the formation of nitrates in soils, which again emphasizes the
national trait of saving and turning to use any and every thing
worth while. Our attention was called to this practice by Rev. A. E.
Evans of Shunking, Szechwan province. It rests upon the tendency of
the earth floors of dwellings to become heavily charged with calcium
nitrate through the natural processes of nitrification. Calcium
nitrate being deliquescent absorbs moisture sufficiently to dissolve
and make the floor wet and sticky. Dr. Evans' attention was drawn to
the wet floor in his own house, which be at first ascribed to
insufficient ventilation, but which be was unable to remedy by
improving that. The father of one of his assistants, whose business
consisted in purchasing the soil of such floors for producing
potassium nitrate, used so much in China in the manufacture of
fireworks and gunpowder, explained his difficulty and suggested the
remedy.
This man goes from house to house through the village, purchasing
the soil of floors which have thus become overcharged. He procures a
sample, tests it and announces what he will pay for the surface two,
three or four inches, the price sometimes being as high as fifty
cents for the privilege of removing the top layer of the floor,
which the proprietors must replace. He leaches the soil removed, to
recover the calcium nitrate, and then pours the leachings through
plant ashes containing potassium carbonate, for the purpose of
transforming the calcium nitrate into the potassium nitrate or
saltpeter. Dr. Evans learned that during the four months preceding
our interview this man had produced sufficient potassium nitrate to
bring his sales up to $80, Mexican. It was necessary for him to make
a two-days journey to market his product. In addition he paid a
license fee of 80 cents per month. He must purchase his fuel ashes
and hire the services of two men.
When the nitrates which accumulate in the floors of dwellings are
not collected for this purpose the soil goes to the fields to be
used directly as a fertilizer, or it may be worked into compost. In
the course of time the earth used in the village walls and even in
the construction of the houses may disintegrate so as to require
removal, but in all such cases, as with the earth brick used in the
kangs, the value of the soil has improved for composting and is
generally so used. This improvement of the soil will not appear
strange when it is stated that such materials are usually from the
subsoil, whose physical condition would improve when exposed to the
weather, converting it in fact into an uncropped virgin soil.
We were unable to secure definite data as to the chemical
composition of these composts and cannot say what amounts of
available plant food the Shantung farmers are annually returning to
their fields. There can be little doubt, however, that the amounts
are quite equal to those removed by the crops. The soils appeared
well supplied with organic matter and the color of the foliage and
the general aspect of crops indicated good feeding.
The family with whom we talked in the village place their usual
yields of wheat at 420 catty of grain and 1000 catty of straw per
mow,--their mow was four-thirds of the legal standard mow--the grain
being worth 35 strings of cash and the straw 12 to 14 strings, a
string of cash being 40 cents, Mexican, at this time. Their yields
of beans were such as to give them a return of 30 strings of cash
for the grain and 8 to 10 strings for the straw. Small millet
usually yielded 450 catty of grain, worth 25 strings of cash, per
mow, and 800 catty of straw worth 10 to 11 strings of cash; while
the yields of large millet they placed at 400 catty per mow, worth
25 strings of cash, and 1000 catty of straw worth 12 to 14 strings
of cash. Stating these amounts in bushels per acre and in our
currency, the yield of wheat was 42 bushels of grain and 6000 pounds
of straw per acre, having a cash value of $27.09 for the grain and
$10.06 for the straw. The soy bean crop follows the wheat, giving an
additional return of $23.22 for the beans and $6.97 for the straw,
making the gross earning for the two crops $67.34 per acre. The
yield of small millet was 54 bushels of seed and 4800 pounds of
straw per acre, worth $27.09 and $8.12 for seed and straw
respectively, while the kaoliang or large millet gave a yield of 48
bushels of grain and 6000 pounds of stalks per acre, worth $19.35
for the grain, and $10.06 for the straw.
