instead of, or as well as, in eastern Asia, there might have been a
Grand Canal, something as suggested in Fig. 148, from the Rio Grande
to the mouth of the Ohio river and from the Mississippi to
Chesapeake Bay, constituting more than two thousand miles of inland
water-way, serving commerce, holding up and redistributing both the
run-off water and the wasting fertility of soil erosion, spreading
them over 200,000 square miles of thoroughly canalized coastal
plains, so many of which are now impoverished lands, made so by the
intolerable waste of a vaunted civilization. And who shall venture
to enumerate the increase in the tonnage of sugar, bales of cotton,
sacks of rice, boxes of oranges, baskets of peaches, and in the
trainloads of cabbage, tomatoes and celery such husbanding would
make possible through all time; or number the increased millions
these could feed and clothe? We may prohibit the exportation of our
phosphorus, grind our limestone, and apply them to our fields, but
this alone is only temporizing with the future. The more we produce,
the more numerous our millions, the faster must present practices
speed the waste to the sea, from whence neither money nor prayer can
call them back.
If the United States is to endure; if we shall project our history
even through four or five thousand years as the Mongolian nations
have done, and if that history shall be written in continuous peace,
free from periods of wide-spread famine or pestilence, this nation
must orient itself; it must square its practices with a conservation
of resources which can make endurance possible. Intensifying
cultural methods but intensifies the digestion, assimilation and
exhaustion of the surface soil, from which life springs. Multiple
cropping, closer stands on the ground and stronger growth, all mean
the transpiration of much more water per acre through the crops, and
this can only be rendered possible through a redistribution of the
run-off and the adoption of irrigation practices in humid climates
where water exists in abundance. Sooner or later we must adopt a
national policy which shall more completely conserve our water
resources, utilizing them not only for power and transportation, but
primarily for the maintenance of soil fertility and greater crop
production through supplemental irrigation, and all these great
national interests should be considered collectively, broadly, and
with a view to the fullest and best possible coordination. China,
Korea and Japan long ago struck the keynote of permanent agriculture
but the time has now come when they can and will make great
improvements, and it remains for us and other nations to profit by
their experience, to adopt and adapt what is good in their practice
and help in a world movement for the introduction of new and
improved methods.
In selecting rice as their staple crop; in developing and
maintaining their systems of combined irrigation and drainage,
notwithstanding they have a large summer rainfall; in their systems
of multiple cropping; in their extensive and persistent use of
legumes; in their rotations for green manure to maintain the humus
of their soils and for composting; and in the almost religious
fidelity with which they have returned to their fields every form of
waste which can replace plant food removed by the crops, these
nations have demonstrated a grasp of essentials and of fundamental
principles which may well cause western nations to pause and
reflect.
While this country need not and could not now adopt their laborious
methods of rice culture, and while, let us hope, those who come
after us may never be compelled to do so, it is nevertheless quite
worth while to study, for the sake of the principles involved, the
practices they have been led to adopt.
Great as is the acreage of land in rice in these countries but
little, relatively, is of the dry land type, and the fields upon
which most of the rice grows have all been graded to a water level
and surrounded by low, narrow raised rims, such as may be seen in
Fig. 149 and in Fig. 150, where three men are at work on their
foot-power pump, flooding fields preparatory to transplanting the
rice. If the country was not level then the slopes have been graded
into horizontal terraces varying in size according to the steepness
of the areas in which they were cut. We saw these often no larger
than the floor of a small room, and Professor Ross informed me that
he walked past those in the interior of China no larger than a
dining table and that he saw one bearing its crop of rice,
surrounded by its rim and holding water, yet barely larger than a
good napkin. The average area of the paddy field in Japan is
officially reported at 1.14 se, or an area of but 31 by 40 feet.
Excluding Hokkaido, Formosa and Karafuto, fifty-three per cent of
the irrigated rice lands in Japan are in allotments smaller than
one-eighth of an acre, and seventy-four per cent of other cultivated
lands are held in areas less than one-fourth of an acre, and each of
these may be further subdivided. The next two illustrations, Figs.
151 and 152, give a good idea both of the small size of the rice
fields and of the terracing which has been done to secure the water
level basins. The house standing near the center of Fig. 151 is a
good scale for judging both the size of the paddies and the slope of
the valley. The distance between the rows of rice is scarcely one
foot, hence counting these in the foreground may serve as another
measure. There are more than twenty little fields shown in this
engraving in front of the house and reaching but half way to it, and
the house was less than five hundred feet from the camera.
