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
On the Kisogawa, at the station of the same name, there were four
anchored floating water-power mills propelled by two pair of large
current wheels stationed fore and aft, each pair working on a common
axle from opposite sides of the mill, driven by the force of the
current flowing by.
At Kisogawa we had entered the northern end of one of the largest
plains of Japan, some thirty miles wide and extending forty miles
southward to Owari bay. The plain has been extensively graded to two
levels, the benches being usually not more than two feet above the
rice paddies, and devoted to various dry land crops, including the
mulberry. The soil is decidedly sandy in character but the mean
yield of rice for the prefecture is 37 bushels per acre and above
the average for the country at large. An analysis of the soils at
the sub-experiment station north of Nagoya shows the following
content of the three main plant food elements.
Nitrogen Phosphorus Potassium
Pounds per million
In paddy field
Soil 1520 769 805
Subsoil 810 756 888
In upland field
Soil 1060 686 1162
Subsoil 510 673 1204
The green manure crops on this plain are chiefly two varieties of
the "pink clover," one sowed in the fall and one about May 15th, the
first yielding as high as sixteen tons green weight per acre and the
other from five to eight tons.
On the plain distant from the mountain and hill land the stems of
agricultural crops are largely used as fuel and the fuel ashes are
applied to the fields at the rate of 10 kan per tan, or 330 pounds
per acre, worth $1.20, little lime, as such, being used.
In the prefecture of Aichi, largely in this plain, with an area of
cultivated land equal to about sixteen of our government townships,
there is a population of 1,752,042, or a density of 4.7 per acre,
and the number of households of farmers was placed at 211,033, thus
giving to each farmer's family an average of 1.75 acres, their chief
industries being rice and silk culture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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