A crop of wheat like the one stated, if no part of the plant food
contained in the grain or straw were returned to the field, would
deplete the soil to the extent of about 90 pounds of nitrogen, 15
pounds of phosphorus and 65 pounds of potassium; and the crop of soy
beans, if it also were entirely removed, would reduce these three
plant food elements in the soil to the extent of about 240 pounds of
nitrogen, 33 pounds of phosphorus and 102 pounds of potassium, on
the basis of 45 bushels of beans and 5400 pounds of stems and leaves
per acre, assuming that the beans added no nitrogen to the soil,
which is of course not true. This household of farmers, therefore,
in order to have maintained this producing power in their soil, have
been compelled to return to it annually, in one form or another, not
less than 48 pounds of phosphorus and 167 pounds of potassium per
acre. The 330 pounds of nitrogen they would have to return in the
form of organic matter or accumulate it from the atmosphere, through
the instrumentality of their soy bean crop or some other legume. It
has already been stated that they do add more than 5000 to 7000
pounds of dry compost, which, repeated for a second crop, would make
an annual application of five to seven tons of dry compost per acre
annually. They do use, in addition to this compost, large amounts of
bean and peanut cake, which carry all of the plant food elements
derived from the soil which are contained in the beans and the
peanuts. If the vines are fed, or if the stems of the beaus are
burned for fuel, most of the plant food elements in these will be
returned to the field, and they have doubtless learned how to
completely restore the plant food elements removed by their crops,
and persistently do so.
The roads made by the Germans in the vicinity of Tsingtao enabled us
to travel by ricksha into the adjoining country, and on one such
trip we visited a village mill for grinding soy beans and peanuts in
the manufacture of oil, and Fig. 136 shows the stone roller, four
feet in diameter and two feet thick, which is revolved about a
vertical axis on a circular stone plate, drawn by a donkey, crushing
the kernels partly by its weight and partly by a twisting motion,
for the arm upon which the roller revolves is very short. After the
meal had been ground the oil was expressed in essentially the same
way as that described for the cotton seed, but the bean and peanut
cakes are made much larger than the cotton seed cakes, about
eighteen inches in diameter and three to four inches thick. Two of
these cakes are seen in Fig. 137, standing on edge outside the mill
in an orderly clean court. It is in this form that bean cake is
exported in large quantities to different parts of China, and to
Japan in recent years, for use as fertilizer, and very recently it
is being shipped to Europe for both stock food and fertilizer.
Nowhere in this province, nor further north, did we see the large
terra cotta, receptacles so extensively used in the south for
storing human excreta. In these dryer climates some method of
desiccation is practiced and we found the gardeners in the vicinity
of Tsingtao with quantities of the fertilizer stacked under matting
shelters in the desiccated condition, this being finely pulverized
in one or another way before it was applied. The next illustration,
Fig. 138, shows one of these piles being fitted for the garden, its
thatched shelter standing behind the grandfather of a household. His
grandson was carrying the prepared fertilizer to the garden area
seen in Fig. 139, where the father was working it into the soil. The
greatest pains is taken, both in reducing the product to a fine
powder and in spreading and incorporating it with the soil, for one
of their maxims of soil management is to make each square foot of
field or garden the equal of every other in its power to produce. In
this manner each little holding is made to yield the highest returns
possible under the conditions the husbandman is able to control.
From one portion of the area being fitted, a crop of artemisia had
been harvested, giving a gross return at the rate of $73.19 per
acre, and from another leeks had been taken, bringing a gross return
of $43.86 per acre. Chinese celery was the crop for which the ground
was being fitted.
The application of soil as a fertilizer to the fields of China,
whether derived from the subsoil or from the silts and organic
matter of canals and rivers, must have played an important part in
the permanency of agriculture in the Far East, for all such
additions have been positive accretions to the effective soil,
increasing its depth and carrying to it all plant food elements. If
not more than one-half of the weight of compost applied to the
fields of Shantung is highly fertilized soil, the rates of
application observed would, in a thousand years, add more than two
million pounds per acre, and this represents about the volume of
soil we turn with the plow in our ordinary tillage operations, and
this amount of good soil may carry more than 6000 pounds of
nitrogen, 2000 pounds of phosphorus and more than 60,000 pounds of
potassium.
