FARMING IN CHINA.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1933, 22 August 1889, Page 3

FARMING IN CHINA.

Consul Oxenham, reporting upon thdstate of agriculture in tbe neighborhood of Chin Kiang, shows how the plodding and persevering industry of the peasant of China has effectually solved the vexed problem of how to maintain the maximum number of •people on the minimum amount ef land. While one’cause of success is put down to the warm sun of a Chinese summer, a very large proportion is due to the equitable relationship between landlord and tenant, and the fact that the land is. never allowed to lie fallow, even for a month. Thus oyer ground which can be watered enough for rice, as soon as the crop is reaped in Noyemfeer the field is sown with wheat. I'his appears above ground in a month or leas, and is ready to cut by May. As soon as this is gathered in, the ground is ploughed up and irrigated, and the young rice plants transplanted from their seed plots. Everywhere there is the same eagerness to get all that can be gathered from the soil, the fertility of which is maintained by incessant manuring. The home of the cultivator may be squalid indeed, but his fields will be garden-like in their neatness. Of course where so much depends upon the products of the farm, a long-continued drought or a widespread inundation must neees-

sarily produce a terrible disaster, siich as those which affiiet the Celestial Empire now, But comparatively slight'’ failures I to some extent compensated for by the system of land -tenure. The landlord receives as payihent ft fraction of the crop; but this fraction varies, being larger in times of plenty- and diminishing to nothing in lv4ryi- poor years. When the distress ifl in/any way acute the Emperor himself 1 remits the land tax, and the landlords can but follow his august example. The principle is that first of all the peasant gets his living from the soil, and the rent and taxes are a secondary consideration.