Sustainable Agriculture and Food: Four volume set (Earthscan Reference Collections)

(Elle) #1
Agroecological Farming Systems in China 217

erect stem plants, deep- and shallow-rooted plants, sun-loving plants and shade
resistance, early and lately maturing varieties. These characteristics were expanded
to include all land resources within the organic combination of agriculture, for-
estry, animal husbandry, fishery and sideline production, together with compre-
hensive development and beneficial recycling systems. In the Qing Dynasty four
methods of raising fish with different foods and living condition were combined
in the same pond to maximize use of the water, to save on bait and to increase
efficiency. The system, in which grass carp, silver carp, variegated carp and com-
mon carp were fed in the same waterbody to rationally utilize the water, save forage
and increase benefits, is still used nowadays.
A large variety of aquaculture and agriculture interactive systems have been
developed in China. Sugarcane has been cultivated on the dykes since the begin-
ning of this [20th] century. Despite the widespread adoption of sugarcane cultiva-
tion, many former mulberry dykes were converted to vegetable production or
paddy rice. Historically, although excavation of fishponds and dyke construction
is considered to be the best way of transforming formerly economically marginal
areas, subject to a range of natural disasters, until 1949 cropping patterns on the
dykes were dictated by market prices rather than by ecological considerations.
In the Wei Ya Wen Ji (Collected Works of Wei Ya Wen) written in the Ming
Dynasty, it was recorded that a variety of small crab lived in paddy field and fed on
tender sprouts of rice. To control this little crab, the local farmers raised ducks in
the paddy. As a result, ducks produced meat and eggs, the paddy fields were ferti-
lized by the manure of ducks and the little crabs and insect pests were devoured by
the fish.
During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, multiple cropping spread throughout
north and south China. In the Jiang Nan Cui Geng Ke Dao Biao (The Situation of
Rice in South China), Li Yanzhang summarized the growing of double-harvest rice
on wheat stubble in the south of the Yangtze River, in which barley was harvested
in the last ten days of March and the wheat was harvested in the first ten days of
April. Seed soaking was done in the first ten days of March and on 30 March the
rice seedlings germinated. After the harvest of wheat, the fields were fertilized,
ploughed and raked and then rice seedlings were transplanted. In this way, three
harvests in one year are realized. In Hunan Province, beans were planted after rice
harvesting, and ripened in winter; then wheat was planted in the field and ripened
in the next summer, followed by rice, etc.


Development of Modern IFS

Rapid development and upgrading of knowledge in IFS


Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, there has been a
rapid growth in population and the economy, together with a decrease in arable

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