Concerning food: The intervention (interference) of the city (that is, the secondary and tertiary industries) in the production of food is considerable, and for this reason it has become possible to produce great quantities of high-yield crops with reduced labor. If the city's participation were to disappear it would mean the instant disintegration of this production system, and agriculture would be dealt a severe blow. At least this is the way the city boasts of its superior position, and causes the country to bow before it, cutting a magnificent figure. But we should not worry too much about this. The kind of agricultural system that would become unable to function without the city is actually none other than a suck-up-to-the-city agriculture that is locked into the city's plunder system. However, to natural cycle, small-scale, self-sufficient agriculture, the city's meddling is actually a nuisance; as long as we have the blessings of Nature there is not the slightest difficulty. The object of the city's interference is to continue plundering the country. There is here perhaps one thing we should be aware of, and that is the necessity of certain tools -- not tilling and threshing machines, but such things as sickles and hoes. Without the help of the city it might be difficult to find such things unless we revive the part-time blacksmiths of the Edo Period or earlier. In former times the part-time farmers who made water conduits, baskets, and sifters lived in every village. When they were not working in the fields they made and repaired farm implements and household goods. But since their main occupation was farming, they had little time to make such things, and thus did not become real merchants. They do not make things to sell, but when they were asked (modern industries that produce too much can learn something here). And there should be no need for large-scale iron works if they get the raw materials from iron sand as the swordsmiths did. Abandon Anti-Nature Urban Dietary Habits The city haughtily tells us that we must have, if not refrigerators, electric rice cookers, propane gas, blenders, artificial flavoring, and sugar, then at least essential items like pots and bowls and salt, and that without such urban blessings we would not be able to go on living. But let us not get excited. If there be a need, we should be ready to do without even pots and bowls and salt. And if at the same time we make up our minds to do without such things, and begin the preparations for a new dietary life, we begin to see to what extent urban dietary life is anti-Nature, and how it is leading us down the road to self-destruction. Wild animals all eat what is natural for them to eat. Squirrels eat nuts, cats eat mice. Should we ignore this simple fact, feeding mice to squirrels and chestnuts to cats, neither will be able to go on living. This is the great iron hammer of Heaven that falls on those who ignore these laws.