The Apple Story of Akinori Kimura of Japan: Learning from the "Miracle Apples"

This is a big deal! Almost most of the people who take my classes have seen the episode of the Japanese NHK television interview with him! The forty-some-minute video, I've watched it so many times I could almost recite it by heart, which shows just how much of an influence he has had on us!

I once went to Japan to attend a natural farming seminar, and the main speaker that day was Mr. Kimura. By then he was already "very famous"! And was "frequently" invited to China and Korea to teach natural farming. But seeing his warm, toothless smile, he seemed just like the farmer uncles among our neighbors. Yet his observation and understanding of nature clearly far surpassed what ordinary farmers can achieve.

So during the intermission, I shamelessly went up to chat with him, and even asked him for the slide file from his presentation. Sure enough, just as he says about himself, he doesn't want others to suffer the same hardship, so whatever he knows, he will definitely tell it all, holding nothing back!

Anyone who has read the book "At Least Once in This Life, Be a Fool" knows that Mr. Kimura, because his wife would suffer severe allergic reactions and have to lie in bed for a week every time they sprayed pesticide, worked hard to think of a solution. At the same time, he happened to see Masanobu Fukuoka's book on natural farming in a bookstore, and wanted to give it a try.

The roots of plants below the ground, and the living state of the soil, are the "root" that we need to learn and understand.

In fact, isn't this exactly the same as people's attitude toward life and their ability to discern things? Modern people chase "quickly obtained" results, but in the end sacrifice "long-term" interests. Between gain and loss, if you calm your mind, anyone can find the answer, but we who have drifted far from nature have lost even this little bit of judgment! Therefore, through the method of "natural cultivation," finding our way back to such ability may be the fastest shortcut of all.

This time, Mr. Kimura was invited by the Productivity Center to give three talks on September 26 to 28, three consecutive days, in Zhongpu, Chiayi, Yilan, and Taipei respectively. In order to give more farmers who are already practicing Shumei Natural Farming a chance to learn deeper techniques and attitudes, we specially asked the Productivity Center to arrange a visit to Tamsui Happiness Farm on the morning of the 27th, and to arrange for farmers to exchange with him. We will compile an on-site record of this part and share it with everyone.

We look forward to people with the same goal supporting one another, and on the long road toward food safety, knowing that they are not alone, understanding the possibility of approaching perfection, and then putting our agricultural ideals into practice step by step on this beautiful land!

In a French restaurant in Tokyo, people come and go in an endless stream. The signature dish of this restaurant is "Kimura Apple Soup."


Business is so booming that reservations take a year.

Many Japanese even have a wish: "I hope I can eat Kimura's apples in this lifetime, even just once." So they adopt a lottery system for purchasing, but only 2,000 people can get their wish each year.

Those who win the lottery get so excited it's like winning the jackpot.

What exactly is it that makes this fruit grower's apples receive so much attention?

The reason is that these apples are all grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers, the fruit is abundant and delicious, and they won't rot even after more than two years. Many people come because of their fame.


(Apples left at room temperature for more than two years)
The apples are grown by a man named Akinori Kimura, who was the first fruit grower in Japan to persist in not using pesticides or chemical fertilizers, spending nearly ten years to succeed in his cultivation experiments.

Someone described Kimura's apples like this: "Take one bite, and that delicious flavor will make you involuntarily want to cry; the apple is filled with the joy of living in this world."

To be honest, I haven't eaten them either. Perhaps you can imagine the scene in "God of Cookery" where the judges eat the "Sorrowful Ecstasy Rice"?

And according to a Japanese study, without using pesticides, apple harvests would drop by more than 90%. Not only do pests gnaw on the flowers and leaves, but gray mold and brown spot diseases that cause trunk rot and leaf disease also run rampant.

So how did Akinori Kimura grow beautiful big apples without using pesticides or chemical fertilizers?

The Opportunity for the Pesticide-Free Experiment

In 1949, Kimura was born in Aomori Prefecture, Japan. At that time, Kimura's surname was not Kimura, but Mikami.

In 1972, he married into the Kimura family and changed his surname to Kimura. The Kimura family had four apple orchards, which could sell for about 6 million yen (about 380,000 yuan) a year.

Aomori Prefecture is a famous apple growing base in Japan. At the time, apple growing was introduced throughout Japan, but because pest disasters were rampant, people had no way to deal with them, so they had to maximize yields through the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers.


