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   The world is suffering a great global bellyache. The abused earth simply cannot digest the stuff that is dumped and spread over the land, sprayed and exhausted into the air and washed and spilled into the seas.

   During nearly 40 years of the constant concern and efforts by conservationists, and the spending of huge sums of public and private money, the deterioration of the environment has continued to accelerate. CONSERVATION NEVER WILL BE ENOUGH!

   Although general awareness of the out-of balance landscapes and the consequences of new pollutants is recent, many anti-landscape processes are of long standing. In the old world with small numbers of people the wide Balance of Nature was little disturbed. However, the world today seems small for a population so great: there are few landscapes or processes of Nature which remain undisturbed to balance the wide violations of man.

   The nature of the species Homo sapiens led eventually to the winning of all the freedoms he demanded. But the freedoms of man left freedom itself open to be abused. Man finds himself again enslaved by the institutionalisation of his freedoms.

   The freedom of organisation has given business the right to kill. It is obvious that murder shortens life, but many enterprises do not agree that shortening life is killing. So they continue their onslaught on human life by using the power of money to persuade us to buy things which as food or in use, shorten life. These selfish money interests are causing us all, particularly little children, to be less alive in life and quicker dead. Their deadly game has been the cause of an irrevocable split in society. An expanding group of people will not take part in any activity which will help the continuance of the established order which sanctions such activities. They have rejected and left the rat races of the business world and the workers life. They are not drop-outs, but they opt out of the machinery of the Establishment. In a large measure they think as great numbers of other people think but there is this difference; they are backing up their convictions by acting on them in their lives. They already constitute a head society since they include in their number so many with outstanding intelligence and sincerity. The Human Environment Revolution has need of their qualities and their dedication.

   If my analysis of the landscape design of Nature; of soil and landscape processes, and of the bastardisation of agriculture, are correct; the only answer to the depravity and destruction of our environment and for the consequent inhumanity of society is a re-union of mankind with the natural landscape and the ways of Nature.

   Firstly, it is proposed that the City Forest be the major step for the cities; secondly; all country towns should be redesigned to include their own City Forest in preparation for increased population, and thirdly, there is THE FAMILY FARM, and the redesign of the whole farming landscape. Fourthly is the need for the creation of new cities.

   It was stated in Chapter 2, "the farm was and still remains the most critically important landscape of man." THE MOST IMPORTANT LAND ON EARTH FOR HUMAN SURVIVAL AND THE WELFARE OF MANKIND, COULD WELL BE THE FAMILY FARMS--THE PRIMARY COMMUNITY UNITS LIVING IN HARMONY WITH LANDSCAPE! The important people are the rebel farmers who have not been bastardised and who have stuck to the healthy and meaningful way of working with their soil and of farming with Nature.

   Great pressures have been exerted on the farmers to force them to follow the will of the Establishment. The degradation of agriculture substituted quantity for quality in food. The healthy balance of mixed farming enterprises were immediately at a disadvantage with the over speciallsed one-crop type of agriculture which was urged on the farmers. Eventually thousands of farmers were forced into line by financial circumstances alone.

   The ghoulish impositions of probate have been sapping the substance of the family farms for a long time. Probate, which was originally imposed to break up the great estates of Britain, has remained to become a macabre joke on everyone. Its damaging effects were worst on the farming families. But probate did not affect the rising institutions. With their own "everlasting life" they have been able to acquire and to accumulate over the generations, enormous wealth and power, and wide control over the environment. They are now either a sector of the Establishment or they exercise a compelling measure of control over it.

   The make-believe of subsidies and assistance to farmers invariably finished as cash in the hands of the institutions. But the real objective is clearly shown in the arrogant demand of the Establishment for farmers to "get big or get out". A further damage to the future of healthy farming is the restraints which the Establishment has placed on the children of farmers who want to go on the land.

   The concern of institutions is not with human welfare. They should be humanised by being permitted to die regularly and pay probate. An institutional probate is just, but probate on private lives is not.

   The family farm is now critically stressed. It is my contention that the young people must fight as for their own lives to save these farms and their people. The young people and the farming families have great need of each other. They are alike because, almost alone, both have continued to fight for real freedom and living space.

