CHINESE AGRICULTURE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3149, 25 December 1922, Page 7

CHINESE AGRICULTURE.

(By Kenyon L. Butterfield).

" Almost every foot of land is mad© to I contribute material for food, fuel or . fabric. Everything which can be made edible serves as food for man or d'o- ; animals. Whatever cannot be ' eaten or worn is used for fuel. The 1 wastes of the body, of fuel and of fabric ' worn beyond other use are taken back to the field; before doing so they axe 1 housed against waste from weather, compounded with intelligence and forethought and patiently labored with ' through one, three or even six months, to" bring them into the most efficient form to serve as manure for the soil or as feed for the crop. Professor King has paid a deserved tribute to the skill, the toil, and the thrift of the Chinese farmer —and well he may. It is almost platitude to reiterate the statements that China is the oldest existing civilisation with a continuous history; that for four thousand years she has continued her life through all vicissitudes : that to-day she is the most populous country in the world, with perhaps a fourth of the world's population: and, finally, that .she is fully as vigorous, and virile as ever before in her long experience. There are many reasons for this remarkable situation, but one not usually mentioned is certainly fundamental, namely, this same skill and thrift and severe toil of the Chinese farmers (who constitute not less than four-fifths of her enormous population), which have resulted in maintaining sufficient soil fertility to make China practically selfsufficing in regard to her food requirements. But, like every other book about China, this book of Professor King's tells only a part of the story. Chinese life is so complex that it seems to be constantly contradictory and even paradoxical. As a matter of fact, while the Chinese farmers are at the best very skilful, Chinese agriculture to-day is a mass, and a foreigner might be tempted to say a mess, of problems. For example, fundamentally the Chinese have no science. Their acts are governed! by long experience, but often instigated by pure'superstition. In the field of agriculture, for example, they have done little for the improvement of varieties or for building up the soil. They are absolutely helpless in the face of insect pests and planj, diseases. And then, there are certain large questions that have become so commou with them as hardly to be thought of as problems and yet, to a Western observer, they are crucial with respect to China's future development. One of these is the famine question. It is a, constantly recurring issue. Apparently the famines are becoming more frequent and more serious. The two main causes of famine are hoods in Central China and drought in North China. But floods in turn are due to the denuding of the forests' of their growth, to the great amount of silt washed down the rivers, to the lack of levees and flood' reservoirs and to the immense areas of flat delta land easily flooded. Drought, of course, can be met only by better methods of cultivation, by irrigation, or by growing; drought-resisting varieties of plants. Then there is the question of what might be called the lack of surplus. The farmers live from hand to mouth. They store up very little either in the way of surplus food or of surplus capital. They have almost nothing of what the thrifty Western farmer would call savings. The situation is bad enough in normal times, and keeps them constantly on the margin of precarious standard of living. But when the floods come and their houses, built not only on shifting soil but out of mud, are washed away in the flood, the situation becomes terribly acute. A year ago in one rather small district in the province of Shantung, in an area flooded from the Yellow River over 6000 • farm hamlets were completely wiped out! There are no facilities for saving. There are no storages for surplus grain. There are no banks utilised by the common people. There are surprisingly large areas of land not yet in use for agriculture. Some of these areas and often the richest are the sites of the graves of ancestors. Some land is idle beccause it is not properly forested, some because it is not properly drained, some because it has not yet been irrigated. There is a great sweep of country in the north and west of China where they can grow wheat as well as in the Dakotas and stock as well as in Wyoming and that can be colonised by millions of people. From our point of view there are many rural economic problems on the verge of emerging into great significance, especially as soon as an extended scheme of steam railways is developed; such, for. example, as credit and co-operative buying and selling.