Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and JapanKing, F. H. (Franklin Hiram)
Science
Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan
King, F. H. (Franklin Hiram)
Agriculture -- China; Agriculture -- Japan; Agriculture -- Korea
Edward C. Parker, writing from Mukden for the Review of Reviews,
stated: "The bean cake shipments from Newchwang, Dalny and Antung in
1908 amounted to 515,198 tons; beans, 239,298 tons; bean oil, 1930
tons; having a total value of $15,016,649 (U. S. gold)". According
to the composition of soy beans as indicated in Hopkins' table of
analyses, these shipments of beans and bean cake would remove an
aggregate of 6171 tons of phosphorus, 10,097 tons of potassium, and
47,812 tons of nitrogen from Manchurian soils as the result of
export for that year. Could such a rate have been maintained during
two thousand years there would have been sold from these soils
20,194,000 tons of potassium; 12,342,000 tons of phosphorus and
95,624,000 tons of nitrogen; and the phosphorus, were it thus
exported, would have exceeded more than threefold all thus far
produced in the United States; it would have exceeded the world's
output in 1906 more than eighteen times, even assuming that all
phosphate rock mined was seventy-five per cent pure.
The choice of the millets and the sorghums as the staple bread crops
of northern China and Manchuria has been quite as remarkable as the
selection of rice for the more southern latitudes, and the two
together have played a most important part in determining the high
maintenance efficiency of these people. In nutritive value these
grains rank well with wheat; the stems of the larger varieties are
extensively used for both fuel and building material and the smaller
forms make excellent forage and have been used directly for
maintaining the organic content of the soil. Their rapid development
and their high endurance of drought adapt them admirably to the
climate of north China and Manchuria where the rains begin only
after late June and where weather too cold for growth comes earlier
in the fall. The quick maturity of these crops also permits them to
be used to great advantage even throughout the south, in their
systems of multiple cropping so generally adopted, while their great
resistance to drought, being able to remain at a standstill for a
long time when the soil is too dry for growth and yet be able to
push ahead rapidly when favorable rains come, permits them to be
used on the higher lands generally where water is not available for
irrigation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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