Later that year, I was shown around Eu­rope by a Greek gen­tle­man and a young Ital­ian woman who had stayed in one of my hill­side huts. The Eu­ro­pean coun­tries are, for the most part, very care­ful about pro­tect­ing the nat­u­ral en­vi­ron­ment and main­tain­ing the lovely veg­e­ta­tion. At first glance the en­tire area looks like a nat­u­ral park, but it is only the beauty of a pic­ture post­card. If you look closely, you will find that there are very few va­ri­eties of trees. The soil is thin, hard, and un­fer­tile. It ap­peared to me that the earth in Eu­rope had been dam­aged by an agri­cul­ture made up of mis­man­aged pas­tures used to pro­duce meat for roy­alty, and vine­yards to pro­duce wine for church use ^1)↓.
 Gen­er­ally speak­ing, the far­ther south you go from the Nether­lands, up the Rhine, and to­ward Italy, the more the num­ber of trees de­creases and the green color fades. In ad­di­tion, much of the Alps are com­posed of lime­stone and have few large trees. The far­ther south you go, the higher the soil tem­per­a­ture, and the drier the cli­mate. The soil be­comes thin­ner and in­creas­ingly less fer­tile. My im­pres­sion was that in Eu­rope, the soil was dry and de­pleted just be­low the sur­face.
 Masanobu Fukuoka, „Sawing Seeds in the Desert”