Masanobu Fukuoka
Masanobu Fukuoka was a farmer and philosopher from the Shikoku Island in Japan. His interest in natural farming struck him at the age of twenty five, when he realized that nature was already designed perfectly, and that its downfall came with human tampering. Because no one else he knew of in the area had tried natural farming, many of his successes were through years of trial and error. Fukuoka’s mentality behind his natural farming technique was that nature would divulge the paths he would need to take in order to farm successfully. In the very beginning of his experimentations Fukuoka noticed an abandoned rice field and saw healthy and thriving rice even though it had been left untouched for many years. Because of this Fukuoka began mimicking natural cycles of seeding and sowed seeds in the fall instead of the spring, allow the seeds to settle into the ground as they would naturally. Fukuoka also experimented with ways to get rid of weeds without having to plow. After many trials he found that white clover and barley straw mulch prevents weeds from growing while also adding nitrogen into the soil. While working with his plants Fukuoka refrained from having preconceptions about what would work best. For instance, instead of picking where he wanted each type of vegetable to grow, he would mix all his seeds together and scatter them throughout an area, allowing the vegetables to choose what environment suited their needs the best.
“‘How about trying this? How about trying that?’ That is the usual way of developing agricultural technique. My way was different. ‘How about not doing this, and How about not doing that?’ – this was the path I followed. Now my rice growing is simply sowing seed and spreading straw, but it has taken me more than thirty years to reach this simplicity.” – Masanobu Fukuoka
By taking the human intuition out of his farming techniques Fukuoka would often be taken by surprise as plants thrived where he least expected it. In this way Fukuoka’s methods diverge from permaculture. Permaculture involves the farmer’s intellect to design and construct a garden or farm that they think will 
suit the area best. Fukuoka’s natural farming methods try to remove the human intellect as much as possible, as he believes it gets in the way of nature’s own plans. While these two value opposite methods, they ultimately work in tangent as a means of living sustainably with nature.
Fukuoka is also the man attributed to the origin of seed bombing. As part of his hands-off farming technique a mixture of clay, compost, and seeds would be used to create hundreds of seedballs each year. Fukuoka stated that each seedball is “a small universe in themselves.” His methods and theories behind seedballs are written about in his book The One Straw Revolution.
Resources:
Seedballs From Fukuoka to Green Guerillas
