Since I produce rice to feed myself, I do not sell it, and I do not produce much more than I need. And of course there is no need to pile on agricultural chemicals. Even if for this reason the amount harvested drops a little, no one will complain. As long as I grow enough to eat for one year, it is not worth worrying about the amount of the harvest. If one applies poisons and produces so much poisoned rice that one cannot eat it at all, the final result is only damage to one's health. I sell a few eggs. Since they are natural eggs, they have great value, sometimes selling for twice the market price. I feed the chickens many things that are ordinarily thrown away, so I spend about half as much as usual on feed. Even when the chickens lay fewer eggs than usual I always come out ahead. The money I get from these eggs represents what I described in Chapter VI: the smallest possible link with the meddling city. With this money I pay what I must, like taxes, contributions, education, and the like. When the cities perish I will no longer need this money, and I will not have to sell eggs any more. When that time comes I will substantially reduce the number of chickens down to where I can supply all their feed myself. Every year I apply chicken manure to my fields to build up the soil, so my plants are highly resistant to insects and disease. Of course there are insects, and disease sometimes occurs during cold and wet weather. However, I have never lost everything to insects or disease, and for the past 30 years I have always had enough to eat. Healthy human beings have resistance to worms, tuberculosis, tooth decay, and viruses, but sickly people are always suffering illness. We can observe the same phenomenon in food plants. If one raises the plants organically and supplies them sufficiently with the blessings of Nature (air, sunlight, water, the Land), one will have healthy plants that are highly resistant to disease and insects. Even if you lose 20 percent, the other 80 percent will survive. We need only eat this to insure our own survival. This is what I mean by self-sufficient agriculture. We must also supply ourselves with farm implements and items for household use. Our forebears all did this, and that is why they apparently "needed only salt." In addition, almost all of these implements were made of recyclable materials like bamboo, wood, and straw, where they did not have to live in fear of running out of underground resources, and they did not pollute the environment in their manufacture. What is more, once these things wore out, they could be discarded just as they were, for they would in time decompose and return to the soil. Is there any room in this kind of agriculture for contamination, destruction, and profligacy? What need is there of money, or of living in fear of the self-destruction brought about by money? Become a Lone Wolf