Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

From the technical point of view there is no obstacle whatever for such an organisation being started to-morrow with full success.

The amount of labour required to grow food under a rational culture is so small, indeed, that our hypothetical inhabitants would be led necessarily to employ their leisure in manufacturing, artistic, scientific, and other pursuits.

And its total amount would be far smaller than the amount of labour which every thousand persons, taken from this or from any other nation, have now to spend in getting their present food, much smaller in quantity and of worse quality.

It would be accessible to everyone, strong or weak, town bred or country born; it would also have many charms besides.

Whatever improvement upon the present conditions such an organisation might be, that improvement would not last; it would have to undergo a further transformation or disappear.

Two hundred families of five persons each, owning five acres per family, having no common ties between the families, and compelled to find their living, each family on its five acres, almost certainly would be an economical failure.

In agriculture, as in everything else, associated labour is the only reasonable solution.

For improving our methods of culture to that extent, we surely need not divide the land into one-acre plots, and attempt to grow what we are in need of by everyone’s separate individual exertions, on everyone’s separate plot with no better…

Under a rational culture, those necessaries and those luxuries which must be obtained from the soil, undoubtedly can be obtained with much less work than is required now for buying these commodities.

He can do it; and in so doing he would save an immense quantity of the work which is now given for buying his food abroad, and for paying all the intermediaries who live upon this trade.

He would not be bound to invent some new methods, but could simply generalise and widely apply those which have stood the test of experience.

Taking the powers of man over the land and over the forces of nature--such as they are at the present day--we can maintain that two to three inhabitants to each cultivable acre of land would not yet be too much.

Not to reduce, I mean, the world-exchange: it may still grow in bulk; but to limit it to the exchange of what really must be exchanged, and, at the same time, immensely to increase the exchange of novelties, produce of local or national…

The present tendency of economical development in the world is--we have seen--to induce more and more every nation, or rather every region, taken in its geographical sense, to rely chiefly upon a home production of all the chief…

A dense population, a high development of industry, and a high development of agriculture and horticulture, go hand in hand: they are inseparable.

It is precisely in the most densely populated parts of the world that agriculture has lately made such strides as hardly could have been guessed twenty years ago.

There are a few counties where the County Councils, and still more so, the Parish Councils, are doing their best to break at last the land monopoly, and to permit those small farmers who intend to cultivate the soil to do so.

Let me add to these remarks that a decided awakening is to be noticed in this country for making a better use of the land than has been made for the last fifty years.

But home-grown fruit and vegetables have always many advantages in comparison with imported produce.

But, so far as can be judged from the facts I have at my disposal, the two ventures have proved that the climate of England is no obstacle to French gardening.

And at the same time we learn that immense quantities of land go every year out of culture, to be transformed into game reserves for rich Englishmen and foreigners.

Don’t prove too much; beware of the landlord!” a practical gardener once wrote to me.

And yet, even such plain and cheap houses yield excellent results.

Every farmer is more or less of a gardener, and he gives free scope to his inventive powers for devising some cheap type of greenhouses.

The tomatoes and strawberries in the open air, as well as the fruit trees, all on tiny spaces, were equal to the grapes; and when one is shown on what a space half a ton of strawberries can be gathered under proper culture, it is hardly…