There are more than eleven thousand square miles of fields thus
graded in the three main islands of Japan, each provided with rims,
with water supply and drainage channels, all carefully kept in the
best of repair. The more level areas, too, in each of the three
countries, have been similarly thrown into water level basins,
comparatively few of which cover large areas, because nearly always
the holdings are small. All of the earth excavated from the canals
and drainage channels has been leveled over the fields unless needed
for levees or dikes, so that the original labor of construction,
added to that of maintenance, makes a total far beyond our
comprehension and nearly all of it is the product of human effort.
The laying out and shaping of so many fields into these level basins
brings to the three nations an enormous aggregate annual asset, a
large proportion of which western nations are not yet utilizing. The
greatest gain comes from the unfailing higher yields made possible
by providing an abundance of water through which more plant food can
be utilized, thus providing higher average yields. The waters used,
coming as they do largely from the uncultivated hills and mountain
lands, carrying both dissolved and suspended matters, make positive
annual additions of dissolved limestone and plant food elements to
the fields which in the aggregate have been very large, through the
persistent repetitions which have prevailed for centuries. If the
yearly application of such water to the rice fields is but sixteen
inches, and this has the average composition quoted by Merrill for
rivers of North America, taking into account neither suspended
matter nor the absorption of potassium and phosphorus by it, each
ten thousand square miles would receive, dissolved in the water,
substances containing some 1,400 tons of phosphorus; 23,000 tons of
potassium; 27,000 tons of nitrogen; and 48,000 tons of sulphur. In
addition, there are brought to the fields some 216,000 tons of
dissolved organic matter and a still larger weight of dissolved
limestone, so necessary in neutralizing the acidity of soils,
amounting to 1,221,000 tons; and such savings have been maintained
in China, Korea and Japan on more than five, and possibly more than
nine, times the ten thousand square miles, through centuries. The
phosphorus thus turned upon ninety thousand square miles would
aggregate nearly thirteen million tons in a thousand years, which is
less than the time the practice has been maintained, and is more
phosphorus than would be carried in the entire rock phosphate thus
far mined in the United States, were it all seventy-five per cent
pure.
The canalization of fifty thousand square miles of our Gulf and
Atlantic coastal plain, and the utilization on the fields of the
silts and organic matter, together with the water, would mean
turning to account a vast tonnage of plant food which is now wasting
into the sea, and a correspondingly great increase of crop yield.
There ought, and it would seem there must some time be provided a
way for sending to the sandy plains of Florida, and to the sandy
lands between there and the Mississippi, large volumes of the rich
silt and organic matter from this and other rivers, aside from that
which should be applied systematically to building above flood plain
the lands of the delta which are subject to overflow or are too low
to permit adequate drainage.
It may appear to some that the application of such large volumes of
water to fields, especially in countries of heavy rainfall, must
result in great loss of plant food through leaching and surface
drainage. But under the remarkable practices of these three nations
this is certainly not the case and it is highly important that our
people should understand and appreciate the principles which
underlie the practices they have almost uniformly adopted on the
areas devoted to rice irrigation. In the first place, their paddy
fields are under-drained so that most of the water either leaves the
soil through the crop, by surface evaporation, or it percolates
through the subsoil into shallow drains. When water is passed
directly from one rice paddy to another it is usually permitted some
time after fertilization, when both soil and crop have had time to
appropriate or fix the soluble plant food substances. Besides this,
water is not turned upon the fields until the time for transplanting
the rice, when the plants are already provided with a strong root
system and are capable of at once appropriating any soluble plant
food which may develop about their roots or be carried downward over
them.
Although the drains are of the surface type and but eighteen inches
to three feet in depth, they are sufficiently numerous and close so
that, although the soil is continuously nearly filled with water,
there is a steady percolation of the fresh, fully aerated water
carrying an abundance of oxygen into the soil to meet the needs of
the roots, so that watermelons, egg plants, musk melons and taro are
grown in the rotations on the small paddies among the irrigated rice
after the manner seen in the illustrations. In Fig. 153 each double
row of egg plants is separated from the next by a narrow shallow
trench which connects with a head drain and in which water was
standing within fourteen inches of the surface. The same was true in
the case of the watermelons seen in Fig. 154, where the vines are
growing on a thick layer of straw mulch which holds them from the
moist soil and acts to conserve water by diminishing evaporation
and, through decay from the summer rains and leaching, serves as
fertilizer for the crop. In Fig. 155 the view is along a pathway
separating two head ditches between areas in watermelons and taro,
carrying the drainage waters from the several furrows into the main
ditches. Although the soil appeared wet the plants were vigorous and
healthy, seeming in no way to suffer from insufficient drainage.
These people have, therefore, given effective attention to the
matter of drainage as well as irrigation and are looking after
possible losses of plant food, as well as ways of supplying it. It
is not alone where rice is grown that cultural methods are made to
conserve soluble plant food and to reduce its loss from the field,
for very often, where flooding is not practiced, small fields and
beds, made quite level, are surrounded by low raised borders which
permit not only the whole of any rain to be retained upon the field
when so desired, but it is completely distributed over it, thus
causing the whole soil to be uniformly charged with moisture and
preventing washing from one portion of the field to another. Such
provisions are shown in Figs. 133 and 138.
