Duhamel Du Monceau, Arthur Young, Ōkura Nagatsune and Alternative Early-Modern Agricultures

“THE USE OF PLANTS FOR THE RECONSTITUTION OF HISTORY”: DUHAMEL DU MONCEAU, ARTHUR YOUNG, ŌKURA NAGATSUNE AND ALTERNATIVE EARLY-MODERN AGRICULTURES

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

HISTORY

DECEMBER 2017

A. P. J. Witten

Dissertation Committee:

Kieko Matteson, Chairperson Herbert Ziegler William Farris Peter H. Hoffenberg Lonny Carlile

Keywords: agricultural manuals, Duhamel du Monceau, Arthur Young, Ōkura Nagatsune, alternative agriculture

For Stan, Benjamin, Shelle, Peggy, Liz and Ruth

Those I lost along the way

Acknowledgements

Throughout this process my committee provided the support, advice and friendship that have made me a better student and teacher. Through our conversations and directed readings, Dr. Kieko Matteson encouraged me to consider alternatives, introducing me to literature that now keeps me in thrall. I thought I had everything figured out until she sent me to the Rare Books room and my plans all fell apart, in a very good way. In my teaching and research, Dr. Peter Hoffenberg has been mentor, supervisor and friend. The time he has taken to guide my progression as a thinker can never be repaid. Dr. William Farris encouraged me to find and retain my voice, even if it didn’t immediately blend with others. When I felt hesitant on how and if to proceed, he assured me that this was worth finishing. Dr. Herbert Ziegler kindly took me on in a pinch, making incisive comments during my oral examinations that have heavily influenced my thinking. Dr. Lonny Carlile consistently cheered my efforts. His well wishes when I departed for Japan significantly boosted my spirits. Lastly, Dr. Jerry Bentley, one-time chair of my committee, is the reason I came to the UH. Although I hadn’t been a history major, Dr. Bentley convinced me that the discipline could be a welcoming home and challenged me to find a place for myself within it. Without their contributions, feedback and recommendations, this project would be inferior and I would not have become the student of history I am. This dissertation relied on the assistance of dear friends and family who graciously facilitated library access and were generous with their time and patience. Landon Key, Amanda Witten and Dr. Joshua “Gooch” Batts were instrumental in accessing rare sources. Sean Nathan and Michelle “Hoku” Nathan discovered and scanned documents I would not have found otherwise. Without these efforts, case studies would be heavily attenuated. Yet what they were able to do depended on the work of archivists, librarians and researchers around the world who compiled and published the primary sources used in this study. To these professionals who have unleashed such treasure upon the world, I offer my deepest gratitude. Among them should be counted the members of ILL at the UH library and the staff of the Miyagi Prefectural Library. I’m sure they still don’t know what I was up to, since they were all too polite to ask; yet they helped in every way they could. The Rare Books Room at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa provided the initial space, materials and conversation that shaped the arc of this research. Conversations with Lynn Davis, Joy Enomoto and Charise Michelsen made discoveries into sources of excitement, and not only for myself. Moreover, the invitation to deliver a talk on this research furnished the title of this dissertation and my first substantive attempt to make meaningful comparisons between France, Britain and Japan. The love of friends and family is a powerful thing and I am fortunate to receive more than my fair share. I have particular appreciation for Amanda Witten, who sat through a squirm-inducing recounting of humanure collection, Idell Kesselman for enduring many a chat on land allocation and poverty relief, Dwayne and Susan Witten for listening to me go on and on about what was left to do, and Janine Kesselman for learning not to ask me how it was going but always asking me how I was doing. My sisters, Alycia, Annie, Sam, and Claire all lent support in their own, meaningful ways; as did my brother James, and my nephews, Nolan and Lincoln. Sometimes being distracted is the best way to get anything done. My self-chosen family has been just as compassionate. Landon Key, Janis Boteilho and Gooch Batts have had my back for fifteen years and I pray for fifty more. Michael Kane, Chi Tim, Melissa Esmacher, Josh Hevert, Tomoko Fukushima and Sue Carlson made seminar, TAing and office hours a joy. Our pranks, fights, debates and consultations will ever remain defining moments in my graduate career. They along with Andre Perez, Jason Yun, Lia Kozach, Plamen Ganev and

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Andrew Negin bolstered my sails when they emptied, commanding me onwards even when I felt otherwise. During this tract’s composition, I was provided the opportunity to farm rather than merely talk and write about it. In the hours I spent spreading manure or carting water, I developed a firmer appreciation for farmers than I had from countless books and articles. That experience rejuvenated me, restoring the faith I had lost in the capacities for social change through scholarship. Tasting bread made from grain I grew or biting soil-covered radishes with my students (when I didn’t have to chase them away from my peas and spinach) taught me that life engenders more life when it is allowed to do so. I thank Eriko Witten for teaching me this, for encouraging me to embrace my love of farming and for giving us the gift of our son, Kei. Thus I dedicated this research to the dead and I end it with emphasis on the living. We who depend upon the past to nurture the present ought to acknowledge that our deaths feed multitudes. Let us learn to be unselfish, to give what we can so that we leave behind more life than we took out of it. Let us go and cultivate our gardens.

Abstract

Utilizing the agricultural manuals of Duhamel du Monceau (1700-1782), Arthur Young

(1741-1820) and Ōkura Nagatsune (1768-1860), this dissertation examines commonalities among best practices in eighteenth and nineteenth century French, British and Japanese agronomies. These practices offered significant possibilities for agrarian improvement in an ecologically sustainable context, but were supplanted by the advent of industrial agriculture before their full potential could be attained. In recovering these past and in many cases forgotten approaches, I link their practices and potentialities with present-day farm literature, tracing continuities that suggest how contemporary agriculture might more fruitfully unfold.

Contents Acknowledgements ...... iii Abstract ...... v List of Tables ...... viii Notes on Translation and Style ...... ix Glossary ...... x Introduction. Practical Repositories and Recreating their Contents ...... 1 Chapter 1. Duhamel du Monceau (1700-1782): Improvement as Science ...... 24 Duhamel’s Entry Point into Farm Books ...... 25 The Traité: Duhamel’s Transmogrification of Tull ...... 29 Duhamel’s New Husbandry – Accepted and Precluded ...... 42 Duhamel’s New Husbandry and the Trees ...... 44 Safeguarding Harvests ...... 53 Duhamel’s Agronomy ...... 57 Chapter 2. Arthur Young (1741-1820): Improvement as Alchemy, Art and Science ...... 61 The Kalendar’s Contents ...... 62 Tasks and Techniques of a Farm Ideal ...... 65 The Principles of Young’s Early Farm Management ...... 74 The Annals of Agriculture ...... 75 An Altered Agronomy? ...... 77 Implications ...... 98 Chapter 3. Ōkura Nagatsune (1768-1860): Improvement as Security and Prosperity ...... 100 One Handle: Profit and Prosperity ...... 101 The Other Handle: Famine Preparedness and Prevention ...... 121 Ōkura’s Agronomy ...... 136 Chapter 4. Comparative Agronomy ...... 140 Comparative Practices...... 141 On Fertilizers and Crop Rotations ...... 155 Humanure and the Assessment of Sustainability ...... 158 On Crop Rotations ...... 162 Implications ...... 174 Chapter 5. Agricultural Manuals in the Present-Day ...... 176 Agricultural Manuals in the Present Tense ...... 177 Implications ...... 197 Conclusion. Reconstitution and the Garden ...... 201

Bibliography ...... 204 Primary Source Collections ...... 204 Primary Sources at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa ...... 204 Other Printed Primary Sources ...... 204 Secondary Sources ...... 211

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List of Tables

Table 1.1 Arable Land and Population circa 1800 CE in France, England/Wales and Japan………..9

Table 1.2 Agricultural Systems in Terms of Demographic Potential…………………………..…...10

Table 6.1: Duhamel, Young and Ōkura Compared………………………………………………142

Table 6.2 Comparative Crop Rotations…………………………………………………………..165

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Notes on Translation and Style

Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. Without exception, I have aspired to be literal, opting to keep repetitive phrasing if that reflects the composition of the sources. This may make for drab reading but I believe accuracy is more important than style, at least in this.

I have adhered to convention concerning such things as agricultural terms, place names and formatting. Japanese names are therefore given in the Japanese way of last name first and first name last.

Any and all errors in content or presentation, included those intentionally rendered of course, are my sole responsibility.

Glossary

Anaerobic composting: the storage of organic materials within sealed containers, within which bacteria break down the materials without generating high temperatures that would release and/or denature plant nutrients.

Arpent: to be loosely understood as a French acre. During the period studied in this dissertation, the term did not possess a standardized value and varied, quite considerably, by region and locale.

Artificial grasses: a term used in French and British sources in reference to non-native grasses. Artificial grasses were often deemed superior to native grasses for livestock, both in the field and as hay/silage.

Broadcast: to sow seed by throwing it onto a field surface where it might be plowed, harrowed or raked in, or left as is.

Calcareous manures: fertilizers emphasized for their calcium content, i.e. those that derive from lime or chalk.

Convertible farming/husbandry: the transition of pasture to arable and arable to pasture such that land was continually converted between grassland and cropland. This was a system for the maintenance of livestock and the regulation of on-farm soil fertility.

Crop rotation: the specific types of plants and their order of cultivation in a farm’s management. For instance, a source might state that a farmer grows wheat after a clover crop, before oats, which precede peas. Such a rotation indicates a crop rotation in which the same field produces four different plants in four years, in the following order: 1) clover, 2) wheat, 3) oats, and 4) peas.

Double-cropping: to grow two crops of the same variety on the same field in the same year.

Fallow: a break from cultivation. This may range from a seasonal fallow (non-cultivation for perhaps summer or winter), an annual fallow (nothing planted for a year), to a spatial system in which certain intervals or areas, like fencerows and ditches, are not cropped consistently at all.

Furrow: the indentation between two ridges that allows water to drain off as well as for people, animals and machinery to pass.

“Good Heart”: an adjective applied to soils, fields and animals to indicate their health as well as capacity to yield or reproduce.

Harrow/harrowing: a device with many teeth, usually rectangular in shape, that is pulled across field surfaces to level them. ‘Harrowing’ refers to the application of the tool to a field, usually after the fields have been plowed, fertilized, and planted, to ensure sufficient soil to seed contact for germination, as well as to conceal seed from avian predation.

Humanure: human excrement, both solid and liquid, when used for fertilizer.

Inter-cropping/planting: to cultivate multiple species in the same field, often by alternation. This might consist of growing clover or another legume under a grain, or planting different species of vegetables in interchanging rows.

Leaching: the loss of nutrients below the rhizosphere, where they cannot be accessed by plant roots.

Ley farming: also known as grass or pasture farming. It is the management of grasses to ensure a constant source of fresh food for livestock. Presently, the most advanced approaches make use of a mixture of grasses, greens and small grains, paddocks and a rotation that ensures the optimal time for grasses to develop, flourish and recover in conjunction with livestock access.

Marl: now known as calcium carbonate, it was considered a type of “fossil manure” because it was excavated from sub-soils during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Marl was considered an effective fertilizer on soils that drained quickly because it provided silt and clay, particles that help to bind lighter soils together, retaining the nutrients of plant nutrition.

Nitrogen-fixing/fixation: a symbiotic relationship between a class of plants known as legumes and Rhizobium and Bradyrhizobium bacteria. The bacteria penetrate into the roots of legumes where they form nodules, within which they capture nitrogen from the air and make it available to plants, in exchange for the nutrients provided by the roots.

Nitrogenous manures: fertilizers emphasized for their nitrogen content, e.g., urine, avian dung (fresh or fossilized), oil cake and fish-based fertilizers. The phrase is typically used to distinguish this class of substances from calcareous manures, i.e. lime.

Pulse: a legume that produces edible seeds, e.g. beans, peas.

Ridge: upraised soil into which seeds or seedlings are planted. Ridge height is often determined by soil quality, and reflects the presence or absence of water.

Smallholder, or small farmer: a farmer who holds a comparatively small amount of land within her or his region. As is argued in this dissertation, the term does not indicate anything about efficiency or land management and bears no value judgment.

Sugaring: the use of tree sap to produce sugar. Trees are tapped and the sap is boiled down until it obtains the desired sugar content, consistency and color.

Thermophilic composting: the layering of organic materials according to nitrogen and carbon content, as well as the admixture of water, to provide for the work of bacteria and fungi. These microorganisms break down organic materials releasing heat that exceeds 140˚F, killing disease- causing microbes and seeds and leaving behind an effective plant food.

Turning down: plowing into established crops and inverting them such that their greenery is pushed under the soil while the soil at their roots and from the intervals becomes the field surface.