The Kimura family was the same, but before long, Kimura ruined his health from long-term pesticide use.

After each pesticide spraying, Kimura's eyes would become red and swollen, and his skin all over his body was often burned by the pesticides, leaving red scars;

And Kimura's wife Michiko was even more pitiable, developing reactions like being corroded by lacquer. After each pesticide spraying, she could not go to the orchard to work for a week, and at the worst, she lay in bed for a whole month.

Seeing his wife like this, Kimura was heartbroken and began to think about ways to reduce pesticides.

Kimura was naturally fond of researching things, and often went to libraries or bookstores to look through agricultural technology books.

Once in a bookstore, he saw the work of natural farming pioneer Masanobu Fukuoka, "The One-Straw Revolution," which mentioned that natural farming uses no fertilizer at all, only straw.

This completely overturned conventional cultivation methods, and Akinori Kimura was deeply attracted by this concept.

He began to reduce the amount of pesticide used, cutting the original 13 sprayings per year to 6. The result was beyond imagination: there were none of the diseases and pest problems that had originally been feared, and neither quality nor yield changed much.

Kimura thought to himself: It should be fine even without spraying pesticides, right?

The next year, Kimura reduced the number of pesticide sprayings to 3. Although a few disease and pest problems appeared, because pesticide use was reduced, profits actually increased.

Kimura began to feel that pesticide-free cultivation was not an impossible task.

So the following year he sprayed pesticide only once. Perhaps fate was smiling on him, for the harvest was unexpectedly good.

The bold and reckless Kimura, at the age of 29, proposed to his father-in-law that they start challenging pesticide-free cultivation the next year, and unexpectedly his father-in-law agreed.

Challenging the Impossible

Mr. Kimura first used the plot of land that had come with him as a "dowry" to experiment with pesticide-free cultivation.

But the result was disastrous: the growing conditions with one spraying of pesticide and without pesticides were worlds apart.

After stopping the use of pesticides, the apple trees underwent strange changes, with large numbers of pests appearing, and various pathogens also running rampant. By the end of August, the leaves had all fallen off.

Besides disease, the harm from pests grew more and more serious. He studied and consulted various materials, trying every method he could think of, attempting to cure the apple trees of disease.

The second year, he tried spraying diluted solutions of vinegar, Japanese sake, salt, and garlic paste alternately in two orchards. Failure.

The third year, all four orchards implemented pesticide-free cultivation. He tried green onions, soy sauce, potato starch, flour, Chinese chives, onions, milk...

In short, every food humans could eat had been tested on the apple trees.

However, not one was as effective as pesticides.

When the pest disaster was severe, the whole family had no choice but to take plastic bags to the apple orchard to catch insects and eggs, often filling several bags.

But in the end, quite a few apple trees withered and died, let alone flowering and bearing fruit. There was no harvest at all, a scene of desolation, and not even basic income.

Kimura was forced to sell the car and all the farm machinery, and even sold the wheat field where his experiments had succeeded.

Food expenses became tight. To earn living expenses, Kimura even worked as a tout at a nightclub. When Kimura's wife cooked, she also used weeds from the apple orchard. The family could not pay the tuition for their three daughters, and even a small eraser had to be divided into three parts to share.

In this way, Kimura, with elders above and young ones below, plunged his family into poverty, and life was unbearable. For a time there was no money to pay taxes, and even the apple trees at his home were plastered with red notices from the tax office.

Fortunately, Kimura's father-in-law, wife, and children all supported his experiment. No matter how difficult it was, with his family's support and companionship, Kimura could carry on his experiment.

At that time, pests and diseases grew more severe day by day, and the neighbors also blamed Kimura one after another, calling him a "fool." Many friends cut off contact with him.

In order not to run into other people, he would go out early and return late, acting alone. With no transportation, every day he could only walk back and forth between the apple orchard and home, spending nearly four hours traveling.

In winter, when he could not farm, he went to Tokyo to do odd jobs. At night he slept in a park, and in the morning he got up to wait for the foreman to pick him. By the time spring came and the work ended and he returned home, he already reeked terribly.

The fourth year passed, and the condition of the apple trees still had not improved. On the days when other fruit growers harvested their apples, the Kimura family's orchard remained empty.

Just like that, their family became the poorest household in Iwaki Town, and their life sank to rock bottom.


Even though he deeply believed that "naturally cultivated apples must be feasible," seeing that the orchard's condition still could not improve, and facing harsh reality, Kimura became neurotic. He had no way left to turn.

