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
Through the kind offices of the Imperial University of Sapporo and
of the National Department of Agriculture and Commerce, Professor
Tokito met us at Nagasaki, to act as escort through most of the
journey in Japan. Our first visit was to the prefectural
Agricultural Experiment Station at Nagasaki. There are four others
in the four main islands, one to an average area of 4280 square
miles, and to each 1,200,000 people. The island of Kyushu, whose
latitude is that of middle Mississippi and north Louisiana, has two
rice harvests, and gardeners at Nagasaki grow three crops, each
year. The gardener and his family work about five tan, or a little
less than one and one-quarter acres, realizing an annual return of
some $250 per acre. To maintain these earnings fertilizers are
applied rated worth $60 per acre, divided between the three crops,
the materials used being largely the wastes of the city, animal
manure, mud from the drains, fuel ashes and sod, all composted
together. If this expenditure for fertilizers appears high it must
be remembered that nearly the whole product is sold and that there
are three crops each year. Such intense culture requires a heavy
return if large yields are maintained. Good agricultural lands were
here valued at 300 yen per tan, approximately $600 per acre.
When returning toward Moji to visit the Agricultural Experiment
Station of Fukuoka prefecture, the rice along the first portion of
the route was standing about eight inches above the water. Large
lotus ponds along the way occupied areas not readily drained, and
the fringing fields between the rice paddies and the untilled hill
lands were bearing squash, maize, beans and Irish potatoes. Many
small areas had been set to sweet potatoes on close narrow ridges,
the tops of which were thinly strewn with green grass, or sometimes
with straw or other litter, for shade and to prevent the soil from
washing and baking in the hot sun after rains. At Kitsu we passed
near Government salt works, for the manufacture of salt by the
evaporation of sea water, this industry in Japan, as in China, being
a Government monopoly.
Many bundles of grass and other green herbage were collected along
the way, gathered for use in the rice fields. In other cases the
green manure had already been spread over the flooded paddies and
was being worked beneath the surface, as seen in Fig. 216. At this
time the hill lands were clothed in the richest, deepest green but
the tree growth was nowhere large except immediately about temples,
and was usually in distinct small areas with sharp boundaries
occasioned by differences in age. Some tracts had been very recently
cut; others were in their second, third or fourth years; while
others still carried a growth of perhaps seven to ten years. At one
village many bundles of the brush fuel had been gathered from an
adjacent area, recently cleared.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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