Wastes: a term, in European husbandry, for lands that were not utilized in pasture or arable cultivation and were sometimes considered to be too infertile for modification. In the context of European and Japanese husbandry, the term is also used to refer to lands that were once cultivated but have since fallen into disuse.

Water furrow: deeper than the typical furrow, water furrows are used on heavy lands that drain poorly. They are a means to create drier soils on the ridges that is more conducive to plant growth.

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We sense a miracle every time a seed sprouts and grows to maturity because, considering all the possibilities of that not happening, fruition is almost a miracle. 1 - Gene Logsdon, The Contrary Farmer (1993)

Introduction. Practical Repositories and Recreating their Contents

One day I was hoeing a particularly thick and heavy soil, a soil with so much yellow clay I

was certain it would be better for making vessels than growing grain. While I installed a drainage

pipe to at least help with the puddling water, a mound of twenty or so kilos of the stuff had formed.

There was this one especially dense clod, bigger than a human head, that really forced me to sweat in

extracting it. So in celebration for getting the pipe in place, I smashed my hoe into that lump to

remind it who had won the encounter. Its mass deformed to expose a ball of decayed organic matter.

I nudged it loose and several perfectly preserved seeds emerged. I was rolling them around in my

hand trying to figure out if I had seen them before when I recalled an article from a French

horticultural journal.

In 1890, the Revue Horticole ran an article titled “The use of plants for the reconstitution of

history.” The piece asked whether the discovery in Pompeii of preserved, mature fruit from Laurus

nobilis, which typically ripens in November, challenged the feasibility of an August volcanic

eruption.2 It is a small entry, only three paragraphs long, and appears not to have received any more

attention while the journal was active. Given that perusing any encyclopedia today confirms Pompeii

and Herculaneum met their demise in August of 79 CE, and not November, it appears the article

didn’t leave much of a mark either. The Revue article wanted to use preserved plant material to re-

assess the historical record. But in finding those seeds, I considered how I might reconstitute their

bodies and thereby reclaim an element of history directly. Doing so might not change how I

conceived of history but it could change what I did on my land.

1 Gene Logsdon, The Contrary Farmer, (Post Mills, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 1993), 150. 2 “L’utilité des plantes pour la reconstitution de l’histoire,” Revue Horticole, (Paris: Librarie Agricole de la Maison Rustique, 1890), 532

Since the publication of that article our understandings of history, science and life have

changed in meaningful ways. Thanks to an expanding comprehension of genetics, it is possible to conceive of the living as a manipulable record of the past, a data mine from which vestiges of our personal historical legacies and even propensities for our futures are contained and preserved within our DNA. While the reduction of any lifeform to a patentable collection of genes poses significant ethical concerns, the insights that DNA analysis offers suggest a reconceptualization of that 1890 article. Essentially all cultivars, that is to say the plants humans have domesticated and have in turn been domesticated by, are records of decision-making within their communities. They are the result

of selection for seed or fruit size, texture, flavor, preservability, color and use-value. In time, they

become unique reflections of their place and the people who cultivate them. So when we encounter

seeds from another place or time, we have an opportunity to reflect upon the multiplicative

pathways of plant development and, potentially, change what we’re doing with the life around us.

Although the seeds I found in that clay did not germinate, I kept three of them. They remain

in my winter jacket pocket. I roll them around in my palm when I walk my fields and think about

what I’ll be doing with the land in the coming spring. They remind me that seeds are not just food.

They remind me that seeds are a living record of the past but one that can only be conserved by

continuing to be planted and saved. When seeds stop being cultivated their ability to germinate

declines over time and their capacities to keep history alive cease. Unlike documents that can retain

their information without needing to be regenerated by birth and death, when a seed expires we lose

something that has perhaps been with us since the advent of agriculture, that has shaped our lives

and cultures.

But what happens when the living history within seeds inspires us to reclaim the no-longer-

living history within farming records? What happens when we reject the tendencies to aggregate and

commodify in agricultural history and instead assume a farm-level perspective, one in which we

2 assess a field, the soil within it and the seeds that could or could not thrive upon it? In conjoining the potentialities of this kind of living history with what we know about history, there is an opportunity to change how we conceive of the past and to alter what we’re doing in the present.

In this manner, “the use of plants for the reconstitution of history” means thinking about plants in history, and the agricultural practices centering on them, to consider the environmental, cultural and economic implications of husbandry. It means learning to think like farmers centuries ago, assessing their points of views as well as the daily, seasonal and annual performances that kept their fields fertile, their communities fed and enabled their societies to continue in their own self- styled trajectories of development. But to conceive of these themes through the evolution of plants and their farming systems, particularly through the keeping of seed, is to embrace a pregnant metaphor. It means concerning ourselves with what was as well as with what might have been and what might still be. It implies thinking about how the decisions that have taken place on every farm in history, as well as on those of the present, impact the material world we inhabit to determine our lifeways as well as our outlooks for the future.

There is no better time for this project than the present, for we live in a world that is increasingly unfamiliar with agrarian concerns and consequently cannot conceive of the environmental, social and cultural losses underway. Sure, most readers know a thing or two about what’s happening. Annual top soil loss and poisoned drinking water are common themes in the news. So is the disappearance of honeybees. The magnitude of chemicals applied to our fields to coordinate maturation and assure weed-less spaces, as well as the seeds genetically designed to resist those chemicals, are both known quantities. Increasingly, even concerns for food culture, regional variety, and communal ownership of the crops that sustain us are ascendant within certain urban communities. But these matters are commonly interpreted from a consumer standpoint, from the viewpoint of an urban resident distant from the sites of production, unknowing of the intricacies of

production and mitigated through a marketplace that allows them to feel engaged and helpful merely

through their consumption. As a result, farmers’ markets are decreasingly about farmers and more

about providing consumers with certain prepared foods and experiences, obscuring farmers

themselves.3

This distance from farming is reaffirmed in literature about farming written by non-farmers

for non-farmers. These works not only discuss historical patterns of agricultural development,

tracing and comparing yields and their implications, but inculcate food crazes that create demand on

local, regional, national and international scales. At the level of government and non-government

organizations, non-farmer bureaucrats make decisions on what does or does not qualify for subsidies,

encouraging or discouraging crops and practices that influence the environmental impact of farms

catering to their quotas. Farming, that is, is a site for experts whose expertise does not require

practical experience in actual farming.

Perhaps this is because, unlike other professions, farming does not have the means to self-

police what is meant by good farming or what the definition of a farmer is.4 So allow me to share

what the word doesn’t mean according to the historical literature utilized in this dissertation. If a

person farms solely for market production, producing little of anything for personal subsistence,

farms in accordance with information received from off-farm experts, utilizes industrial inputs and

off-farm purchases (inclusive of seed, fertilizer, and machinery that are beyond the informational

and technological capacities of the individual to produce themselves), if the person abandons usable

3 This is a national trend, one that happened to be encapsulated in Kathy Stephenson’s “Growers first,” The Salt Lake Tribune (Friday, June 9, 2017), D1. This newspaper article perfectly conveys how farmers are getting lost in markets that bear their name and were created to provide for direct farmer-consumer interfaces. 4 The reader will note that I have elected to use the word farmer over terms such as peasant. Although the secondary work in these matters is extensive (and I will site meaningful works momentarily), I remain unconvinced that these words are appropriate or accurate for the case studies that follow. In agreement with Jan de Vries and his entry on peasants in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, I find these words to be socio-political in nature. As a result, using them shifts the object of study away from the physical practices of agriculture while reducing the agency of historical farmers. Thus whether the reader deems it anachronistic or presentist, whichever the case may be, I have elected to use the term “farmer” to designate growers of comestible crops as an occupational group, one in which class is not the overriding determinant in the experiences, knowledge and expertise common among them.

organic materials for convenience, and has no mixture of crops in any given season, nor crop

rotation, this person is not a farmer.5 This person is an owner of factors of production who looks upon their agro-environmental assets as that of a factory owner.6 Land, labor, animals and plants are reduced simply to mechanisms and inputs and the non-usable portions of their bodies, as well as

their manures, rendered “wastes” to be discarded.

On the contrary, if a person farms in accordance with the idea of husbandry or stewardship,

if they produce partially for their subsistence, if they rely at least partially on on-farm manures, seed,

5 In discounting these qualities, I have in mind the following works. Their reference is not intended to serve as an extensive or comprehensive account of studies available on these subjects.

On Peasants: Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966); George M. Foster, “What is a Peasant,” in Jack M. Potter, May N. Diaz and George M. Foster, Peasant Society: A Reader, (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967); Eric Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century, (New York: Harper & Row, 1969); Robert Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe,” Past & Present No. 70 (Feb., 1976); Teodor Shanin, Peasants and Peasant Societies: Selected Readings, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987).

On Marxist Analysis: Karl Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1964); Frederick Engels, Peasant Question in France and Germany, (London: Elecbook. 2001 [1894]); Frederick Engels, The Peasant War in Germany, (New York: International Publishers, 2000 [1926]); Karl Kautsky, The Agrarian Question, (London and Winchester, MA: Zwan Publications, 1988 [1899]); Nigel Harris. “The Revolutionary Role of the Peasants,” International Series 41 (Dec. 1969), 18- 24.

Peasants in France: Gordon Wright, Rural Revolution in France: The Peasantry in the Twentieth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964); Albert Soboul, Problèmes paysans de la révolution 1789-1848: Études d’histoire révolutionnaire, (Paris: François Maspero, 1983); Annie Moulin, Peasantry and Society in France since 1789, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); P. M. Jones, The Peasantry in the French Revolution, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Jean Jacquart. “L’exploitation agricole” in Jacques Marseille (ed), La Terre et les Paysans en France, 1600-1800. (Paris : Association pour le développement de l’histoire économique, 1998); François Crouzet, “The Historiography of French Economic Growth in the Nineteenth- Century,” The Economic History Review 56: 2 (May, 2003).

Peasants in Japan: Roger W. Bowen. Rebellion and Democracy in Meiji Japan, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); Stephen Vlastos, Peasant Protests and Uprisings in Tokugawa Japan (Berekely: University of California Press, 1986); Anne Walthall, Social Protest and Popular Culture in Eighteenth-Century Japan, (Tuscon, AZ: The University of Arizona Press, 1986); Thomas C. Smith. “Peasant Time and Factory Time in Japan,” Past & Present No 111 (May, 1986); Herbert P. Bix, Peasant Protest in Japan, 1590-1884, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986); James H. White, Ikki: Social Conflict and Political Protest in Early Modern Japan (Ithaca and London: Cornell Unviersity Press, 1995); Herman Ooms, Tokugawa Village Practice: Class, Status, Power, Law (Berekley: University of California Press, 1996). 6 The reader may note that by this definition people who are habitually called farmers, particularly those who specialize in large-scale production of monocultural crops, are no longer considered farmers. When stewardship is integrated into the definition of what farming is and means, they cannot be. Thus despite their involvement in food production, their approach to the land disqualifies them on the grounds of both stewardship and husbandry. Their approach to and use of the land should not be linked with the subjects of this dissertation or the concepts of farmer and farming.

5 and know-how for the construction, repair and maintenance of their infrastructure and machinery, if they do not practice solely based on the advisement of academic and institutional agricultural experts, if they utilize a crop rotation, and grow a diverse assortment of crops, in every season, then this person is a farmer. Please note, to be a farmer does not rely on a certain size of land-holding or access. Being a farmer depends solely on the practices in place on the farm, on the ability of the farmer to produce food and care for the land so that both become richer over time. Farmer used to have as synonyms ‘husbandman’ and ‘steward’ and that is exactly the sentiment intended here.

But we live in societies where farmers who meet this definition are rarer than ever before and where few if any people want to become farmers. Acknowledgement of those trends is essential to grasping one of the fundamental implications of literature about farming written by non-farmers for non-farmers. For instance, consider The Economist’s “The Future of Agriculture,” ten pages advocating for factory farms, the application of information technology, genetic-modification and robotization.7 Among all the models that were considered, not one speaks to the farmer-led land- and labor-intensive agricultural systems that are cropping up around the world, providing for the needs of growing markets while taking care of the land as well. Instead, the article draws on businessmen and in all instances emphasizes how off-farm ideas will transform how we cultivate our food. The article is in fact so bold as to emphasize the potentials of indoor factory farms that do not even make use of soil or the sun. It contrast with this dissertation, it does not consider how pre- industrial practices can be integrated into present-day farming systems to make them more effective and productive, less wasteful, and more sustainable. Rather, the article conveys the kind of thinking that typifies urban outlooks on farming, the result of disconnection from the land, a viewpoint of agriculture as commodity production, and a worldview that sees farmers as yet another form of factory managers.