   Healthy farms have much to offer the young people. Practically the only sources of good food are these farms. This does not decry the fact that fruit and vegetables of superlative flavour and goodness are grown in home gardens where the fertility of the soil is maintained and continuously improved by the addition of properly prepared compost. (See Sir Albert Howard's, "An Agricultural Testament" and "Farming and Gardening For Health or Disease.")

   With the Industrial Revolution in England 'cheap food' was the cry of the industrialists. Their concern was to keep wages down and profits up. Cheap food for the working people became the popular aim of governments. The effect of the policy was to encourage mono-culture in the new lands--which eventually led to the loss of fertility of large areas of fertile soil--and cause the decline in farming and in the fertility of the soil in the older continental countries.

   Status symbols also played a part in the loss of the wholesomeness of food. There was the status of "White." White bolted flour, white refined sugar, white bread, white rice were at first dearer than their wholesome counterparts. Only the more affluent could afford them, so everyone wanted them and later got them as they became staple items of diet. Now there are few items of food which escape the processors and profit seekers. Perhaps we need a Brown Australia policy.

   The continuous decline in the fertility of the soil and the loss of the real goodness of food has led to the degenerative diseases and those formerly specific to old age, attacking ever more youthful sections of the population. Modern food is no longer cheap--except in quality.

   However, there is a revolution in thinking taking place on the subject of food. It is no secret now-a-days that good fruit, vegetables, meat and grains grow only on fertile soil without the application of artificial fertilisers and poison sprays. It is being realised that the one feed for producing the finest taste and goodness in meat, is good pasture growing on fertile soil. The products of the pig are much tastier when it can get out onto grass and not live eternally on concrete. It is something to speak of when a chicken is eaten which grew up with soil and pasture beneath its feet. It does not look like the pale bloated corpses in their celephane coffins of the battery produced article. The taste is something many have forgotten and some have never experienced. And what about an egg which does not have the pale insipid yolk or the watery white of the wire mesh caged hen fed on unnatural feed. Even fish, of which there is an increasing doubts of its freedom from contamination, can be grown pollution free in ponds on the healthy farms. We produced fish in farm dams in water which drained off good soil. They grew quickly and were all that could be desired.

   A successful Human Environment Revolution will depend on youth and the 'rebel' farmer. A simple way to get the best for the environment from these farmers is to buy the good food which they produce. They must be made prosperous and given their rightful place in the community. There are too few of them now but their numbers would be swelled quickly with the demand for wholesome food.

   If cities are to be given the landscape balance of health and good living a new agricultural revolution is necessary--and the rebel farmers are needed in the forefront.

   A necessary first step is for the two groups of critically important people to get together and to get to know each other. The place of meeting should be on the good land of the farmers. Here again youth will lead! It would be presumptuous to suggest to the young people what they should do. It is only necessary to say to the farmers--if you want to develop real fertility in your soil--if you want to grow only food of complete wholesomeness and get the benefits of your labour--if you want to grow healthy fish--if you want your land to become a farmscape of outstanding health, balance and beauty; by-pass the Establishment and ask for assistance and the co-operation of youth! If you lack contacts write to Keyline, P.O. Box 165, Paddington, 2021, New South Wales, Australia.

   Quite apart from the consideration of healthy landscapes and the production of food, there is a nostalgic longing for the country and for participation in farm life by thousands of city people. The principal tourist attraction for city folk could become their visits to farmer friends in the country.

   Instead of the drift away from the land to the city, there is a need for more people on the land. There can be good business in the diversification of the farming enterprise and the successful background to this move is a fertile soil.

   General reader; if you would like your surrounds in either the city or the country designed and developed on the lines we have discussed, your wishes can be expressed in local and community activities and the ballot boxes.

   When you go out in the country, or outside your front door and are able to see the shape of the land through the structures of the city; look at a main ridge--the sky line. Look at the depression below it which is the primary valley with its primary ridges on either side. Look at the water lines of the natural landscape--the contours of shore lines and the drainage lines of water courses. Look also at the placing of trees--or their rarity in the cities; look at the green foliage and grass--or the dry bare soil and the concrete. Let the Landscape Design of Nature remind you that your survival depends on the Human Environment Revolution.