Later, he thought of death.

One summer night, he took a rope and walked aimlessly up the mountain. Suddenly, an apple tree caught his eye. Looking carefully, it turned out to be a lush oak tree.

Kimura felt puzzled. Without using pesticides, why did this naturally growing tree have no pests and no disease?

Just as he was lost in thought, he suddenly smelled a strong earthy scent around him. Kimura dug up the soil near the tree roots and found that this soil was surprisingly soft.

That night he excitedly walked down the mountain, exclaiming, "I've found the answer!"

Be a Fool Once More

The next day, Kimura once again confirmed that the vigorous natural oak tree before him was completely different from the pitiful apple trees in the orchard. He believed the decisive difference was that pungent smell of soil full of vigorous life.

From then on, he let the weeds in the orchard grow freely, making the orchard environment close to primitive nature, with weeds everywhere in the yard.

In addition, Kimura also carried out various experiments, striving to make the soil in his apple orchard return to the kind of soil in a natural environment, full of bacteria, rich in nutrients, and high in temperature, so that the apple trees would be as full of vitality as those oak trees.

After four or five years of effort, leaves finally appeared on the treetops in the orchard, forming a rich and diverse ecosystem. Hares ran around everywhere in the grass, and later martens, weasels, and field mice moved in...

What was exciting was that in the eighth year since the start of pesticide-free cultivation, one apple tree finally produced 7 flowers, 2 of which successfully bore fruit, and the daughters finally got to eat the apples their father grew.


By the spring of the ninth year, Kimura's orchard was finally full of white apple blossoms, full of vitality under a blanket of white sunlight.


Kimura and his wife stood there frozen, tears streaming down uncontrollably.

At 35 he had once sought death, and now he finally saw the "light": it was as if the fruit had been exchanged for his own life. His miracle apple forest had finally bloomed.

Although the apples that year were only the size of ping-pong balls, and the entire apple orchard's income was only about 10,000 yen (about 800-plus yuan), Kimura's heart was full of hope.

Now, his apples are sweet, large, and red, no different in appearance from ordinary apples.


Japan's "sage of management" Kazuo Inamori said: When your effort is no less than anyone else's, the gods will appear.

From the first 8 years of no harvest and difficult days, Kimura persisted until now. With his endurance and persistence, he finally reaped a miracle.

Kimura often says he is a fool, but it is precisely because of this "foolish" streak that Kimura achieved himself. The apples he grew by breaking convention will have a revolutionary impact on world agriculture.

Following the Laws of Nature

"Qimin Yaoshu" records: In long-term production practice, pests and the natural enemies of pests can depend on each other and restrain each other, maintaining a certain balance. If this balance is not destroyed, it will exist for a long time.

Kimura understood this theory. He did not use pesticides; he used his eyes to adjust the ratio of beneficial insects and pests to keep them in balance.

But although his eyes could deal with pests, he was helpless against invisible pathogens. To ensure that the apple trees were not affected by disease, Kimura would use vinegar made by fermenting rice or corn, using vinegar to sterilize the fruit trees and inhibit the growth of pathogens.

Mechanical efficiency is naturally much higher than manual work, but Kimura still insisted on using manual spraying so as not to destroy the soil layer.

Precisely because of this, the orchard environment was suitable for plant growth. In the contest with nature, the roots of the apple trees could extend 10 meters to 20 meters underground to absorb and store nutrients and accumulate more sugar, so the fruit they bore was naturally superior.


As higher animals, humans often think in a self-centered way, constantly expanding our living space on Earth, while constantly transforming the animals and plants around us, considering their fate according to human needs, and firmly believing that our wisdom can surpass nature.

In fact, humans are merely a small component of the Earth's ecosystem. Only by following the balance of this system can we coexist mutually and beneficially with other life.

Before Kimura succeeded, many people thought his approach was foolish, but in fact he had merely let go of humans' self-perceived "cleverness." He let his apple orchard return to the balance of nature, and nature rewarded him with abundant fruit.


Only by following the laws of nature can we continue to thrive endlessly.


From barren land to a miracle apple forest, how much bitterness, sorrow, and unyielding persistence lie behind Kimura? But I believe Akinori Kimura's craftsman spirit, his persistent tenacity, and his spirit of exploring natural farming will inspire every one of us.


I hope you too can harvest fruit of your own from this story.