7 The Economist, “Technology Quarterly – The Future of Agriculture,” (June 11-17, 2016), 1-16.

As a result of this kind of thinking, agriculture has become a site for colonization by off-

farm forces, particularly industry. Articles like those from The Economist present hope for the future

more so in the hands of Silicon Valley than in the hands of farmers. This at least partly explains why

agriculture, a profession and economic sector that is closest to nature than perhaps any other and

logically positioned to embrace natural systems as models for its own practices, is now increasingly

mechanical and chemical in nature while technological industries turn to nature to inform their

research. With work now being done to design materials that can regrow like lizard tails and shed

water like lotus leaves,8 where is the agricultural research that models itself on plants, animals and ecosystems? In other words, why does agricultural innovation seem to flow from industry, chemistry

and finance rather than from nature via agriculture and its practitioners?

I do not intend to answer these questions here. Rather, they offer a contemporary lens for

understanding and engaging the dissertation’s historical context. For the fears that shape our

concern about future food production are strikingly similar to the ones that caused eighteenth- and

nineteenth-century authors to compose agricultural manuals. Although separated by nearly three

centuries, the authors of these works and writers in the present-day struggle with a similar problem:

how to balance the productive potential of available land with the needs of a growing population.

The technology and industry-dominated discourse of our present moment argues that agricultural

centralization or agglomeration, particularly through mechanized, large farms utilizing more capital

and chemical inputs, are the only ways to feed more people. This dissertation discusses a historical

and eminently viable alternative.

That alternative was articulated by early modern authors writing from within societies still

heavily populated by farmers. From their personal experience, correspondence and experiments,

these authors hypothesized and verified that they could attain higher outputs through intensification,

8 The Economist, “The lotus position,” (May 13-19, 2017), 72.

7 rationalization and optimization of on-farm resources. Moreover, they verified that farmers could rearrange components of their practices to attain more food while protecting and even generating future fertility. As I discuss in Chapter 5, today these themes are central to a new generation of authors in Canada, France, Britain, the US, Australia and Japan who have taken their agricultural inheritances in dynamic directions full of as much hope and potential as anything to come out of technology and finance, if not more so; for they are works written for farmers by farmers.

A good farm book, from my perspective as well as those of the authors considered in this dissertation, is a work that results from practice. It is a record of the things a person has done with the land, its plants, animals, water and soil, as well as the ideas that sprang from interactions with them all. Far from synthesis based on the experience of others, a good farm book is grounded in observation, trial and error, the conclusions of one’s own eyes, hands and mind. A good farm book shows the reader how to improve their own practices and explains why it should be done. It combines details and deductions with a theory for what is happening, often for processes beyond the scope of our perceptions.

This kind of farm book emerged in France, Britain and Japan around the same time – the mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries – for a similar reason. In this period, all three societies attained a rough equilibrium between maximum population levels and the total availability and productivity of food-producing lands. In France and Japan, famine checked population growth when it exceeded local provisioning capacities. In France and Britain, importation of foreign grain helped to keep famine from occurring more frequently and severely. But in all three instances, there were fears for what would happen when an off-year yielded less grain with just as many mouths to feed as in a good year. And it was that fear, whether rooted in actual scarcity or otherwise, that motivated farmers to solve problems in on-farm resource limitations, production and food preservation on their own. Looking off-farm for inputs to improve productivity was not then

feasible. Instead, farmers had to make do with what they had, by adjusting their cropping systems

and seeking out effective symbioses between plants, animals and soils.

As much as France, Britain and Japan shared similar challenges, their problems varied by

scale, resulting in a diverse array of approaches and objectives. Although quantification is difficult

before the advent of consistent record keeping, even gross figures help us to see significant

differences in the availability of land and its proportionality to those living upon it, an inelegant

though useful way to consider how differences in crop choices and agrarian regimes are reflected in

demographics and food access.

Table 1.1 Arable Land and Population circa 1800 CE in France, England/Wales and Japan9 France England and Wales Japan Agricultural Acreage 103,246,000 acres10 27-29,000,000 acres11 7,335,900 acres12 (arable and pasture) Population 26-27 million13 ~9.2 million14 26 million15 Agricultural Land 3.28-3.971 2.93-3.15 0.28 per Person

9 The table does not include all forests, rivers and oceans, overseas holdings or trade. As a result, it provides an incomplete picture that is only to be used to provide a general evaluation of agricultural potential for each society. 10 The figure of 52.1 million hectares (ha) is provided by J.-C. Toutain for 1821 (“Le Territoire Agricole,” in J. Marczeweski, Hisoire Quantitative de L’Économie Française, (Paris: ISEA, 1961), 27). It has been converted to acres at the rate of 2.47 acres to each hectare. Toutain’s figure does not include Corsica. Of this figure, 41.8 million ha were cultivated, 7.1 million were not cultivated and 3.2 million were not agricultural. The reader is recommended to view Table 5 (p 36) as well. For point of contrast, figures given by Hugh Clout arrive at more or less similar conclusions (for 1837): 95,781,067 agricultural acres inclusive of arable, pasture and vines but not wastes or woodlands, which account for another 39,919,114 acres (The Land of France 1815-1914, (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983), 49). 11 As discussed by Hugh Prince, there is an absence of reliable figures for the era and we are forced to rely on the estimations of various contemporaries, all of whom made use of different systems of measurement and calculation (“Chapter 1: The Changing Rural Landscape, 1750-1850,” in G. E. Mingay, The Agrarian History of England and Wales Volume VI, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 30-32). The approximation given above comes from sources dated 1770, 1801 and 1808 for England and Wales. 12 Although the figure cited comes from around 1720 the statistics for 1874 reflect only an increase of 80,000 ha (197,600 acres). On that basis, I have used the earlier statistic without fear for too much inaccuracy. See: Satō Tsuneo, “Tokugawa Villages and Agriculture,” in Nakane Chie and Ōshi Shinzaburō, Tokugawa Japan: The Social and Economic Antecedents of Modern Japan, (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, Japan, 1990), 62. 13 The Constituent Assembly gave the population of France in 1790 as 26,363,074 (See: Benjamin Sexauer, “English and French Agriculture in the Late Eighteenth Century,” Agricultural History 50: 3 (July, 1976), 496). By 1800 the population had risen, to around 27,349,003 (See: Alfred G. Pundt, “French Agriculture and the Industrial Crisis of 1788,” Journal of Political Economy 49: 6 (Dec., 1941), 849-850). 14 Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), 281. 15 I am aware of the insufficiencies of the figure selected here. Growing consensus favors the figure of 31 million. However, I remain hesistant to use such a finding until I am confident that it does not overstate the population. I would rather err on the side of too few than too many. The reason is, I hope, forgivable. Even if the higher figure were to be used, the findings of this and the following chart change in numerical value only. The trends indicated and discussed remain the same. Conrad Totman, A History of Japan, (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 253.

Table 1.1 reveals comparable populations in France and Japan, though on grossly different

increments of farmable land. The figures also demonstrate that England and Wales had achieved

one-third the population of both France and Japan but on only one-fourth the land available in

France. These kinds of observations signify important starting points for the analysis that follows,

and bolster the observations of the secondary literature. For instance, it would appear that France

was the least agriculturally productive of the three case studies.16 Likewise, those who have made

much ado about English agriculture might pause before declaring it the most advanced agricultural

system of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century world in comparison with Japan’s land-to-

population ratios in the same period.17

This is especially the case when we take the figure for agricultural land per person and apply it to the available land of the other case studies. The result is the agricultural potential of one system in another context, as expressed in people. It calculates an approximate population for each country based on the application of French-style agriculture to British land resources, or British agriculture to Japan’s.

Table 1.2 Agricultural Systems in Terms of Demographic Potential18 French Agriculture British Agriculture Japanese Agriculture France 26,000,000 people 32,776,507 people 368,735,714 people England and Wales 7,302,946 people 9,200,000 people 103,571,428 people Japan 1,947,368 people 2,328,857 people 26,000,000 people

By reducing each society to the total population maintained by their cultivable land, we can consider

how their agricultural systems compared in an alternative context. As the chart shows, French

16 There are entire cadres within European agricultural and economic histories dedicated to debating whether France was underdeveloped in comparison to Britain. It is not my intent to survey or discuss this literature here. For works that can point readers in the direction of what’s worth reading among these subjects, I recommend P. M. Jones, “Recent Work on French Rural History,” The Historical Journal, 46: 4 (December 2003), 953-961; John Broad (ed.), A Common Agricultural Heritage? Revising French and British Rural Divergence, (Exeter: British Agricultural Heritage Society, 2009). 17 The reader is welcomed to read nearly any World History textbook and its discussion of the agricultural changes preceding British industrialization; for speciality works, there are more than a few agricultural historians who write of English and British farming in a spirit of exceptionalism. For reference, Mark Overton, Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy 1500-1850, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 18 For the sake of simplicity, I have taken the upper ranges from the category of Agricultural Land per Person and divided it into the upper figure for Agricultural Acreage for each country in the previous table.

agriculture in England/Wales and Japan would have led to reductions in population. British

agriculture in France would have seen a modest increase. But Japanese agriculture in France and

Britain would have resulted in roughly 14 times higher populations than were actually maintained. If

we choose to measure historical economic vitality by standards of living, it is unlikely this would be

deemed positive.19 However, if we measure the potency of historical agriculture in terms of the

number of people who could be maintained (which seems to be the dominant argument in the

present day for why agriculture must continue to industrialize to keep pace with population growth)

then we need not look to Britain for historical exemplars any longer.

It has been argued by some students of the past that what enabled European development

to supersede other world regions during and after the period under evaluation in this study was culture – the Enlightenment and industrialization being products of that culture.20 Yet some have

found that dissatisfying, arguing that non-cultural forces such as geographic good fortune, i.e.

accessible coal, and the procurement of colonies, enabled European dominance. 21 Neither of these theses explains Japan. Japan did not partake in European culture, or have coal or colonies, but it did succeed in catching up with the West in the nineteenth century. Japan could do this because it already had developed a demographic-agrarian base that was compatible with the needs of

industrialization. Japan was able to modernize because it could draw upon its agriculture and its

19 Students of European history sometimes balk on the standards of living in Japan, particularly because of the “lack” of moveable property. Two historians have discussed these mattters with attention to cultural differences, particularly towards material possessions. Both argue, effectively, for a re-evalution of the meaning and value of necessary consumption vs. conspicuous consumption. Susan B. Hanley, Everyday Things in Premodern Japan: The hidden Legacy of Material Culture, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Penelope Francks, The Japanese Consumer: An alternative economic history of modern Japan, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 20 W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960); Cyril Black, The Dynamics of Modernization, (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1975); David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Rondo Cameron, A Concise Economic History of the World: From Paleolithic Times to the Present, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Eric Jones. The European Miracle: Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003 [1981]). 21 Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence, China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).

11 people to fund state-sponsored modernization projects.22 The ability of Japan to match French and

British counterparts is apparent when the agricultural manuals selected for this research are put into conversation with each other.

These agricultural manuals represent best practices, or the most improved ideas for husbandry according to the experts of their respective societies. They illustrate what their authors and their informants knew worked as well as what they knew didn’t work. What is more, although we can debate the applicability of their methods, they attempted to translate what one person was doing on one field within one farm into a mode by which farmers anywhere could grasp those principles and attempt to replicate that practice. Then, by welcoming readers to consult with them, they enjoined a community of literate agriculturalists to increase the quantity and quality of their communications for the bettering of the conditions of farmers and their consumers, in the name of improvement.

Improvement was the concept that material things such as soils, plants, animals and the products of their bodies could be made better. The concept proved so potent and alluring that it was gradually extended to bettering every component of the agrarian world. The notion of improvement rested on the assumption that inherited practices and the status quo were not perfect. But convincing others to abandon culture, heritage and tradition was a difficult challenge, particularly when these inheritances were not flawed. To rectify the old with the fomenting new, skills developed for the evaluation of both. Such things as empirical observation, record-keeping and controlled experimentation – none of which had been standard fare in the agricultural manuals that came before the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – were new guides. Increasingly, ideas were to be

22 This is a consensus view among specialists in Japanese history. For a work specifically on the policies of that program, see: Dore, R. P., Land Reform in Japan (London: Oxford University Press, 1959).

12 matched with experience, an experience that was repeatable not only by the farmer who first noted particular outcomes but for those who attempted the same thing in other places and conditions.