When we left our hotel by ricksha for the steamer, returning to
Shanghai, we soon observed a boy of thirteen or fourteen years
apparently following, sometimes a little ahead, sometimes behind,
usually keeping the sidewalk but slackening his pace whenever the
ricksha man came to a walk. It was a full mile to the wharf. The boy
evidently knew the sailing schedule and judged by the valise in
front, that we were to take the out-going steamer and that he might
possibly earn two cents, Mexican, the usual fee for taking a valise
aboard the steamer. Twenty men at the wharf might be waiting for the
job, but he was taking the chance with the mile down and back thrown
in, and all for less than one cent in our currency, equivalent at
the time to about twenty "cash". As we neared the steamer the lad
closed up behind but strong and eager men were watching. Twice he
was roughly thrust aside and before the ricksha stopped a man of
stalwart frame seized the valise and, had we not observed the boy
thus unobtrusively entering the competition, he would have had only
his trouble for his pains. Thus intense was the struggle here for
existence and thus did a mere lad put himself effectively into it.
True to breeding and example he had spared no labor to win and was
surprised but grateful to receive more than he had expected.
XI
ORIENTALS CROWD BOTH TIME AND SPACE
Time is a function of every life process, as it is of every
physical, chemical and mental reaction, and the husbandman is
compelled to shape his operations so as to conform with the time
requirements of his crops. The oriental farmer is a time economizer
beyond any other. He utilizes the first and last minute and all that
are between. The foreigner accuses the Chinaman of being always
"long on time", never in a fret, never in a hurry. And why should he
be when he leads time by the forelock, and uses all there is?
The customs and practices of these Farthest East people regarding
their manufacture of fertilizers in the form of earth composts for
their fields, and their use of altered subsoils which have served in
their kangs, village walls and dwellings, are all instances where
they profoundly shorten the time required in the field to affect the
necessary chemical, physical and biological reactions which produce
from them plant food substances. Not only do they thus increase
their time assets, but they add, in effect, to their land area by
producing these changes outside their fields, at the same time
giving their crops the immediately active soil products.
Their compost practices have been of the greatest consequence to
them, both in their extremely wet, rice-culture methods, and in
their "dry-farming" practices, where the soil moisture is too scanty
during long periods to permit rapid fermentation under field
conditions. Western agriculturalists have not sufficiently
appreciated the fact that the most rapid growth of plant food
substances in the soil cannot occur at the same time and place with
the most rapid crop increase, because both processes draw upon the
available soil moisture, soil air and soluble potassium, calcium,
phosphorus and nitrogen compounds. Whether this fundamental
principle of practical agriculture is written in their literature or
not it is most indelibly fixed in their practice. If we and they can
perpetuate the essentials of this practice at a large saving of
human effort, or perpetually secure the final result in some more
expeditious and less laborious way, most important progress will
have been made.
When we went north to the Shantung province the Kiangsu and Chekiang
farmers were engaged in another of their time saving practices, also
involving a large amount of human labor. This was the planting of
cotton in wheat fields before the wheat was quite ready to harvest.
In the sections of these two provinces which we visited most of the
wheat and barley were sowed broadcast on narrow raised lands, some
five feet wide, with furrows between, after the manner seen in Fig.
140, showing a reservoir in the immediate foreground, on whose bank
is installed one of the four-man foot-power irrigation pumps in use
to flood the nursery rice bed close by on the right. The narrow
lands of broadcasted wheat extend back from the reservoir toward the
farmsteads which dot the landscape, and on the left stands one of
the pump shelters near the canal bank.
To save time, or lengthen the growing season of the cotton which was
to follow, this seed was sown broadcast among the grain on the
surface, some ten to fifteen days before the wheat would be
harvested. To cover the seed the soil in the furrows between the
beds had been spaded loose to a depth of four or five inches, finely
pulverized, and then with a spade was evenly scattered over the bed,
letting it sift down among the grain, covering the seed. This loose
earth, so applied, acts as a mulch to conserve the capillary
moisture, permitting the soil to become sufficiently damp to
germinate the seed before the wheat is harvested. The next
illustration, Fig. 141, is a closer view with our interpreter
standing in another field of wheat in which cotton was being sowed
April 22nd in the manner described, and yet the stand of grain was
very close and shoulder high, making it not an easy task either to
sow the seed or to scatter sufficient soil to cover it.
