Farmers of Forty Centuries | Page 4

some
broad plan of international effort such as is here suggested were
organized the expense of maintenance might well be met by diverting
so much as is needful from the large sums set aside for the expansion of
navies for such steps as these, taken in the interests of world uplift and
world peace, could not fail to be more efficacious and less expensive
than increase in fighting equipment. It would cultivate the spirit of
pulling together and of a square deal rather than one of holding aloof
and of striving to gain unneighborly advantage.
Many factors and conditions conspire to give to the farms and farmers
of the Far East their high maintenance efficiency and some of these
may be succinctly stated. The portions of China, Korea and Japan
where dense populations have developed and are being maintained
occupy exceptionally favorable geographic positions so far as these
influence agricultural production. Canton in the south of China has the
latitude of Havana, Cuba, while Mukden in Manchuria, and northern
Honshu in Japan are only as far north as New York city, Chicago and
northern California. The United States lies mainly between 50 degrees
and 30 degrees of latitude while these three countries lie between 40
degrees and 20 degrees, some seven hundred miles further south. This
difference of position, giving them longer seasons, has made it possible
for them to devise systems of agriculture whereby they grow two, three
and even four crops on the same piece of ground each year. In southern
China, in Formosa and in parts of Japan two crops of rice are grown; in
the Chekiang province there may be a crop of rape, of wheat or barley
or of windsor beans or clover which is followed in midsummer by
another of cotton or of rice. In the Shantung province wheat or barley
in the winter and spring may be followed in summer by large or small
millet, sweet potatoes, soy beans or peanuts. At Tientsin, 39 deg north,
in the latitude of Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Springfield, Illinois, we
talked with a farmer who followed his crop of wheat on his small
holding with one of onions and the onions with cabbage, realizing from
the three crops at the rate of $163, gold, per acre; and with another who

planted Irish potatoes at the earliest opportunity in the spring,
marketing them when small, and following these with radishes, the
radishes with cabbage, realizing from the three crops at the rate of $203
per acre.
Nearly 500,000,000 people are being maintained, chiefly upon the
products of an area smaller than the improved farm lands of the United
States. Complete a square on the lines drawn from Chicago southward
to the Gulf and westward across Kansas, and there will be enclosed an
area greater than the cultivated fields of China, Korea and Japan and
from which five times our present population are fed.
The rainfall in these countries is not only larger than that even in our
Atlantic and Gulf states, but it falls more exclusively during the
summer season when its efficiency in crop production may be highest.
South China has a rainfall of some 80 inches with little of it during the
winter, while in our southern states the rainfall is nearer 60 inches with
less than one-half of it between June and September. Along a line
drawn from Lake Superior through central Texas the yearly
precipitation is about 30 inches but only 16 inches of this falls during
the months May to September; while in the Shantung province, China,
with an annual rainfall of little more than 24 inches, 17 of these fall
during the months designated and most of this in July and August.
When it is stated that under the best tillage and with no loss of water
through percolation, most of our agricultural crops require 300 to 600
tons of water for each ton of dry substance brought to maturity, it can
be readily understood that the right amount of available moisture,
coming at the proper time, must be one of the prime factors of a high
maintenance capacity for any soil, and hence that in the Far East, with
their intensive methods, it is possible to make their soils yield large
returns.
The selection of rice and of the millets as the great staple food crops of
these three nations, and the systems of agriculture they have evolved to
realize the most from them, are to us remarkable and indicate a grasp of
essentials and principles which may well cause western nations to
pause and reflect.
Notwithstanding the large and favorable rainfall of these countries,
each of the nations have selected the one crop which permits them to
utilize not only practically the entire amount of rain which falls upon

their fields, but