Once these values emerged, they swiftly led to systematic ways of organizing information such that agricultural practice and experiment could communicate theory. Although the theories that will be discussed in the case studies are incomplete by present-day standards, and these efforts addressed only a fraction of the problems of their day, they resulted in a canon of agricultural literature that reflected their world view, recorded their practices, crops and processing techniques, revealing a moment in pre-industrial agriculture when things were looking up for farmers because of careful attention to the natural world by farmers.

That moment has not been sufficiently identified in agricultural histories or in general world histories because industrialization, the birth of institutionalized, disciplinary science and advances in chemistry have been inserted so forcefully into our narratives that they eclipse farmer-led improvement in the agrarian world. As a result, professional history has unwittingly contributed to a problem that has real-world implications. It has helped to create a narrative for the making of the modern world that strips farmers of their innovative and problem-solving propensities, diminishes their initiative and expertise, and divorces present-day farmers from their historical legacies, engendering ignorance in place of solutions to farm problems that were effectively solved centuries ago.

Even among works that purport to center around the development and practice of agriculture, questions concerning the material efforts of growing and producing are tertiary at best.

Instead, studies like James C. Scott’s recent Against the Grain (2017) 23 are mostly interested in exploring agriculture as a proxy for social and political relationships, occluding our ability to analyze and discuss how farmers’ pursuits were also shaped by concerns other than politics, as well as how

23 James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).

13 farmers understood what they were doing and why. Beyond the power structures that allegedly shaped and controlled farmers’ lives, the reader grapples little with farming as theory, much less praxis. Christopher Isett’s and Stephen Miller’s 2016 Social History of Agriculture,24 similarly focuses on agriculture as a site of class relations, with limited attention to agricultural practice or even the possible role of class as a factor in farmers’ productivity. By turning agriculture into a ground for domination and conflict, such works neglect the significance of farmers’ achievements in favor of broad contexts and off-farm concerns. My aim, by contrast, is to call attention back to the constitutive elements of the agrarian world, to focus readers on the soil, the seeds and the tools that comprise both the exploits of the past and alternatives for the future. By taking farm book writers seriously on their own terms and by examining what they were trying to achieve on their own lands, we have the opportunity to unlock these manuals’ potential and germinate their ideas like seeds within clods of the past, unattenuated by age.

In this way, I argue, early modern agricultural manuals are repositories of the best agricultural ideas that existed before machinery and chemicals came to the fore in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But times are changing once again and the ideas these manuals contain fit remarkably well with many agricultural models that have sprung up in the last half-century. These recent models are developing without much knowledge of their forbearers – a situation that I find both unfortunate and unnecessary. Rather than reinvent the wheel, let us avoid these unnecessary labors and rediscover the best practices of the past that can supplement our present efforts.

Given the multifaceted nature of my concerns, this dissertation speaks to three audiences.

First, it is written for non-farmers, academic or otherwise, who are familiar with agriculture in an abstract sense but lack direct experience of farming. For these readers, I offer a primer in thinking like a farmer, and encourage greater recognition of the knowledge and expertise that farming

24 Christopher Isett and Stephen Miller, The Social History of Agriculture: From the Origins to the Current Crisis, (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2016).

requires. Second, it is written for those seeking agronomic alternatives. I chose the three case studies

that follow specifically because of their best practices, the topicality of their concerns to

contemporary efforts to reform agricultural production, as well as the belief that what each writer meant by improvement is fundamentally in line with what some farmers today are trying to achieve.

Third, this study is written for historians who, with a willingness to embrace the “negative capability”25 of comparative analysis, are open to revising the assumptions that have been made

about farmers in history, as a generality, as well as within each case study. While it is not a goal to

force a major revision to the now dominant forms of world historical analysis --

Convergence/Divergence, World(-)Systems theory and Modernization analyses, and more -- it is my

hope the comparative analyses offered here and the conclusions at which I arrive at least result in

greater attention to agricultural practice in world history, which I believe explains so much more

than it is currently given in global historiographies.26

This dissertation is an effort to demonstrate how historical methodology can be used to

reconstruct bygone farm practices and enhance present-day agriculture, thereby rendering the aims

of historical scholarship and practical contemporary concerns complementary. As far as I am aware,

there has been no recent concerted effort to study early modern agricultural works in a systematic

and comparative way, let alone to resuscitate their agronomic systems and deploy them in the world

around us. There should be; and disciplinary history has a role to play in that effort.

25 John Keats in a letter to George and Thomas Keats (Dec 22, 1817) on criticism he had received recently stated, “The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreements evaporate from their being in close relationship with Beauty and Truth...I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainities, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason...” [Sidney Colvin (ed), Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, (London: MacMillan and Co., 1891), 47-48]. I use the phrase here to honor a teacher who was instrumental in my intellectual development, as well as to poke fun at those who think nation-state and area studies are somehow more comprehensible, or accurate, than comparative and global histories can be. 26 When I write of “world history” I do not mean professional, academic works written for other academics. I am speaking specifically of world history textbooks written for high school and college students who are being introduced to the subject and rarely do more reading on it afterwards. What they do or do not take away regarding historical farmers impacts their views of contemporary farmers. For references see footnotes 20, 21; in addition: Andre Gunder Frank, ReORIENT: A Global Economy in the Asian Age, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Immanual Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century, (New York/London: Academic Press, 1974).

Professional history has the resources to be both “pure,” in that it seeks out knowledge for its own sake, and practical. But in pursuing the former, esoteric interests that few lay-readers understand, care about, much less use, seem to dominate. I find this problematic. Knowledge is not something to merely accumulate and store away. It is to be used. What does practical history look like? This dissertation offers one answer.

Detailing effective historical practices can not only buttress contemporary efforts in alternative agriculture, it can reveal long-term commonalities and illuminate for practitioners a long history of successful experiment and discovery. In this way, this dissertation serves as an agricultural manual of its own – a bridge between historical and present-day farm literatures that clarifies relationships between them, focused above all on approaches, applications and practice.

In composing this historically informed, secondary agricultural manual, I have drawn on and analyzed the works of three important agronomists of the early modern period: Duhamel du

Monceau (1700-1782) in France, Arthur Young (1741-1820) in Britain and Ōkura Nagatsune (1768-

1860) in Japan. All three were popular writers in their days, composing books that went through multiple editions, sometimes quite briskly. Duhamel and Young were both members of agricultural associations and formal, scientific societies whose aims included the improvement of agriculture and its dissemination. They were also land-owners who experimented on their own holdings. Although neither made their living from farming, both sought to empirically evaluate practices, to measure their products in terms of quality and quantity, as means of assessing how any farmer, in any place, could do the same. Ōkura was identical in this regard. Perhaps the most popular writer of Japanese farm books in his lifetime and even for a generation afterwards, he traveled Japan as an agricultural journalist and propagandist, studying and disseminating advice to farmers on how to simplify their tasks, improve production and make more money. So successful was Ōkura in this endeavor that he was able to make a living from his writing. As a result, like Duhamel and Young, he was consulted

regularly by farmers and officials on means of agricultural improvement. Their works thereby

contain the ideas and approaches they considered to be the most valuable for their countries’ respective conditions and environments.27

Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau was, as the secondary literature ceaselessly emphasizes, a

polymath. 28 With interests as diverse as they were interconnected, Duhamel sought a way of

knowing that impacted the ways people worked and lived. This implied that knowledge was

measured at least in some fashion by its utility. Concerned with the feasibility of his findings, the

experimental model he helped to articulate had its objective in the improvement of the material

conditions of agricultural production as well as in the quality and preservation of its harvests. His

ideas structured European agronomic research for two hundred years.29

Arthur Young is perhaps the most well-known agricultural writer of the modern world. As

an experimenter and husbandman, he wrote treatises on farming and livestock management that

were immensely popular, going through multiple editions rapidly.30 As an agricultural observer, he

travelled throughout Britain and Europe, writing commentaries that are as illuminating about

historical practices as they are of historical conditions. But it was his role as the editor and chief writer of the Annals of Agriculture (1783-1808), an agricultural journal, that enabled Young to accumulate and exert his expertise.31

27 Andrée Corvol (ed)., Duhamel du Monceau 1700-2000 : un européen du siècle des Lumières, (Orléans: Académie d'Orléans, 2001); Arthur Young, The Autobiography of Arthur Young: with Selection from His Correspondence. Ed. M. Betham-Edwards, (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1898); Hayakawa Kōtarō, Ōkura Nagatsune, (Tokyo: Yamaokashoten, 1943); Tsukuba Hisaharu, Ōkura Nagatsune, (Tokyo: Kokudosha, 1969). 28 Bruno Dupont de Dinechin, Duhamel du Monceau: Un savant exemplaire au siècle des lumières, (Paris: CME, 1999); Antoine Jacobsohn, Fruits du savoir: Duhamel du Monceau et la pomologie française/Fruits of Knowledge: Duhamel du Monceau and French Pomology, (Versailles; École nationale supérieure du paysage, 2007). 29 Jean Boulaine, “L’œuvre agronomique de Duhamel du Monceau,” in Andrée Corvol (ed)., Duhamel du Monceau 1700- 2000 : un européen du siècle des Lumières, (Orléans: Académie d'Orléans, 2001), 35. 30 Arthur Young, The Autobiography of Arthur Young: with Selection from His Correspondence. Ed. M. Betham-Edwards, (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1898), 29-30. 31 These comments derive from my reading of the entirety of the Annals. It is there that correspondents referred to Young as “the Guardian of British Agriculture” (Vol. 7, 313; Vol. 15, 342) as well as agriculture’s “guiding star” (Vol. 16, 88).

Ōkura Nagatsune was one of the most significant Japanese agricultural writers of the Edo

period (1600-1868).32 A prolific writer on agronomic affairs, he is the subject of multiple biographies

(including one specifically for children) and is among the most referenced Japanese agronomists in

academic literature,33 including the English-language historiography.34 As a result, Ōkura is one of

the few named Japanese agricultural writers known outside of Japan.35 Yet despite this scholarly and

foreign acknowledgement Ōkura is little known within Japan today.36

Being little-known among present-day agricultural practitioners and readers is not singular to

Ōkura. Duhamel and Young also reside in the shadows of popular awareness. Despite their presence in scholarly literatures, these writers and their works have been generally forgotten. This helps to explain why farmers today in Britain, France and Japan are unaware of their historical inheritances, much less the value of seeking out the insights of the past. As long as scholarly historians continue to consider these authors’ from a purely academic perspective, that is how their ideas are likely to remain. Seeking to call contemporary readers’ attention to these works for practical ends thus

32 Hayakawa Kōtarō, Ōkura Nagatsune, (Tokyo: Yamaokashoten, 1943), 10; Tsukuba Hisaharu, Ōkura Nagatsune, (Tokyo: Kokudosha, 1969), 6; as well as just about any kaidai, or commentary, for Ōkura’s manuals within the NNZ. 33 The biographies can be divided into two types: scholarly and hagiographic. The former reconstruct Ōkura’s personal and professional life, often explaining the context for the composition of individual manuals, as well as the people, and publishers, involved in their production. The latter, particularly two for children, convey Ōkura as an exemplar for moral living. They not only include what is known of his life but provide pictures and fictionalized dialogue to drive home the values that have been grafted to him. These values include a sense of familial piety, which is extended to undying work to the benefit of “the nation,” the use of critical thinking and rationality to demonstrate and then to teach, and the physical movement to observe, interact with and understand. The former category include Hayakawa, Ōkura Nagatsune; Eitarō Tamura, Ōkura Nagatsune, (Tokyo: Tosho Shūpan, 1944); Toyota Kanzo, Ōkura Nagatsune, (Ōita City: Ōita-ken Kyōiku Iinkai, 2002); Kodomari Tatsuya, Ōkura Nagatsune: hitobito no yutakana seikatsu wo negatta nōggakusha, (Ōita City: Ōita-ken Kyōiku Iinkai, 2004); The latter are: Tsukuba, Ōkura Nagatsune, (Tokyo: Kokudosha, 1969) and its update, Tsukuba Hisaharu, Ōkura Nagatsune, (Tokyo: Kokudosha, 1999). 34 As far as I am aware, Ōkura is the only agricultural writer of the Edo period to have one of his manuals translated into English, with wood-block prints reproduced and glossed. See Ōkura Nagatsune, Seiyū Roku: On Oil Manufacturing, (New Jersey: Olearius Editions, 1974); and for a review of that publication: Koizumi Kenkichiro, “Review,” Monumenta Nipponica 32: 3 (Autumn, 1976), 330-332. 35 Thomas C. Smith, Native Sources of Japanese Industrialization, 1750-1920, (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1988); Jennifer Robertson, “Sexy Rice, Plant Gender, Farm Manuals, and Grass-Roots Nativism,” Monumenta Nipponica, 39: 3 (Autumn, 1984), 233-260; William B. Hauser, Economic Institutional Change in Tokugawa Japan: Osaka and the Kinai Cotton Trade, (London, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 117; Edward E. Pratt, Japan’s Protoindustrial Elite: the Economic Foundations of the Gōnō, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 158; Conrad Totman, Early Modern Japan, (Berkeley: University of California, 1993), 266; Masuda Wataru, Japan and China: Mutual Representations in the Modern Era, (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000), 124; Donald Keene, Frog in the Well: Portraits of Japan by Watanabe Kazan, 1793-1841, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 87. 36 Tokunaga Mitsutoshi, Kaidai, NNZ, 70: 293.

underpins my approach in this dissertation: I emphasize agricultural techniques over analytical

abstraction and highlight methods like humanuring over historiographical maneuvers.

