Farming Education
Refined & Redifined Through Education
Korean Natural Farming
Korean Natural Farming (KNF) is a soil-centered agricultural system developed by Han Kyu Cho in Korea during the 1960s, built on the idea that the best inputs for a farm are already present in the local environment. Rather than importing fertility through purchased amendments, KNF practitioners cultivate the native microorganisms, plants, and materials already adapted to their specific land and climate.
The system rests on a core belief: healthy soil biology drives everything. When microbial communities thrive, bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes, they unlock nutrients, suppress disease, and build the conditions for vigorous plant growth without synthetic intervention. KNF's job is to feed and multiply those organisms, not replace them.
To do this, practitioners make a set of fermented preparations from locally sourced ingredients:
Each of these preparations is made through simple fermentation, typically combining raw materials with brown sugar at roughly a 1:1 ratio, then diluting the resulting liquid for foliar or soil application. The ingredients are timed to the growth stage of the crop: FPJ and IMO support early vegetative growth, FAA and OHN during transition, FFJ and WCA at flowering and fruiting.What distinguishes KNF from other organic methods is its emphasis on locality and timing. Practitioners don't follow a universal recipe, they collect IMO from the oldest, healthiest forest or field they can find nearby, reasoning that those organisms are already optimized for local conditions. Inputs are applied at specific growth stages rather than on a fixed calendar schedule.KNF has spread well beyond Korea, finding particular traction in Hawaii, Southeast Asia, Central America, and among small-scale farmers worldwide who want to reduce input costs while building long-term soil health.