Extensive as is the acreage of irrigated rice in China, Korea and
Japan, nearly every spear is transplanted; the largest and best crop
possible, rather than the least labor and trouble, as is so often
the case with us, determining their methods and practices. We first
saw the fitting of the rice nursery beds at Canton and again near
Kashing in Chekiang province on the farm of Mrs. Wu, whose homestead
is seen in Fig. 156. She had come with her husband from Ningpo after
the ravages of the Taiping rebellion had swept from two provinces
alone twenty millions of people and settled on a small area of then
vacated land. As they prospered they added to their holding by
purchase until about twenty-five acres were acquired, an area about
ten times that possessed by the usual prosperous family in China.
The widow was managing her place, one of her sons, although married,
being still in school, the daughter-in-law living with her
mother-in-law and helping in the home. Her field help during the
summer consisted of seven laborers and she kept four cows for the
plowing and pumping of water for irrigation. The wages of the men
were at the rate of $24, Mexican, for five summer months, together
with their meals which were four each day. The cash outlay for the
seven men was thus $14.45 of our currency per month. Ten years
before, such labor had been $30 per year, as compared with $50 at
the time of our visit, or $12.90 and $21.50 of our currency,
respectively.
Her usual yields of rice were two piculs per mow, or twenty-six and
two-thirds bushels per acre, and a wheat crop yielding half this
amount, or some other, was taken from part of the land the same
season, one fertilization answering for the two crops. She stated
that her annual expense for fertilizers purchased was usually about
$60, or $25.80 of our currency. The homestead of Mrs. Wu, Fig. 156,
consists of a compound in the form of a large quadrangle surrounding
a court closed on the south by a solid wall eight feet high. The
structure is of earth brick with the roof thatched with rice straw.
Our first visit here was April 19th. The nursery rice beds had been
planted four days, sowing seed at the rate of twenty bushels per
acre. The soil had been very carefully prepared and highly
fertilized, the last treatment being a dressing of plant ashes so
incompletely burned as to leave the surface coal black. The seed,
scattered directly upon the surface, almost completely covered it
and had been gently beaten barely into the dressing of ashes, using
a wide, flat-bottom basket for the purpose. Each evening, if the
night was likely to be cool, water was pumped over the bed, to be
withdrawn the next day, if warm and sunny, permitting the warmth to
be absorbed by the black surface, and a fresh supply of air to be
drawn into the soil.
Nearly a month later, May 14th, a second visit was made to this farm
and one of the nursery beds of rice, as it then appeared, is seen in
Fig. 159, the plants being about eight inches high and nearing the
stage for transplanting. The field beyond the bed had already been
partly flooded and plowed, turning under "Chinese clover" to ferment
as green manure, preparatory for the rice transplanting. On the
opposite side of the bed and in front of the residence, Fig. 156,
flooding was in progress in the furrows between the ridges formed
after the previous crop of rice was harvested and upon which the
crop of clover for green manure was grown. Immediately at one end of
the two series of nursery beds, one of which is seen in Fig. 159,
was the pumping plant seen in Fig. 157, under a thatched shelter,
with its two pumps installed at the end of a water channel leading
from the canal. One of these wooden pump powers, with the
blindfolded cow attached, is reproduced in Fig. 158 and just beyond
the animal's head may be seen the long handle dipper to which
reference has been made, used for collecting excreta.
More than a month is saved for maturing and harvesting winter and
early spring crops, or in fitting the fields for rice, by this
planting in nursery beds. The irrigation period for most of the land
is cut short a like amount, saving in both water and time. It is
cheaper and easier to highly fertilize and prepare a small area for
the nursery, while at the same time much stronger and more uniform
plants are secured than would be possible by sowing in the field.
The labor of weeding and caring for the plants in the nursery is far
less than would be required in the field. It would be practically
impossible to fit the entire rice areas as early in the season as
the nursery beds are fitted, for the green manure is not yet grown
and time is required for composting or for decaying, if plowed under
directly. The rice plants in the nursery are carried to a stage when
they are strong feeders and when set into the newly prepared,
fertilized, clean soil of the field they are ready to feed strongly
under these most favorable conditions Both time and strength of
plant are thus gained and these people are following what would
appear to be the best possible practices under their condition of
small holdings and dense population.
With our broad fields, our machinery and few people, their system
appears to us crude and impossible, but cut our holdings to the size
of theirs and the same stroke makes our machinery, even our plows,
still more impossible, and so the more one studies the environment
of these people, thus far unavoidable, their numbers, what they have
done and are doing, against what odds they have succeeded, the more
difficult it becomes to see what course might have been better.