When we had returned from Shantung this piece of grain had been
harvested, giving a yield of 95.6 bushels of wheat and 3.5 tons of
straw per acre, computed from the statement of the owner that 400
catty of grain and 500 catty of straw had been taken from the beds
measuring 4050 square feet. On the morning of May 29th the
photograph for Fig. 142 was taken, showing the same area after the
wheat had been harvested and the cotton was up, the young plants
showing slightly through the short stubble. These beds had already
been once treated with liquid fertilizer. A little later the plants
would be hoed and thinned to a stand of about one plant per each
square foot of surface. There were thirty-seven days between the
taking of the two photographs, and certainly thirty days had been
added to the cotton crop by this method of planting, over what would
have been available if the grain had been first harvested and the
field fitted before planting, It will be observed that the cotton
follows the wheat without plowing, but the soil was deep, naturally
open, and a layer of nearly two inches of loose earth had been
placed over the seed at the time of planting. Besides, the ground
would be deeply worked with the two or four tined hoe, at the time
of thinning.
Starting cotton in the wheat in the manner described is but a
special case of a general practice widely in vogue. The growing of
multiple crops is the rule throughout these countries wherever the
climate permits. Sometimes as many as three crops occupy the same
field in recurrent rows, but of different dates of planting and in
different stages of maturity. Reference has been made to the
overlapping and alternation of cucumbers with greens. The general
practice of planting nearly all crops in rows lends itself readily
to systems of multiple cropping, and these to the fullest possible
utilization of every minute of the growing season and of the time of
the family in caring for the crops. In the field, Fig. 143, a crop
of winter wheat was nearing maturity, a crop of windsor beans was
about two-thirds grown, and cotton had just been planted, April
22nd. This field had been thrown into ridges some five feet wide
with a twelve inch furrow between them. Two rows of wheat eight
inches wide, planted two feet between centers occupied the crest of
the ridge, leaving a strip sixteen inches wide, seen in the upper
section, (1) for tillage, (2) then fertilization and (3) finally the
row of cotton planted just before the wheat was harvested. Against
the furrow on each side was a row of windsor beans, seen in the
lower view, hiding the furrow, which was matured some time after the
wheat was harvested and before the cotton was very large. A late
fall crop sometimes follows the windsor beans after a period of
tillage and fertilization, making four in one year. With such a
succession fertilization for each crop, and an abundance of soil
moisture are required to give the largest returns from the soil.
In another plan winter wheat or barley may grow side by side with a
green crop, such as the "Chinese clover" (Medicago denticulata,
Willd.) for soil fertilizer, as was the case in Fig. 144, to be
turned under and fertilize for a crop of cotton planted in rows on
either side of a crop of barley. After the barley had been harvested
the ground it occupied would be tilled and further fertilized, and
when the cotton was nearing maturity a crop of rape might be grown,
from which "salted cabbage" would be prepared for winter use.
Multiple crops are grown as far north in Chihli as Tientsin and
Peking, these being oftenest wheat, maize, large and small millet
and soy beans, and this, too, where the soil is less fertile and
where the annual rainfall is only about twenty-five inches, the
rainy season beginning in late June or early July, and Fig. 145
shows one of these fields as it appeared June 14th, where two rows
of wheat and two of large millet were planted in alternating pairs,
the rows being about twenty-eight inches apart. The wheat was ready
to harvest but the straw was unusually short because growing on a
light sandy loam in a season of exceptional drought, but little more
than two inches of rain having fallen after January 1st of that
year.
The piles of pulverized dry-earth compost seen between the rows had
been brought for use on the ground occupied by the wheat when that
was removed. The wheat would be pulled, tied in bundles, taken to
the village and the roots cut off, for making compost, as in Fig.