In short, the target of this study is practice. It is understanding the value of farmers’

priorities and approaches through three historical examples; it is reconstructing and conveying the

methods and mindsets of a nearly forgotten agronomic past – what Thomas Kuhn would

characterize as a paradigm superseded by new ideas, yet worthy of reexamination. 37 Lastly, it is

establishing that there is a demand for this knowledge in the present day, albeit a demand that is for

the moment underdeveloped because awareness of historical antecedents is limited.

In seeking out historical antecedents of my own, I have situated this work in the vein of

Robert Allen’s Enclosure and the Yeoman (1992), a book that studies farming without disentwining

yields, economic development or social change from farmer know-how. Allen’s research shows that

family farmers were not an obstacle to rising agricultural productivity in England in the eighteenth

century; in fact, they were the actors responsible for those gains. Yet instead of receiving credit for

that accomplishment they have been ridiculed while their contributions have been co-opted.

Through enclosure they were displaced and, just as their lands, their exploits flowed into the hands

of manorial lords. Large farmers thereby reaped the rewards of small farmers. 38 This dissertation finds similar results not only in England but in France and Japan. By looking at the agronomy of all three places at the same time, it becomes possible to extend Allen’s finding for England to a greater agronomic event, one which has the capacity to not only re-envision narratives for the development

of institutional science and scientific, industrial agriculture but to provide material for the continued

development of locally inspired, ecologically sensitive agricultural approaches.

Grasping these historical and presentist aims simultaneously prompted a dissertation

structure that first constructs historical practices in three respective agronomic literatures, contrasts

37 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962). 38 Robert Allen, Enclosure and the Yeoman, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 38.

them, and then compares their contents with present-day farm literature. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 issue

individual case studies. Each is organized around a survey of the principle works and ideas of an

agronomist 39 and ends in the articulation of an agronomical summary that will be used in

comparative analysis in Chapter 4. These chapters are drawn entirely from the sources of the

agronomists themselves. An effort has been made not to utilize secondary analysis, so as to focus on

the intentions and practices of the authors. Each chapter’s contents set the stage for the analysis that

follows in Chapter 5, in which manuals written within the last century are aligned with and discussed

through their eighteenth and nineteenth century counterparts.

Chapter 1 examines Duhamel du Monceau’s agricultural treatises. It begins with his translation of an English farm book then turns to emphasizing his contributions through experiment and systematization. The chapter makes use of the lens of British-French agronomic transfers found in the secondary literature. It does so to demonstrate that a British idea was transformed within

France before returning to influence Britain. This flow and counter-flow dynamic criticizes the notion of one-way technological transfers and questions underlying assumptions of comparative

French underdevelopment, especially in terms of scientific or technical expertise. This is particularly significant as Duhamel’s work was instrumental to the development of European agronomic science at large.

Chapter 2 surveys Arthur Young’s texts through two lenses. First, it lays out what his earliest text on farm management claimed to be ‘good’ farming. It was The Farmer’s Kalendar that did more than many others to gain him the reputation of Britain’s foremost agricultural expert. Because of that status, he was able to assume an editorial role for one of Europe’s first agricultural journals, The

Annals of Agriculture. In that capacity, reading findings from across Europe, his personal and professional correspondence and his travels allowed him to amass the information and experience

39 Which I define as, a thinker on agrarian matters, particularly the details and nuances of farming practices.

20 requisite to the revision of his initial agronomic thinking. The modifications he made reveal changing tendencies within British farming, our second lens, and hold implications for present-day agriculture.

Chapter 3 analyzes the works of Ōkura Nagatsune. His books are extensive in their scope and detail, allowing readers to grasp the intricacies of historical agricultural practices with a clarity that is often lacking in other farm books. This is largely due to his attentions not only to cultivation but to marketing and processing. Unlike other writers, Ōkura stressed on-farm value-added processing to ensure farmer economic well-being. He aimed to teach his readers how to go from seed to market not with raw goods but finished products. By assembling his findings into a cohesive system for agricultural improvement, the chapter advocates for an alternative picture of early- modern Japanese farming than is present in the secondary literature.

These case studies construct and analyze the thought processes of three individuals who were each central to their respective agronomies. But because this study is concerned with practice, it does not attempt to speak to other historical contexts that are conventional and likely expected.

That is why thinking of this study as a secondary agricultural manual is beneficial. By synthesizing the work of three agronomic writers, each dominant in their respective historical literature, for the purposes of demonstrating their concerns, detailing their practices, and enabling comparisons between them, I establish continuities across space in roughly the same time. By then following these chapters with a discussion of related ideas in farm literature today, I link the present with the past, exploring and underscoring commonalities as well as the potential for creating a rich and rewarding dialogue between agricultural practitioners of today and early modern farm books. Thus

Chapter 4 takes the agronomic principles from each case study and uses them to identify the ways in which French, British and Japanese agronomies were moving in similar directions regardless of meaningful differences in climate and geography. It emphasizes techniques and approaches that

21 were unique, as well as concepts that were shared. It does this through examining specific agro- ecological themes, particularly the utilization of human manure and the centrality of crop rotations to good husbandry, factors that can be used to assess sustainability.

Finally Chapter 5 provides a survey of present-day farm books that are aligned with the major findings of Chapters 1, 2 and 3. Readers may want to consider this chapter a methodological genealogy of present-day alternative agricultural practices. For it builds on the analysis of Chapter 4, arguing for historical continuities between the case studies and present-day manuals, while articulating a common agronomic core, despite being in three languages operating on four continents. From this vantage point, it becomes comprehensible why I elected to use present-day sources to disclose similarities with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century priorities, rather than trying to problematize the concept of alternative agriculture, or detail the many internal divisions that exist among schools of agronomic thought.

Just as Euclidean geometry works for the construction of homes but would cause the destruction of any and all space-bound objects, there are multiple kinds of agriculture for a variety of sites and contexts. Some ideas and practices work for some places and crops that do not work for others. Some ideas work as generalities, though their perpetual re-assessment is warranted.

Consequently, for those thinking about agriculture, historical or contemporary, we are stuck holding contradictory notions at the same time with incompatible logics constantly competing with each other for sovereignty in our decision-making. At the end of the day, one expert, the market, or even agricultural heritage need not determine what we should be doing. The efficacy of specific practices can be evaluated against the model set by nature. What are the conditions in which food is produced without jeopardizing the long-term stability of that ecosystem and its community of life? What are the conditions of food production that do not trigger, crop failures, erosion, and the degradation of

nutrition within our crops? For these are the indicators that we are not doing something as well as

we could be.

Nothing I am saying in this dissertation is distinctly new. Rather, it has been said in three different languages for over two hundred years. More contemporarily, it has been said repeatedly and consistently since the 1930s and 1940s by such agronomists as Albert Howard, J. I. Rodale and

Edward Faulkner. It has also been regularly ignored. It has been disregarded by governments, scientific institutions, academia, corporations, the holders of large farming estates and consumers to such an extent that the information looks new. In the context of today, when everything “green” and “organic” and “natural” gets kudos for consciousness, and demands higher mark-ups from consumers who tend to act out of fear and fashion more than knowing, it all looks new again. But what matters about this argument, what matters about the arguments of the people who have made similar critiques and appeals before, is its very age. It is the heritage and the history of this perspective that makes it all the more important. For this is not merely an alternative interpretation, and an appeal to use other methods for our food production and self-reproduction; it is about remembering, preserving, and continuing in the processes that human beings have been engaged in since agriculture was developed. This is about embracing our inheritance and using it to continue processes of evolution, of differentiation, distinction, diversification, and mutual need within a community of life, so that life itself continues as a shared community belonging to us all.

Incidentally, it seems that a farmer holds more than all other workers to the soil that saw him born. The cultivation of the earth does not suffer interruption; the laborer, continually occupied, does not think of moving himself; he desires to sow a field that he has begun to cultivate; he then waits for the harvest as the reward of his labor; before he even makes that harvest, he has already begun to plow another soil: all this forms a chain of operations that are without interruption. In this way fixed in the same place, he has occasion to examine only that which going on around him: he plants a tree in the same way that his father planted it: he does not know that there are other methods to follow that conform more with the progress of nature, and more suitable to those circumstances. The study of planters is therefore very limited; they follow without reason a hereditary routine. When these men who have nothing but practice, and who are concentrated in a small circle of ideas, have sometimes attempted to transmit to others their knowledge, they have exposed their methods in too confused a state to be instructive: they have said roughly, without order, that which they have practiced in diverse circumstances; but only those who find themselves in precisely the same situation can extract some advantage. We must not however be contemptuous of the memoirs of these practitioners, when they have not sought to rise beyond their reach, and have enclosed themselves in the simple and naïve exposition of what they have executed by themselves: they are truths, of which an educated man can profit.40 – Duhamel du Monceau, Des semis et plantations des arbres, et de leur culture (1760)

Chapter 1. Duhamel du Monceau (1700-1782): Improvement as Science

Duhamel du Monceau made contributions to every field of knowledge he touched, whether

it was botany, chemistry or naval construction. 41 Once his wide-ranging interests turned to

agriculture, however, his ambitions came to center on the assessment of best practices and the

assembly of an agricultural system that would improve the fields of France. His agronomic writings

are therefore a means to assess two complementary elements of eighteenth-century French

agronomics. Because he facilitated the introduction of British agronomic ideas to France, his

translation and then modification of new ideas acted as a stimulus to French agricultural

improvement. But in the acclimatization of those ideas, Duhamel came to lead an agronomic

movement that in turn influenced Britain. As that movement expanded and diversified within the

French-speaking world, Duhamel successfully structured and guided it, integrating topics of

40 Duhamel du Monceau, Des semis et plantations des arbres, et de leur culture, (Paris: H. L. Guerin and L. F. Delatour, 1760), xi-xii. 41 Claude Vie, “Duhamel du Monceau, naturaliste, physicien et chimiste,” Revue d’histoire des sciences, 38 : 1 (1985), 56.

domestic significance such as arboriculture and the preservation of grain, both surveyed in this

chapter. Such research had the potential to deeply influence the productivity and resilience of

French agriculture, while impacting a burgeoning intellectual community dedicated to agricultural

improvement. But they were also topics that fit perfectly with Duhamel’s emphasis on and hopes for

smallholders; for he believed that improved practices had the capacity to make smallholders, not estate owners, the model of agricultural improvement as a whole.

This chapter is organized around those complementary elements, first studying Duhamel’s translation and modification of British agronomy before detailing his wider range of themes, techniques and goals. The chapter concludes with an agronomic summary that, in tandem with those of Chapters 2 and 3, are utilized in the comparative analysis of Chapter 4. As this chapter makes clear, Duhamel was a pioneer in European agronomic improvement. The information network

Duhamel shaped and the expectations he articulated impacted the development of European scientific agriculture for nearly two centuries.42 Consequently, there is much that is impressive about

his methodology, contributions and conclusions as well as a great capacity for their continued

application and improvement.

Duhamel’s Entry Point into Farm Books

Duhamel did not start his career with farming. Rather, he came to agriculture through

interests in what became entomology and plant pathology. His first published work, in 1727, detailed

how parasites caused the infection then ruining saffron cultivation in France. His results enabled

farmers to recover their yields and saw Duhamel welcomed into the Academy of Sciences.43 It was his association with the Academy that enabled him to take over the translation of Jethro Tull’s A

42 Jean Boulaine, “L’œuvre agronomique de Duhamel du Monceau,” in Andrée Corvol (ed), Duhamel du Monceau 1700- 2000 : un européen du siècle des Lumières, (Orléans: Académie d'Orléans, 2001), 35. 43 Vie, “Duhamel du Monceau, naturaliste, physicien et chimiste,” 58-59.

Horse-Hoeing Husbandry (1733). And it was that task that established agriculture as the overarching

context for the remainder of his career.