How full with work is the month which precedes the transplanting of
rice has been pointed out,--the making of the compost fertilizer;
harvesting the wheat, rape and beans; distributing the compost over
the fields, and their flooding and plowing. In Fig. 160 one of these
fields is seen plowed, smoothed and nearly ready for the plants. The
turned soil had been thoroughly pulverized, leveled and worked to
the consistency of mortar, on the larger fields with one or another
sort of harrow, as seen in Figs. 160 and 161. This thorough puddling
of the soil permits the plants to be quickly set and provides
conditions which ensure immediate perfect contact for the roots.
When the fields are ready women repair to the nurseries with their
low four-legged bamboo stools, to pull the rice plants, carefully
rinsing the soil from the roots, and then tie them into bundles of a
size easily handled in transplanting, which are then distributed in
the fields.
The work of transplanting may be done by groups of families changing
work, a considerable number of them laboring together after the
manner seen in Fig. 163, made from four snap shots taken from the
same point at intervals of fifteen minutes. Long cords were
stretched in the rice field six feet apart and each of the seven men
was setting six rows of rice one foot apart, six to eight plants in
a hill, and the hills eight or nine inches apart in the row. The,
bundle was held in one hand and deftly, with the other, the desired
number of plants were selected with the fingers at the roots,
separated from the rest and, with a single thrust, set in place in
the row. There was no packing of earth about the roots, each hill
being set with a single motion, which followed one another in quick
succession, completing one cross row of six hills after another. The
men move backward across the field, completing one entire section,
tossing the unused plants into the unset field. Then reset the lines
to cover another section. We were told that the usual day's work of
transplanting, for a man under these conditions, after the field is
fitted and the plants are brought to him, is two mow or one-third of
an acre. The seven men in this group would thus set two and a third
acres per day and, at the wage Mrs. Wu was paying, the cash outlay,
if the help was hired, would be nearly 21 cents per acre. This is
more cheaply than we are able to set cabbage and tobacco plants with
our best machine methods. In Japan, as seen in Figs. 164 and 165,
the women participate in the work of setting the plants more than in
China.
After the rice has been transplanted its care, unlike that of our
wheat crop, does not cease. It must be hoed, fertilized and watered.
To facilitate the watering all fields have been leveled, canals,
ditches and drains provided, and to aid in fertilizing and hoeing,
the setting has been in rows and in hills in the row.
The first working of the rice fields after the transplanting, as we
saw it in Japan, consisted in spading between the hills with a
four-tined hoe, apparently more for loosening the soil and aeration
than for killing weeds. After this treatment the field was gone over
again in the manner seen in Fig. 166, where the man is using his
bare hands to smooth and level the stirred soil, taking care to
eradicate every weed, burying them beneath the mud, and to
straighten each hill of rice as it is passed. Sometimes the fingers
are armed with bamboo claws to facilitate the weeding. Machinery in
the form of revolving hand cultivators is recently coming into use
in Japan, and two men using these are seen in Fig. 14. In these
cultivators the teeth are mounted on an axle so as to revolve as the
cultivator is pushed along the row.
Fertilization for the rice crop receives the greatest attention
everywhere by these three nations and in no direction more than in
maintaining the store of organic matter in the soil. The pink
clover, to which reference has been made, Figs. 99 and 100, is
extensively sowed after a crop of rice is harvested in the fall and
comes into full bloom, ready to cut for compost or to turn under
directly when the rice fields are plowed. Eighteen to twenty tons of
this green clover are produced per acre, and in Japan this is
usually applied to about three acres, the stubble and roots serving
for the field producing the clover, thus giving a dressing of six to
seven tons of green manure per acre, carrying not less than 37
pounds of potassium; 5 pounds of phosphorus, and 58 pounds of
nitrogen.
Where the families are large and the holdings small, so they cannot
spare room to grow the green manure crop, it is gathered on the
mountain, weed and hill lands, or it may be cut in the canals. On
our boat trip west from Soochow the last of May, many boats were
passed carrying tons of the long green ribbon-like grass, cut and
gathered from the bottom of the canal. To cut this grass men were
working to their armpits in the water of the canal, using a
crescent-shaped knife mounted like an anchor from the end of a
16-foot bamboo handle. This was shoved forward along the bottom of
the canal and then drawn backward, cutting the grass, which rose to
the surface where it was gathered upon the boats. Or material for
green manure may be cut on grave, mountain or hill lands, as
described under Fig. 115.
The straw of rice and other grain and the stems of any plant not
usable as fuel may also be worked into the mud of rice fields, as
may the chaff which is often scattered upon the water after the rice
is transplanted, as in Fig. 168.