Editorial Introduction to Volume I 7184 BC. He was always the champion of the common people. Quintilian speaks of
Cato’s great versatility as a general, philosopher, orator, historian and expert on
agriculture. De Agri Cultura resembles a farmer’s notebook, and constitutes the
earliest surviving specimen of connected prose. Although haphazard in style, it
contains many long-standing truths, including on the first page, ‘And when they
would praise a worthy man, their praise took this form: good husbandman, good
farmer; one so praised was thought to have received the greatest commendation’.
Marcus Terentius Varro was born more than 30 years after Cato’s death, and
lived 116–27 BC. He was born in Reate, where Cato’s father had his farm, and
devoted his life to literature and the antiquities. Under the political banner of
Pompey, he held the offices of tribune, aedile and praetor. He came into conflict
with Caesar for twice supporting Pompey, was later forgiven and then commanded
by Caesar to supervise the great library. Varro claimed by his 78th year to have
written several hundred books, but only six survive. The Res Rusticae was begun in
Varro’s 80th year, and it contains perhaps the earliest suggestion of the importance
of sustainability in farming. Identified first by Gordon Conway, a section in Varro’s
third book states that ‘agriculture is not only an art, but an important and noble
art. It is, as well, a science, which teaches what crops are planted in each kind of
soil ... in order that the land may regularly produce the largest crops (quo terra
maximos perpetuo reddat fructus)’.
Li Wenhua provides an historical review of the emergence of agroecological
farming systems in China. As he says, ‘for thousands of years, Chinese philoso-
phers have pondered on the harmonious relationship between humans, nature and
the environment’. As a result, many effective technologies and practices have been
developed (and also forgotten), some of which are now being championed today.
It is in China that there is the greatest and most continuous record of agriculture’s
development. He dates the earliest records of integrated crop, tree, livestock and
fish farming to the Shang-West Zhou Dynasties of 1600–800 BC. Later Mensius
said in 400 BC, ‘if a family owns a certain piece of land with mulberry trees around
it, a house for breeding silkworms, domesticated animals raised in its yard for
meat, and crop fields cultivated and managed properly for cereals, it will be pros-
perous and will not suffer starvation’. In one of the earliest recognitions of the need
for the sustainable use of natural resources, he also said, ‘if the forests are timely
felled, then an abundant supply of timber and firewood is ensured, if the fishing
net with relatively big holes is timely cast into the pond, then there will be no
shortage of fish and turtle for use’.
Still later, other treatises such as the collectively written Li Shi Chun Qiu (239
BC) and the Qi Min Yao Shu by Jia Sixia (600 AD) celebrated the fundamental value
of agriculture to communities and economies, and documented the best approaches
for sustaining food production without damage to the environment. These
included rotation methods and green manures for soil fertility, the rules and norms
for collective management of resources, the raising of fish in rice fields, and the use
of manures. Li Wenhua indicates that, ‘these present a picture of a prosperous,
diversified rural economy and a vivid sketch of pastoral peace’. The chapter goes