Following the westward expansion of the nineteenth century, US agronomists found themselves plagued by soil degradation and erosion as a result of unorganized development. In an effort to find answers, Western scholars soon focused their attention on China, home of the oldest farming country in the world, where Chinese farmers were successfully maintaining the strength of their land after thousands of years of cultivation. In 1909, US soil scientist F. H. King and his entourage crossed the ocean and began a trip through East Asia. He carefully observed how the Chinese farmed, trying to unravel this oriental mystery with modern scientific knowledge, and discovered that traditional Chinese fertilizer was the key. At the same time, as the trend of Western learning spread across the East, Western chemical fertilizers expanded throughout China. As such, Chinese and Western fertilizers finally converged within...
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1 June 2020
Issue Editors
Book Review|
June 01 2020
Jin Zhi: Fertilizer Knowledge and Practice in Traditional China (Tenth to Nineteenth Century)
Du, Xinhao,
Jin Zhi: Fertilizer Knowledge and Practice in Traditional China (Tenth to Nineteenth Century)
Beijing
: China Agricultural Science and Technology Press
, 2018
. 212
pp. ¥46.00.
Yuanming Song
Yuanming Song
Institute of Cultural Heritage and History of Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology Beijing, China email: songyuanming@ustb.edu.cn
Yuanming Song is an assistant professor at the Institute of Cultural Heritage and History of Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology Beijing. He received his PhD in 2018 from the Institute for History of Natural Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on the history of agriculture in modern China.
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East Asian Science, Technology and Society (2020) 14 (2): 427–430.
Citation
Yuanming Song; Jin Zhi: Fertilizer Knowledge and Practice in Traditional China (Tenth to Nineteenth Century). East Asian Science, Technology and Society 1 June 2020; 14 (2): 427–430. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/18752160-8540106
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