Penguin's 'Green Ideas' series is a new publication of twenty short books each written by an eminent environmental thinker and focusing on different aspects of our planet's environmental crisis. I am grateful to Penguin for sending me review copies of five of these works and, on the strength of what I have read so far, I look forward to completing the set myself.

I didn't find The Dragonfly Will Be the Messiah as easy to get into as the previous two Green Ideas books I read, The Democracy Of Species by Robin Wall Kimmerer and This Can't Be Happening by George Monbiot. Fukuoka seemed to jump between ideas too frequently so this book felt bitty. That said though, it still packs in lots of intriguing food for thought. Through it I have newly discovered Fukuoka's 'do nothing farming' system, elements of which reminded my of the Native American 'Three Sisters' agricultural method. The aim is to work with nature rather than to attempt to impose upon it - an idea which seems blindingly obvious when Fukuoka explains how his farm works, yet is completely at odds with most Western farming practices.

The Dragonfly Will Be the Messiah is an excerpt from the longer work, Sowing Seeds In The Desert, which I am now curious to read and am also keen to find a copy of Fukuoka's even earlier work, The One Straw Revolution, which gets a couple of mentions. I think despite its 1970s publication, will be quite the eye-opening read. I love how Penguin's Green Ideas series is bringing to my attention amazing thinkers who might otherwise have passed me by.