Fix the Soil First: Soil → Crop → Animal → Human

Why does Cho say the soil has to be fixed before anything else, people included?

Thursday morning, the first session of the three-day nutritive-cycle seminar in Makapala. The projector shows only the title slide (CGNF-H advanced training, Nutrient Cycle, October 19-21, 2017). Cho stands at a flip chart and writes in Chinese characters and Korean: 自然? / 農業 大 = 人農業 / 第一要 健康 / 農者天下之大本, then 토양 복지 / 작물 〃 / 동물 〃 / 인간 복지 with 化學 and 分析 beside them. He teaches by asking the room questions; the interpreter relays the answers back to him in Korean.

1. This seminar keeps the old flavour but gives a new taste; returning students should treat it as review.

   Cho: eat the same food several times and it stops tasting good.

   ▶ 1:53 As spoken

2. To know what nature is, you first have to know who you are.

   Pretending to know nature without knowing yourself 'is a lie'. Board: 自然?

   ▶ 3:56 As spoken

3. There is a living self and a physical self: you exist because your parents, and theirs, gave you life.

   Cho's words are 생명적인 나 (the living me) and 육체적인 나 (the physical me). The interpreter said 'spirit'.

   ▶ 5:40 As spoken

4. The biggest farming is raising people.

   Board: 農業 大 = 人農業. Raising people is like farming.

   ▶ 6:51 Written on the board

5. Health is the biggest inheritance; lose it and you lose everything.

   Board: 第一要 健康 (first need: health). Room answers before that: life, wisdom, love, respect.

   ▶ 9:34 Written on the board

6. Healthy people need healthy food, and healthy food needs healthy crops.

   So the most important thing for everyone's health is healthy food, and someone has to grow it.

   ▶ 9:54 As spoken

7. Farming is the great foundation of the world (農者天下之大本).

   Old proverb, written on the board. Reason: what guarantees the health of the child you love most is healthy food, and the farmer makes it.

   ▶ 10:48 Written on the board

8. We farm because we can't make a tomato ourselves: farming is depending on the crop.

   If you could make corn, tomato, papaya or mango by magic, you wouldn't farm. Board: 依存 (dependence).

   ▶ 14:58 As spoken

9. Farm to suit the crop, not your own judgment.

   Cho asks whether the room has farmed to the crop or to their own judgment, and whether that was smart or foolish.

   ▶ 15:50 As spoken

10. Professors who farm by their own theory are 'smart-fool' doctors; farmers who follow them are 'smart-fool' farmers.

    똑똑 바보 박사 / 똑똑 바보 농민. Food from that farming gives 'fool's health' (바보 건강).

    ▶ 17:33 As spoken

11. Fix the soil first: when the soil lacks capacity, everything grown on it suffers.

    'Where do you fix first, your body or your soil?' The room: soil.

    ▶ 22:50 As spoken

12. Soil welfare comes first, then crop welfare, then animal welfare, then human welfare.

    Board: 토양 복지 / 작물 〃 / 동물 〃 / 인간 복지. Each has to come about before the next.

    ▶ 23:38 Written on the board

13. Today people push human welfare alone and think chemistry, working by analysis, can fix soil, crop and animal.

    Board: 化學 / 分析 bracketed beside the first three.

    ▶ 24:55 Written on the board