146, which shows the family engaged in cutting the roots from the
small bundles of wheat, using a long straight knife blade, fixed at
one end, and thrust downward upon the bundle with lever pressure.
These roots, if not used as fuel, would be transferred to the
compost pit in the enclosure seen in Fig. 147, whose walls were
built of earth brick. Here, with any other waste litter, manure or
ashes, they would be permitted to decay under water until the fiber
had been destroyed, thus permitting it to be incorporated with soil
and applied to the fields, rich in soluble plant food and in a
condition which would not interfere with the capillary movement of
soil moisture, the work going on outside the field where the changes
could occur unimpeded and without interfering with the growth of
crops on the ground.
In this system of combined intertillage and multiple cropping the
oriental farmer thus takes advantage of whatever good may result
from rotation or succession of crops, whether these be physical,
vito-chemical or biological. If plants are mutually helpful through
close association of their root systems in the soil, as some believe
may be the case, this growing of different species in close
juxtaposition would seem to provide the opportunity, but the other
advantages which have been pointed out are so evident and so
important that they, rather than this, have doubtless led to the
practice of growing different crops in close recurrent rows.
XII
RICE CULTURE IN THE ORIENT
The basal food crop of the people of China, Korea and Japan is rice,
and the mean consumption in Japan, for the five years ending 1906,
per capita and per annum, was 302 pounds. Of Japan's 175,428 square
miles she devoted, in 1906, 12,856 to the rice crop. Her average
yield of water rice on 12,534 square miles exceeded 33 bushels per
acre, and the dry land rice averaged 18 bushels per acre on 321
square miles. In the Hokkaido, as far north as northern Illinois,
Japan harvested 1,780,000 bushels of water rice from 53,000 acres.
In Szechwan province, China, Consul-General Hosie places the yield
of water rice on the plains land at 44 bushels per acre, and that of
the dry land rice at 22 bushels. Data given us in China show an
average yield of 42 bushels of water rice per acre, while the
average yield of wheat was 25 bushels per acre, the normal yield in
Japan being about 17 bushels.
If the rice eaten per capita in China proper and Korea is equal to
that in Japan the annual consumption for the three nations, using
the round number 300 pounds per capita per annum, would be:
Population. Consumption.
China 410,000,000 61,500,000 tons
Korea 12,000,000 1,800,000 tons
Japan 53,000,000 7,950 000 tons
-----------------------
Total 475,000,000 71,250,000 tons
If the ratio of irrigated to dry land rice in Korea and China proper
is the same as that in Japan, and if the mean yield of rice per acre
in these countries were forty bushels for the water rice and twenty
bushels for the dry land rice, the acreage required to give this
production would be:
Area.
Water rice, Dry land rice,
sq. miles. sq. miles.
In China 78,073 4,004
In Korea 2,285 117
In Japan 12,534 321
------- ------
Sum 92,892 4,442
Total 97,334
Our observations along the four hundred miles of railway in Korea
between Antung, Seoul and Fusan, suggest that the land under rice in
this country must be more rather than less than that computed, and
the square miles of canalized land in China, as indicated on pages
97 to 102, would indicate an acreage of rice for her quite as large
as estimated.
In the three main islands of Japan more than fifty per cent of the
cultivated land produces a crop of water rice each year and 7.96 per
cent of the entire land area of the Empire, omitting far-north
Karafuto. In Formosa and in southern China large areas produce two
crops each year. At the large mean yield used in the computation the
estimated acreage of rice in China proper amounts to 5.93 per cent
of her total area and this is 7433 square miles greater than the
acreage of wheat in the United States in 1907. Our yield of wheat,
however, was but 19,000,000 tons, while China's output of rice was
certainly double and probably three times this amount from nearly
the same acreage of land; and notwithstanding this large production
per acre, more than fifty per cent, possibly as high as seventy-five
per cent, of the same land matures at least one other crop the same
year, and much of this may be wheat or barley, both chiefly consumed
as human food.