Tull’s book, containing theories of plant nutrition and techniques for the mechanization of

agriculture, is a hallmark of agricultural histories for Britain and Europe.44 Proponents found in it an

inventiveness they associated with a new way of thinking about agriculture, one they believed would

facilitate breaking from a long-established approach to cultivation. Opponents saw Tull’s system as a

ludicrous rejection of agricultural heritage, one that risked farm fertility, farmer prosperity and the

national grain market when it would fail (See Chapter 2).

Tull’s work provided much to assay. He argued that plants took in their food through their

roots and that soils could be divided infinitely to accommodate plant growth. 45 Accordingly, all

farmers had to do was reduce the soil as minutely as possible and then leave the rest to plant roots.46

Consequently, dung wasn’t needed whatsoever and farmers could save on one of the chief expenses

of husbandry by replacing the collection, storage, carting and spreading of animal manures with

more and better tillage.47

Tull proposed an agriculture centered on the idea that all plants, regardless of differences in

characteristics, fed on the same food. It held that plants competed with each other based upon their

spacing. It claimed that lands that were proper for a specific kind of plant were always proper for it,

without fallow, dung, or rotation. Consequently, yields were improvable through regularly spacing

plants within finely prepared soils. Tull recommended row planting as well as mechanisms to

regularly place seed within rows and hoe their intervals with as little human labor as was feasible.

44 See the following work for a discussion of his most enduring impacts: G. E. Fussell, Jethro Tull: His Influence on Mechanized Agriculture, (Reading: Osprey Publishing, 1973). 45 Jethro Tull, Horse-Hoeing Husbandry: Or, An Essay on the Principles of Vegetation and Tillage…(London: A Millar, 1751), 20; “Earth is so surely the Food of all Plants, that with the proper Share of the other Elements, which each Species of Plants requires, I do not find but that any common Earth will nourish any plant.” 46 Ibid., 37. 47 Ibid., 214.

The seed-drill and horse-hoe answered for this.48 All that had to be done was increase the intervals

to allow the passage of equipment, which had the added benefit of providing more food for each

plant.49 The only issue to consider was the scale of cultivation, a matter to be weighed in proportion

to available capital and the health and number of draft animals.

This mode of cultivation had startling implications for European agriculture. It meant the

dominant three-course rotation, that saw farms divided into three sections, one under wheat, one

under spring grains (barley, rye or oats), and the last under fallow, could be cropped all under wheat,

every year without loss in quality (either in the land or in the grain, supposedly). If this were indeed

the case, it meant increases in wheat production and a simplification of farm management. But it

also required more capital investment. For the heavier plows, seed-drills and horse-hoes he stressed,

in deep contrast with the common plow and hand tools like those of the hoe and spade, cost more

money. Additionally, these machines relied on healthy and likely larger animals to pull them. This

necessitated the cultivation or acquisition of foodstuffs for the year-round maintenance of draft

animals. Thus intensified submission of the soil required intensified production to meet its own on-

farm needs.

Tull’s manual called into question engrained, cultural, social and economic assumptions

regarding what constituted “good” farming, as well as who could afford to participate.50 Perhaps that

is why Tull’s manual did not receive the wide-scale acceptance that had been expected, at least by the

editors of his third edition (1751), who intended to stimulate more interest in the “long neglected”

48 Ibid., 29-36, 47-57 and Chapter XXIII 49 In his own words, “In wide Intervals, we can raise a good Crop with less Labour, less Seed, no Dung, no Fallow, but not without a competent Quantity of Earth, which is the least expensive of any thing (sic) given to Corn” (Ibid., 122). 50 Tull and his manual were frequent punching bags within Arthur Young’s Annals of Agriculture, the topic of the next chapter. As a result of what is about to be discussed, the connection between Tull and Duhamel led some to cross-apply their estimations of Tull to Duhamel in ways that were not flattering. Nonetheless, Duhamel was positively cited throughout that journal and, if I am not mistaken, appears to have inspired field trials within England during the period of the Annals’ publication. Moreover, it has been noted by a French agricultural historian that when Young visited Duhamel’s farm he did so with a sense of reverence (see: André Bourde, Agronomie et Agronomes en France au XVIIIe Siècle, Vol. I, 257, footnote 1). Young and his contemporaries may have said unkind things about Duhamel but that did not mean they lacked appreciation for his accomplishments.

truths of Tull’s then two-decades-old treatise. They hoped that attention to Tull’s method would address the “evils” of farmers struggling with rent payments and/or walking away from leases as a result of low grain prices. The editors were certain that if open-minded individuals, willing to test the

principles of Tull, gave these ideas fair trial they would be worth instituting in various parts of the

country, regardless of the scale of landholding. They also noted that “although the Method of

Culture here proposed has made little Progress in England, it is not like to meet with the same

Neglect abroad, especially in France.”51

The editors were pleased to reproach their domestic readers with the suggestion that foreign

agriculture, inspired by English ideas, would now overtake English agriculture. For in France three

separate individuals had undertaken “Translation of Mr. Tull’s Book” before placing theirs into the

hands of “Mr. Du Hamel du Monceau, of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, and of the Royal Society of

London.” 52 Although Duhamel’s translation altered Tull’s method it had “very exactly given his

Principles and Rules.”53 France might now reap the harvests Tull envisioned for Britain, doubling

profits in contrast with the old method (three-course husbandry), benefiting in the face of low grain

prices, and extending cultivation to every surface and plant regardless of differences in soils.54

The editors were not mistaken.55 Duhamel had maintained the core principles of Tull; but he

also altered their direction and therefore their intentions and capacities. Whereas Tull’s manual had

51 Tull, Horse-Hoeing Husbandry, v. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., vi. 54 Ibid., vi-xvi. 55 The editors’ comments are stunning, both in terms of historical and present-day analyses. They reveal a commonality in thinking about agricultural production that spans two and a half centuries despite significant alterations in the technical and synthetic capacities of present-day industries: principally that, in the face of low commodity prices the only solution is to produce more. Those who farm are familiar with this sentiment as the “get big or get out” impulse. It is inherent to the Tullian agronomic model. For if farmers specialize in grain, and invest in the machines needed to create large, monocultural fields with the least manurial and labor inputs, they have little choice but to attempt to profit from higher volumes when operating in a low price environment. If they do not, they cannot allocate their capital investments towards other aims because their machinery cannot be easily made to produce other crops like lettuce or asparagus. Of equal import are the editor’s claims about the complete applicability of Tull’s methods to all soils, and all plants. This universalization is not in the least bit problematized, rivaling the era in which we live, when grand claims are made by agricultural companies (and the national governments that support them) about the anywhere-anytime deployability of

not resulted in the wide scale acceptance of his method or ideas, Duhamel’s Traité de la culture des

terres, suivant les Principes de M. Tull, Anglois (A Treatise on the Cultivation of Lands, According to the

Principles of M. Tull, an Englishman)56 triggered a multiplication in localized experimentation. The

inclusion of those findings, writers and experiences swelled into a total of six volumes (1750-1761).

What had been a translocation of Tull converted into something more encompassing and much

more scientific. Duhamel structured that discourse and guided it, accomplishing a wider scale of

application. Almost from its inception, the Traité became nearly an agricultural journal and through

the collaboration that filled its pages managed to rectify many of the failings in Tull’s model.57 The

resulting method which was alternatively called the New Husbandry, New Culture, and New System

within its pages, became something that was not Tull’s but Duhamel’s and France’s.

The Traité: Duhamel’s Transmogrification of Tull

Duhamel’s initial reception of Tull was warm, though not total. He did not approach Tull’s

work like a zealot, compelled to translate the author’s sentiments word-for-word. Instead, he

conveyed their main ideas, simplified the text, and replaced obscure references with sources he

considered French readers could access and understand. 58 Yet Duhamel’s version is excited. It

communicates his captivation with the potentials of greater yields without applications of dung.

After all, if Tull were right, extensive-agriculture could be expanded because lands under pasture

their products in spite of the historical and scientific data that emphasizes the importance of local conditions and variability. 56 Duhamel du Monceau, Traité de la culture des terres, suivant les Principes de M. Tull, Anglois, Volume I, (Paris: Hippolyte- Louis Guerin, 1750), iii-v. 57 One of the more meaningful changes that Duhamel made to Tull was the replacement of the dichotomy of “new” and “old” husbandry with the diction of “new culture” and “ordinary culture.” This change is responsible for Duhamel and his correspondents formulating an agricultural system that was workable. Because they did not dismiss “ordinary culture” as outdated, they remained willing to draw from it. When something from the “new culture” didn’t work, or a theory could not be supported with evidence, “ordinary culture” remained the site to which Duhamel and his correspondents could return and re-evaluate. “Ordinary culture” was therefore mined for the materials needed to salvage the errors in Tull, making it workable on small and large scales. Moreover, because “ordinary culture” always remained in view and under analysis, it forced Duhamel to acknowledge what was being done correctly within it. Duhamel did not create the take-it-or-leave-it or all-or-nothing position that made Tull so utterly dismissible to his British contemporaries. One could disagree with Duhamel without having to vilify him. 58 Duhamel, Traité, Vol. I, 25.

need no longer be rested, inferior lands no longer coddled with applications of manure or fallow.59

Accordingly, the secret to steady yields would not be capital-investment in soil fertility or fertility

management but in machinery and higher applications of tillage.60 The wealth of a farm might now

be measured in mechanisms and livestock and not the size of the dung heap.

The model Duhamel structured was straightforward and comprehensible. Duhamel reduced

wheat cultivation in The Horse-Hoeing Husbandry to three points, 1) wheat does equally as well on

lands that have been prepared according to the new method, without fertilizers, as well-fertilized

fields under the ordinary method, 2) a farmer who has grown wheat the previous year, through the

giving of sufficient plowings, attains the same field quality as that of fallow, and 3) a field so

cultivated does not demand rest.61 Those who identify a commonality in the second and third points are not mistaken. Ostensibly, all of Tull can be summarized into but two issues: thoroughly plowed

fields, made into ridges, and seeded in rows, yielded equally with a well-fertilized, broadcast field;

and the field under the new method, through its repetitive cultivation, did not require fallowing.

Tull’s insistence that all plants take their nourishment from the earth, but his inability to

account for what within the earth served as plant food, led Duhamel to question whether all plants

were nourished by the same substance.62 This was of particular value because if plants did utilize the

same food, regardless of their type, an argument could be made against crop rotation. It would mean

that no particular plant would be more exhausting than any other and that repetitive cultivation of

the same plant in the same space would not pose difficulties. By providing a justification for all

plants using the same earthen materials, Duhamel issued a defense for perpetual cultivation that was

59 Here to be understood as the time needed to recover fertility. 60 Duhamel and his chief correspondents personally sought to perfect what they believed were failures in Tull’s machinery schematics. Within a few volumes, they reported that they had. From there, they intended to make new models that were cheaper to build as well as more consistent and reliable in their seed placement. 61 Ibid., 184-185. 62 Ibid., xi.

lacking in Tull. But he did not explain what that food was any more than call it sap or juice (suc).63

While this provided no added clarity, in giving a name other than earth, Duhamel broke from Tull,

forcing himself to rethink what earth was and where sap came from. A reevaluation of dung’s role in

agriculture was the outcome.

Even within the first volume of the Traité Duhamel found himself writing of manuring more

kindly than Tull. He said that manuring and plowing were the modes by which agricultural

production arrived at good effect.64 In later volumes he forcefully admitted that Tull was wrong on

dung. Dung was essential to good agriculture. But Duhamel was not without suspicions from the start, for he attenuated Tull’s critique of dung by removing a chapter dedicated to that theme within the first volume of the Traité. So when Duhamel ultimately broke with Tull’s claim that “the chief, and almost only Use of Dung,” was to return “a most inconsiderable Proportion to the Soil it is design’d to Manure; and therefore, in that respect, is next to nothing” he was not engendering a primary conflict. 65 Instead, he was repairing what is likely the most significant flaw in Tull’s

agriculture.

Without regular applications of organic materials, agricultural lands degrade and eventually

become unable to bear annual yields capable of supporting human communities let alone life in

general. In such a state, they are wont to erosion, a situation that can result in the loss of top soil and

sterility. Historical and scientific data offer exceptions but they are just that, exceptions. Works such

as Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, which chronicles repeated societal breakdown due to

environmental and agricultural degradation, would have no basis in fact if crop land could be

consistently cultivated without fertilizers and without losses in yield anywhere and everywhere.66

Consequently Duhamel’s acceptance of manures wasn’t just an ideological break. It was the suture

63 Ibid., xi. 64 Ibid., 150-151. 65 Tull, The Horse-Hoeing Husbandry, 37. 66 Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York: Penguin Books, 2005).

to the very hemorrhage in Tull’s agronomy that risked agronomic mortality. It was the means by

which Tull’s agronomy could be retained and expanded, coupling innovative approaches to field

preparation and crop management with the nutrients needed to achieve the yields that would attract

new practitioners. Yet it is the scale of Duhamel’s acceptance of fertilizers that deserves attention, if

only to illustrate why it would be Duhamel, and not Tull, who structured scientific agriculture going

forward.

