Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin: “Intensive” agriculture and gardening are already by this time as much a feature of the treatment of the soil in America…”

It is a fact that chemical manures, without organic manure, seldom prove to be sufficient.

But the appearance of the cotton industry in a country, or, in fact, of any textile industry, unavoidably becomes the starting-point for the growth of a series of other industries; chemical and mechanical works, metallurgy and mining feel…

We have already, in the facts mentioned in this chapter, an experimental basis for quite a number of means of improving our present methods of culture and of largely increasing the crops.

And yet it is easy to prove that both are totally erroneous: plenty of food could be grown on the territories of Western Europe for much more than their present populations, and an immense benefit would be derived from doing so.