet Master Cho’s system does not abdicate profit. Quite the opposite. In loving Nature, food production can be enhanced. Fighting Nature, in contrast, requires much human intervention, labor costs, and expensive pesticides. The KNF system is designed to decrease the amount of costly labor and inputs. The environment and ecology are enhanced, leading to better quality and yields and better lives for farmers.
As mentioned above, Master Cho’s system of Natural Farming is based on the concepts learned from his three teachers. There are three main activities that define KNF, with a total of seven key concepts. To practice KNF there are three types of Groundwork needed to begin.
Key Concepts (the first three are the main activities that define KNF):
1. Soil Foundation based on IMO (Indigenous Micro-Organism) technology.
2. Nutritive Cycle, a Biochemical Signaling Technology
3. Animal integration for material recycling and ecological management
4. Genetic activation, the “Historic Nutrient of the Seed”
5. Seawater mineralization (“everything is homesick”)
6. Wild aerobic fermentation
7. Vital Forces (air, water and moisture, sunlight and heat)
Foundational Groundwork to Practice KNF
1. Soil Foundation
2. Seed foundation
3. Genetic activation
HOW KNF WORKS
IMO are cultures of complete soil biology taken from local areas, which are then stabilized, amplified, acclimated to the planting soil, and then installed onto the planting soil. One application can be enough. Mulch is used to protect the microbes from UV light and to feed them organic matter. This also serves as weed suppression. IMO Technology installs high concentrations of local microbes as a balanced ecosystem into the planting soil.
Plants take in solar energy, using nutrients from the soil through symbiosis with soil biology to grow. This is the basis for life on Earth. Plants use biochemistry to signal soil organisms to provide the nutrients they need on demand. The massive concentrations of microbes in the soil when using IMO Technology ensure this is easily accomplished in all conditions.
The use of dilute seawater ensures that all elements, no matter how minor, are available. Actual mineral deficiencies in soil, meaning they are lacking and not just chemically bound, can be addressed using a technology called Bacterial Mineral Water. Some inputs provide calcium, phosphate, and potassium using things like eggshells, bones, and plant materials, but these are typically added at the appropriate stage of a plant's lifecycle in the misting formulas rather than added to the soil as nutrients.
Inputs are made by using materials that are on hand, many at no cost. Most undergo wild aerobic fermentation. The liquid serums from these wild aerobic fermentations are referred to as FPJ, Fermented Plant Juice. They are not designed to provide nutrition. They may contain some nutrients, but they are used in such dilute amounts that they cannot provide nutrition in a meaningful way.
Rather, the FPJ are used as the active ingredients in weekly misting formulas following the Nutritive Cycle, which is a Biochemical Signaling Technology.
The enzymes, hormones, co-factors, and related biochemistry used are based on the desired stage of life of the plant according to the Nutritive Cycle. For example, the meristems of fast-growing leaf tips are harvested and processed in the final stages of nighttime respiration before sunlight triggers the plant to begin photosynthesis and changes the active biochemistry. The FPJ from this type of plant material is given as the active ingredient in a formula to signal the plants toward vegetative growth.
Similarly, an FPJ made from ripe fruits is added to the misting formula to induce plant ripening. And so forth. The concept is to give plants the biochemical signals to direct the next stage of growth. This concept can also be used to induce first-aid recovery and to induce plant growth expression in other ways. My experimentation has demonstrated that a single application can induce a change in plant growth that will last the lifetime of the plant over many years.
In other words, rather than directly providing nutrition (NPK + minor + trace elements) based on human understanding, plants are given the conditions to self-fertilize (with the presence of a biologically strong soil foundation), and their growth is directed using the patterns of biochemistry by using plant material in the desired stage of growth.
All that the farmer needs to understand is the patterns. The scientific details do not need to be understood. This means that even illiterate sustenance farmers can be highly successful in producing food of the highest quality with yields approaching genetic potential.
In fact, such farmers, in my experience, seem to be more successful because they do not need to overcome the prejudices of modern agricultural dogma.
[i] *Cho Han-kyu. (2010). Natural Farming. Seoul, Korea: GCNF.
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