By the third volume of the Traité Duhamel openly stated “The necessity of manure, at least

in accordance with ordinary practices, is demonstrated by experiments, all of the time.”67 It was

experiment that verified the error in Tull’s thinking. It was experiment that forced a new perspective

that, once upheld with data, deserved adherence. For this reason, Duhamel did not try to repair

Tull’s initial claims. He rejected them entirely, writing, “I do not care to advance that fertilizers are

harmful when the land is cultivated in accordance with our principles; on the contrary, from my own

experience, I know that they are advantageous.” 68 One of the pillars of Tull’s method, the cost

savings from ignoring the application of dung in the three course husbandry, was now gone.

Farmers could improve on the old methods by accepting row cultivation, seed-drills and the horse-

hoe but they had to keep dung in their farm management.

While reports continued to filter in of successes without dung, they were overwhelmingly

eclipsed by experiments with manures. The assessment of which manures were best for which plants

under which conditions became a consistent and dominant theme of the Traité. It is no coincidence

that the last volume of the Traité signified its complete and utter break with Tull through its

inclusion of an entire chapter, opening with an essay on the “importance of manures,” and

67 Duhamel du Monceau, Traité de la culture des terres, suivant les Principes de M. Tull, Anglois, Volume III, (Paris: Hippolyte- Louis Guerin, 1754), x. 68 Ibid.

containing experiments regarding pigeon dung, fern ashes, mixed earths, turf, green manures and

humanure, all in a positive light.69

This put Duhamel in a potentially odd place. By rejecting the Tullian view of dung he had to

also cast-off the equivocation of dunging and tillage while accounting for how and why some of his

correspondents were reporting improved yields without manures. He therefore ultimately accepted

that there were instances in which dung was not necessary, that a “satisfactory yield” could be

attained without applications of fertilizers. 70 However, he simultaneously stressed that “We have

never ceased to warn that fertilizers are always advantageous, and that they can only be very

profitable to add them to good culture.”71 In time, even the contributor who had provided the most

compelling accounts of high yields without the use of manures, M. Chateauvieux, affirmed that dung

was useful according to ordinary practice.72 “The new cultivation,” Duhamel wrote, “supplements

manures;”73 in so doing tillage was subordinated to dung.

The Traité was also successful in widening the scale of the New Husbandry by applying the

same thinking for wheat to vegetables and fodder crops. One of his most active contributors wrote,

“I thought that if the vegetables that we cultivate in vegetable gardens, which are established in the

best soil, cultivated year-round with lots of care and expense, where we continually fertilize…succeeded in being as beautiful as in vegetable gardens, we could not refuse to conclude with strong reason this same culture ought to be of great benefit to the wheat that we do not

cultivate with the same attention.”74 His trial began by giving manure to the fields, then planting

69 Duhamel du Monceau, Traité de la culture des terres, suivant les Principes de M. Tull, Anglois, Volume VI, (Paris: Hippolyte- Louis Guerin, 1761), 176-218. 70 Duhamel, Traité, Vol. III, x. 71 Duhamel, Traité, Vol. V, 219. 72 Duhamel, Traité, Vol. III, 524. 73 Duhamel du Monceau, Traité de la culture des terres, suivant les Principes de M. Tull, Anglois, Volume IV, (Paris: Hippolyte- Louis Guerin, 1755), 413-414. 74 Duhamel, Traité, Vol. II, 333.

cabbages in rows, plowing them in March, April and June and hand-hoeing in July. Come harvest,

they surpassed those of the vegetable garden in size and quality.75

Such thinking was deemed worthy of emulation by Duhamel and emulated it was. Farmers applied the same principles to beets and carrots, though they replaced direct seeding with transplantation.76 In this regard, they applied “nearly all the work of the gardener.”77 This was a reversal of the labor-saving that the horse-hoeing husbandry had promised, but with good effect.

With no mechanism for the efficient uprooting of seedlings and their placement in the open fields, human hands were compulsory. Horse-hoeing might be able to accompany these crops if the rows were distant enough. But a reduction in yield, as more of the field surface was taken for the mechanism and draft animals to pass, would be required. Farmers therefore had to decide whether they would attempt to maximize on yields or to minimize costs through their choices on how many rows per field, how many plants per row and whether to use human labor or animal labor through machinery.

Experimentation with other cultivars also distinguished the New Husbandry as it transitioned. Work with maize showed that it succeeded in France when planted in March on light, sandy soils with only two preparatory plowings. The husks and leaves could be used as cattle fodder.

The cobs were excellent over-wintering silage that could be saved for many years. For human consumption, maize could be mixed with rye or wheat to make bread.78 Millet could be grown in the

same fashion but its use differed from maize. There were two varieties of millet, red and white. The

red was only suitable for poultry feed. The white could be used for making bread.79 Asparagus,

artichokes and melons also received trials. 80 Then, finally, the potato was inserted into the crop

75 Ibid., 333-336. 76 Duhamel, Traité, Vol. III, 167-168. 77 Ibid., 169. 78 Duhamel, Traité, Vol. III, 179-190. 79 Ibid., 194. 80 Duhamel, Traité, Vol. IV, 454-456.

34 regime.81 In time, open-field trials concluded that the size, flavor and texture of traditionally kitchen- garden crops improved when grown on the arable, whether for use as human or animal feed.82

To plant these crops on the arable required the same principles, practices and machinery as wheat cultivation under the New Husbandry. The adoption of necessary implements for the one could therefore allow for diversity rather than simplification to only wheat. But the new crops did require a wider, more expansive understanding of plant growth and the requirements of cultivation.

Experiments had to assess how many rows at what spacing, what seeding depth, the most accurate seeders, when and how many times to plow, etc. These and other technical issues were tested and repeated to extract a set of core findings, such as the “important maxim regarding plowing, practiced by few farmers, of never working plows when the earth is too moist.” Additionally, if the soil was too dry, or the weather too hot, the soil could not be worked well.83 That assays for specific information, like how many cabbages to sow per arpent when using five row horse-hoes and a specific model of seed- drill would render generalized, yet important, observations on the appropriateness of an agricultural practice is exactly the point that needs to be made about the nature of Duhamel’s inquiries and the community that supported them. It also explains why the mechanisms that were developed and popularized within the Traité were reportedly in operation in Germany, Austria, Italy and Turkey.84

Duhamel’s agriculture, centered in France, was spreading.

However, difficulties were also surfacing among practitioners of the New Husbandry. With the new method the time of plowing differed from ordinary cultivation. Now there were farmers plowing while their neighbors had standing crops; and it was not possible to drive a plow without striking the neighbor’s plants. This reduced the amount of land that could be done under the new method as long as it relied on the plow. Duhamel agreed that on small parcels such a situation “will

81 Duhamel, Traité, Vol. V, 130. 82 Ibid., 544. 83 Duhamel, Traité, Vol. III, 97-150; the quote is from pp 150, emphasis in original. 84 Duhamel, Traité, Vol. IV, 533-534.

infallibly result in the loss of fair quantities of land,” while on larger fields the loss would be of less

consequence. 85 The conflict, and Duhamel’s response, made smallholdings appear susceptible to losses not as meaningful to large-holdings. But this was only valid as long as machines were the

measure of the New Husbandry. That is why Duhamel’s response is intriguing in terms of the

entirety of the Traité, which had earlier asserted that smallholders could attain the New Husbandry

by means of only a hoe.86 The hoe could prepare those areas close to a neighbor’s field without

disturbing standing crops. That Duhamel did not return to this sentiment indicates that the mono-

vision for husbandry by the plow had already set in.

In fact, Duhamel not only accepted the inherency of plowing, he and his correspondents

made efforts to improve on the machines within The Horse-Hoeing Husbandry immediately. Duhamel’s

deepest criticisms for Tull regarded the inefficiencies in his schematics and the inconsistencies in

seeding they created. 87 New plows, seed-drills, horse-hoes and trials demonstrating increased

effectivity emerged in every volume of the Traité. Improvement was so consciously considered that

Duhamel refused to introduce Tull’s mechanisms on the basis that they were inferior to those with

which Duhamel already had familiarity and were available in France. Instead, he merely converted

their details to French measurements, making them comprehensible to French farmers but not

enabling readers to reproduce them.88

Yet in the attempt to make the foreign understandable and practicable, Duhamel was undertaking the most important challenge of the Traité and of all his agronomic works: translating new ideas, practices and plants into a French context. But Duhamel did not limit himself to translation. He sought to make these methods particularly suitable to the small-farmer who, he felt,

85 Duhamel, Traité, Vol. III, 257. 86 Ibid., 3-4. 87 This is why the editors of the 1751 edition of the Horse-Hoeing Husbandry suggested Duhamel might have been kinder to Tull’s machinery if Duhamel had accessed Tull’s supplements as well as their augmented edition; see: Tull, Horse- Hoeing Husbandry, vi. 88 Duhamel, Traité, Vol. I, 117-132.

36 had the most to gain. This may seem oppositional to those who would rather think of agriculture, and agricultural complexities, in terms of machines and technology instead of skills, knowledge and practice. Yet on this Duhamel was perfectly clear. As of 1753, the plows and instruments introduced in his first volume were not in use in the provinces. Readers might assume that they were necessary to the new cultivation and that a farmer’s first task was to acquire them. But that was only true for large farms. For working small pieces of land, it was sufficient to use the plows that were already available, even if they were inferior in comparison to recently improved models. And has already been noted, the New Husbandry could be enacted with only a hoe. Regardless of their scale of landholding, whether or not to implement these techniques was merely a matter of farmers trialing new methods “to reassure themselves by small experiments of the advantages of the new culture.”89

Duhamel’s idea, to use small plots to experiment with the New Husbandry, was taken up by landlords to encourage tenants to adopt new practices. Initial results favored both the method and the mode of instruction.90 But what was taught was the amended New Husbandry, in which the best quality lands were targeted for repeated cultivation, supplemented with fertilizers. When farmers compared two fields, both under the new method identical except for the use of dung, the difference in yield was nearly double in favor of those that had been fertilized. 91 Tradition coupled with innovation could amount to improvement.

Although I am unaware of Duhamel justifying his concern for the small-farmer through enhanced survivability in the face of dearth, he did explain the particular advantages of the New

Husbandry for small-farmers in terms of subsistence. He supposed a smallholder with a three arpent farm under the ordinary method, with one arpent devoted to family subsistence, one for spring grains

(which if sold would provide but one-third the income from wheat) while the final remained

89 Duhamel, Traité, Volume II, 29. 90 Ibid., 55. 91 Ibid.

37 fallowed. When all land was converted to wheat, Duhamel claimed the farmer could triple his income. Moreover, the small farmer could accomplish this without new materials or higher costs of production. The farmer merely had to change the cropping system.92

This was, of course, an oversimplification. But by playing to this point of view, Duhamel was selling his readers on a specific vision of agricultural improvement. It was possible, without changing the implements of production, to unleash greater outcomes by reexamining practice and modifying it according to new thinking on plant nutrition and growth. Even if the small-holder held eight to ten arpents of land, with a third to a half under vines, such farmers could be able to reap larger harvests by converting all arable to wheat, rather than the three-course. At such a scale neither horse, nor plow nor seed-drill was necessary. Such things were only mandatory when the farmer approached 90-100 arpents. 93 Small-farmers didn’t need more capital. They didn’t need off-farm innovations. They just needed to redirect their hoes and their spades.

The focus on the smallholder was warranted not merely because small plots were suitable to experimentation but because smallholders had the most to gain by doubling their yields. Significantly, according to the logic of Duhamel’s practice, they could do this by devoting more labor to each unit of land. The New Husbandry, informed by garden practices, was now set on converting the arable to a garden. Small, rationalized farming spaces, intensively managed, could unleash the smallholder from meager returns without having to rely on higher capital thresholds or new inputs. But how the small-farmer was to access that much dung remained uncertain.

