Farming and Gardening for Health or Disease

The natural reaction to failure is to think again. Perhaps the best known and most vividly expressed example of the ruin which results from choosing the wrong road is that of the Prodigal Son. To-day the realization that there must be something very much amiss somewhere with a civilization which has led us, within twenty years or so, into a second and greater world war, to win which we must pour out all our resources, has produced plan after plan to guide our progress in the future into the paths of sanity and common sense. We are living in an age of planning, in other words in a phase of acute contrition for the blunders of the past.

Why has civilization proved such a disastrous failure? The answer is simple. Our industries, our trade, and our way of life generally have been based first on the exploitation of the earth's surface and then on the oppression of one another -- on banditry pure and simple. The inevitable result is now upon us. The unsuccessful bandits are trying to despoil their more successful competitors. The world is divided into two hostile camps: at the root of this vast conflict lies the evil of spoliation which has destroyed the moral integrity of our generation. While this contest marches to its inevitable conclusion, it will not be amiss to draw attention to a forgotten factor which may perhaps help to restore peace and harmony to a tortured world. We must in our future planning pay great attention to food -- the product of sun, soil, plant, and livestock -- in other words, to farming and gardening.