FARMERS OF FORTY CENTURIES or Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan

Description

Farmers of Forty Centuriesdescribes the voyage agronomist and former US Department of Agricultre offcial Franklin Hiram King made to China, Korea and Japan in the early 1900s. The purpose of his trip was to study how the extremely dense populations of the Far East could produce massive amounts of food century after century without depleting their soils. What he discovered was a higly sophisticated system of water management, crop rotation, inter-planting and rational utilization of ecological relationships among farm plants, animals and people. This book on agriculture should have good effect in establishing understanding between the West and the East. If there could be such an interchange of courtesies and inquiries on these themes as is suggested by Professor King, as well as the interchange of athletics and diplomacy and commerce, the common productive people on both sides should gain much that they could use; and the results in amity should be incalculable.

Franklin Hiram Kingwasan American agricultural scientist who was born on a farm near Whitewater, Wisconsin. King served as a professor of agricultural physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1888 until 1902. He is most popularly known for desinging the cylindrical storage silo, which reduces the occurance of spoilage in the silage. This book can be recounted as his investigations into what would now be called organic farming or sustainable agriculture during a nine-month tour of Asia in 1900s. He has been called the father of soil physics in the United States.