Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

In truth, the problem of cultivating the land with the least number of men has been solved in this spot by not cultivating at all as much as two-thirds of it.

In this adaptability lies the real force of American competition.

Intensive” agriculture and gardening are already by this time as much a feature of the treatment of the soil in America as they are in Belgium.

American agriculture really offers an imposing sight--not in the wheat fields of the Far West, which soon will become a thing of the past, but in the development of rational agriculture and the forces which promote it.

It lies in the ownership of the land, in a system of culture which is appropriate to the character of the country, in a widely developed spirit of association, and, finally, in a number of institutions and customs intended to lift the…

It is also most interesting to note that thousands and thousands of farmers produce mountains of wheat in the Canadian province of Toronto and in the Eastern States, although the land is not prairie-land at all, and the farms are, as a…

In short, in Manitoba one is especially struck with the fact that, even under a system of keen competition, the middle-size farm has completely beaten the old mammoth farm, and that it is not manufacturing wheat on a grand scale which pays…

Somehow, with the aid of manure and improved methods of farming, they compete admirably with the mammoth farms of the Far West.

The result was that “mammoth farms” had to be broken up into small farms, and that the Iowa farmers (after a terrible crisis of short duration--everything is rapid in America) took to a more intensive culture.

In a few weeks nearly all the wheat crop, which was expected to beat all previous records, was lost; eight to ten bushels per acre of bad wheat were all that could be cropped.

But the soil was already exhausted, and when a disease came the wheat plants had no force to resist it.

Under such a system of culture the soil was soon exhausted, the crop declined, and intensive agriculture (which aims at high crops on a limited area) had soon to be resorted to.

Both in Belgium and in France the American imports gave a new impetus toward a more intensive utilisation of the soil, and this impetus was strongest in Belgium, where no attempt was made to protect agriculture by an increase of the import…

It must not be forgotten that the competition of American wheat has made the same havoc in the agriculture of most European countries--especially in France and Belgium; but in the last two countries the adaptations which were necessary to…

Society at large remains indifferent to the needs of British agriculture.

The false condition of British rural economy, not the infertility of the soil, is thus the chief cause of the Russian competition.

But the difference of the land rent in both countries would alone account for the difference of prices.

Besides, the amount of labour which is necessary to grow wheat in Russia with no thrashing-machines, with a plough dragged by a horse hardly worth the name, with no roads for transport, and so on, is certainly much greater than the amount…

Crops of from sixteen to twenty-three bushels per acre are considered good crops in Russia, while the average hardly reaches thirteen bushels, even in the corn-exporting parts of the empire.

The twelve shillings a week of the British agricultural labourer represents the same amount of wheat in Britain as the six shillings a week of the Russian labourer represents in Russia.

But if we analyse price, and make a distinction between its different elements, the disadvantage becomes still more apparent.

And we may therefore hold that it is not yet proved at all that it is cheaper to live on imported food than to grow it ourselves.

We have lately heard a good deal about the quite disproportionate part of the prices we pay which goes into the middleman’s pockets.

There is another feature still more unfavourable for this country: namely, the enormous development of the class of middlemen who stand between the importer and the home producer on the one side and the consumer on the other.

And yet, if we compare the prices of articles of food in France, which herself grows most of them, with the prices in this country, which imports them, we find no difference in favour of the importing country.