Peter Kropotkin - do you enjoy gardening? Do you encourage everyone to garden? Personally, I find gardening to be very boring.

Yes I believe gardening is very critically important in everyone’s lives. In Fields, Factories and Workshops, I argue that both urban and rural people should participate in food growing. Gardening is a required part of my vision for self-sufficient communities because it frees people from dependence on industrial wage labor and exploitative markets. Gardening isn’t just a hobby to kill time, it is a tool for independence, health, and cooperation.

I encourage small-scale gardens that allow neighbors to share food. This reinforces cooperation and community self-reliance. Gardening also teaches both children and adults about nature, seasons, ecology, and responsibility.

Growing your own food also reduces dependence on landlords, shops, and the capitalist market. People need to “take the means of life into their own hands” and gardening is a way to do this. Fresh fruits and vegetables, physical exertion, and labor expended for yourself instead of profit also enhance your enhance well-being.

Yes, I wrote the phrase “We must all toil in the garden!” but I don’t really expect everyone to garden, I just want them to participate in food production in any way that aligns with their abilities and the needs of their community. I’d like everyone to help in sustaining life, but they don’t have to personally dig in soil every day, just find a practical way to sustain yourself and your community.”

Gardening is just one concrete method; the principle is hands-on participation in life and mutual aid.