Yet as is often the case with present-day farming and industry, the capacities of the New

Husbandry became affixed to the technology on which it was associated and, whether conscious or otherwise, Duhamel helped to facilitate that outcome. Although each volume of the Traité contained

92 Duhamel du Monceau, Experiences et Reflexions Relatives au Traité de la Culture des Terres, publié en 1750, (Paris: Hippolyte- Louis Guerin, 1751), iv-vi; Duhamel, Traité, Vol. II, 5. 93 Duhamel, Traité, Vol. II, 1-4.

38 assertions about the increasing number of practitioners, when he wrote of their increase among large landowners he could not downplay the connection between the new machines, improved yields and his own gratification. He could not “conceal the pleasure we feel in seeing the number of agricultural enthusiasts increase, and even extending to those of the highest rank.”94 To lengthen the seduction to an ever widening audience, he went on to provide a list of the tasks for establishing the new culture on lands not yet under it. The essential requirements? That farmers possess seed-drill, wheel- plow and horse-hoe, with the first two deemed absolutely essential.95 This did not mean that appeals to the small-farmer and hand-tools were gone. It merely identified that the New Husbandry now existed in two forms concurrently, one for the small-holder and one for the large, though the preference was clearly for the latter.

The tasks for converting lands from ordinary to New Husbandry reaffirmed this. It was necessary to prepare the field with four plowings, given at different times from April through mid-

September, then harrowed fine. Considerations had to be made for how closely to plant borders, so that there was sufficient room for plow and horse to turn. Seed was prepared, in bulk, to be used with a seed-drill. To optimize even spacing, the horse had to move at a steady pace. The fields were cultivated throughout the growing season by cultivator and/or wheel-plow another four times leading up to wheat flowering in May/June. Once the wheat was harvested, the ground was immediately prepared for the next planting of wheat. This required the now “basic” implements of the New Husbandry or there would not be sufficient time to sow for the following year’s crop. The same directions could be followed for the planting of artificial grasses, vegetables and small grains.96

The smallholder would follow the same timing but, without access to the machinery and draft animals, would have had to convert all practice to spade and hoe.

94 Duhamel, Traité, Vol. III, 48. 95 Ibid., 52. 96 Ibid., 52-62

Such a typification complicated the intended audience of the New Husbandry but it did not

obfuscate the new method, or what stood to be gained by it. While there were various competing

claims within it, the Traité advanced a general approach to farming that allowed both small- and large-farmers to increase their wheat production. The extent and durability of that increase was in question, especially if a farmer did not dung the fields, but the point had been demonstrated time and time again: improvement was possible. In this way a potential miracle unfolded before the reader, asserting that poor lands incapable of yields could, by plowing and only plowing, be brought to yield.97 Account after account placed wonder after wonder before the reader’s eyes. In place of all

the effort of crop rotation, in place of the planning and monitoring required to plant multiple crops

at the same time there was a simplicity in growing only one thing and it growing well. Through row

cultivation and animal-powered machines, there was the capacity to grow the preferred crop year

after year, using less seed, and no fertilizer? It is easy to imagine how the enthusiasm for such a

potential made readers blind to an indispensable caveat articulated on the same page as that

previously mentioned miracle, and indicative of a reality in agricultural production: “It is necessary

to treat lands in relation to their qualities.”98 That is, there are places where this just won’t work, as stated.

Duhamel understood this. He knew that Tull exaggerated the advantages of his culture.99 But

such exaggeration is not only understandable, it is expected. To a certain extent, most farm books

are guilty of the same. As the reports filtered in from around Europe, Duhamel lost the capacity to

control every direction of the New Husbandry’s development. While some were continuing to hold

to dung-less husbandry, others had accepted the necessity of manures and were developing the same

core practices towards a more generally applicable model. Contradictions arose. Disagreements were

97 Duhamel, Traité, Vol. IV, 354-355. 98 Ibid., 354. 99 Duhamel, Traité, Vol. I, 272.

engendered. And dissidents who did not want to accept the positive developments within the New

Husbandry were gifted with a plethora of faulty experiments that invalidated those principles. That

is, a raucous community of people involved in trying to solve the same problems, but disagreeing on

how to get to where the getting was going, emerged.

Yet the logic of the New Husbandry remained straightforward. If farmers were only growing

wheat on one-third of their land, the use of all their lands to grow wheat would triple their

income.100 Further gains were made, according to Tull, because the new method was cheaper to

operate than the ordinary.101 Here, Duhamel had to provide a caveat. Such a claim was true if one

compared the New Husbandry and the ordinary in terms of only one field. However, the allure of

the New Husbandry was predicated on tripling the scale of wheat cultivation. It would therefore require an absolute increase in labor through additional plowings on all parcels in the same season.

As a result, the New Husbandry would cost more than the ordinary. To off-set this, Duhamel

argued that the higher yields would compensate for higher costs. 102 In addition, there was the

assurance that row-planted wheat was more resilient to weather-related damage than broadcast.103 So

farmers would purportedly receive more from their increased investment in wheat cultivation and be

better protected from accidents. Nonetheless, there was no discussion for how farming a wider

variety of plants, even just some spring grains, provided greater security if the wheat crop failed, or if

the wheat market was glutted. Thus the promises of economic gain were prioritized over farmer

survivability, in the face of both food scarcity and overabundance.

100 Ibid., 184-185. 101 Ibid., 273. 102 Ibid., 274. 103 Ibid., 275. This is a point to which Duhamel returns over and over again within the Traité.

Duhamel’s New Husbandry – Accepted and Precluded

In 1759 the first three volumes of Duhamel’s Traité were translated, literally and accurately,

into English. While the editor of the work regretted he could not make use of the latest volumes, he

did provide a summary of their more important findings and supplemented them with recent works

by British agronomists. In the estimations of Duhamel’s translator, “Duhamel and his

correspondents have set the world an example which has long been wanted, and greatly desired by

all who have the good of their country at heart, and are in the least sensible of the importance of

Agriculture. They have given us a series of experiments in this most useful art, continued for several

years together, with accuracy and judgment, and related in a clear, distinct, manner.”104 He went on,

quoting Dr. Home, author of the Treatise of the Principles of Agriculture, to state that such experiments

are “distinct, exact, conclusive so far as they have gone, and stand a model for experiments in

Agriculture. What a shame for Great Britain, where Agriculture is so much cultivated, to leave its

exact value to be determined by foreigners!”105

Thus within the span of a decade French and British agronomists put forward similar claims

of underdevelopment. Just as Duhamel suggested of French practices in the first volume of the

Traité in 1750, Britain received Duhamel’s work with a sentiment of backwardness for domestic

practices. This explains why Duhamel’s positive reception did not lead to a revaluation of Tull.

Rather than reappraise Tull’s 1733 original, or even the 1751 revision, Duhamel’s editor took the

time to translate the original literally. That decision, which we may recall Duhamel did not make for

the Horse-Hoeing Husbandry, indicated that Duhamel’s work had become an orthodox text, unlike

Tull’s. And with that, Duhamel’s New Husbandry reached beyond France and the French-speaking

world.

104 Duhamel du Monceau, A Practical Treatise of Husbandry: Wherein are contained, many Useful and Valuable Experiments and Observations in the New Husbandry, Collected during a Series of Years, (London: J. Whiston and B. White, 1759), v. 105 Ibid., vi.

Yet the translation of Duhamel, while literal and good, did not hold up for the entirety of the manual. When the editor came to topics that he felt were irrelevant to the British he said as much.

“Mr. Duhamel, in the first part of his eighth chapter, enters into a detail of the French method of plowing, which, not being so good as what is generally practiced in this kingdom, we shall pass over, and give instead of it what appears to us the simplest and most rational practice here.”106 With other additions spliced in, the manual took on the same color as the Traité. It accepted ideas, phrasing and rationale but restructured, supplemented and channeled those energies towards British needs. As a result, there are times when it is unclear whether the translator-editor was interpreting Duhamel or speaking for himself and the only way to be certain is to read both texts side by side.

To do so, other than to make note of details such as this, is inconsequential, however. A

Practical Treatise of Husbandry (1759) re-acclimatized elements of the Tullian method, pinned within an agronomic system structured by Duhamel, to now be re-worked and converted into a British context.

The editor was sure to accomplish this when, just as Duhamel had done, he converted measurements and replaced references to French authorities with British writers, of whom readers would be aware. Duhamel was thus treated as he had treated Tull. In so doing, the New Husbandry returned, changed, on the shores from whence it had originated, further amended to suit the needs of the British farming public, without reverence for its first prophet. But where respect for the originator faded, admiration for its disciple remained, albeit of a mixed nature.

The opinion of Duhamel’s translator and editor, as well as those he cited, conceived of

Duhamel as “one of the most accurate of the experimental husbandmen.”107 References to his views on seed steeps, the benefits of lime as fertilizer and advice concerning establishing and managing tree plantations are common within the Annals of Agriculture (1783-1808), a British agricultural journal and a subject of the next chapter. Duhamel’s experiments are also referenced, repeated and

106 Ibid., 48. 107 Dr. A. Hunter, “On Mons. Brongniart’s Vegetable Powder,” Annals of Agriculture, Volume 7 (1786), 316.

challenged within that series. At the same time, the journal’s editor felt compelled to disentwine

Duhamel’s New Husbandry from what was then also called the New Husbandry within British

farming circles. 108 While the former has been detailed above, the latter was a synonym for the

Norfolk Four-Course, a crop rotation that improved upon the three-course rotation through

replacing fallow with artificial grasses and fodder crops to increase livestock numbers. It did not

necessarily adopt the seed drill or row cultivation and it never abandoned dung. Rather one of its

chief objects was to get as much manure as possible so as to increase grain production. As a result, it

adhered to a different proposition on the correlation between dunging and tillage, holding that

“tillage fertilizes the soil, by bringing to the surface that nutritious earth and those fermentable

matters which are placed so deep as to be beyond the reach of the roots of plants: but tillage without

manure must, in the end, become useless; because after a certain time it would bring to the surface

an earth as much exhausted as that which covered it.”109

The existence of two conflicting agricultural systems under the same name may be a mere

accident but the place of Duhamel within that conflict is certainly not. Duhamel, by repairing and

expanding on Tull, found his way to the center of debates connected with drill husbandry, fallow,

plant nutrition, fertilizers and many other facets of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century

agricultural improvement. It was a place that he and his correspondents earned through their work

on the Traité, work that not only influenced the contents of those debates but structured them.

Duhamel’s New Husbandry and the Trees

Although the Traité structured what agricultural improvement looked like for the arable,

Duhamel particularly concerned himself with its extension to trees. He wrote that “to study the

works of the Creator, to contemplate the admirable spectacle of Nature, is one of the most dignified

108 See Arthur Young’s discussion in “Of the Drill Husbandry, before the Late Improvements,” Annals of Agriculture, Volume 22 (1794), 72-90. 109 Senebier, “On Manures and Vegetation,” Annals of Agriculture, Volume 43 (1805), 186.

occupations of the man who thinks;”110 and he placed arboriculture among the “principal resources

for life, security, and pleasure,” i.e. “wheat, the vine, woods [and] livestock.”111 Wheat and the vine

sustained life. Woods provided supplemental foods and shelter. Livestock gave dairy, meat and

fibers that further fed and clothed. But when one considered what most fascinated the eye and what deserved the most care, there were none more important than trees, “the most beautiful decoration of the countryside.”112

Trees were the ultimate ornament of spring gardens, charting the brilliant transformations of

summer and fall.113 They were the plants from which “the most agreeable objects that waken and flatter the pallet at the end of a meal, the most sumptuous and most researched” articles of agriculture derived. 114 They were the means by which perfume, freshness, flavor, and sweetness

came into the world, pleasures that were so addictive that some said they were dangerous to human

health, producing problems with the stomach and persistent fevers. 115 Duhamel contested these

negatives and he championed trees.

The key to knowing trees, Duhamel emphasized, was naming. “Nomenclature, it is true, is

the science of the names of plants; but it does not consist simply of knowing names, it must lead to

knowledge of plants at the same time.”116 Here “knowledge” reads as ‘practical knowledge,’ as far as

I am concerned. For a name could not convey how best to plant, when to graft and trim, or how to harvest. Moreover, as Duhamel recognized, plants already had names. “An inhabitant of the countryside succeeds in knowing the plants which are continually beneath his eyes: he must even, to

110 Duhamel du Monceau, Traité des Arbres Fruitiers: contenant leur figure, leur description, leur culture, &c., Volume I, (Paris: Saillant and Desaint, 1768), i. 111 Ibid. 112 Duhamel du Monceau, Des semis et plantations des arbres, et de leur culture, (Paris: H. L. Guerin and L. F. Delatour, 1760), 32. 113 Duhamel, Traité des Arbres Fruitiers, i. 114 Ibid. 115 Ibid, i-ii. 116 Duhamel du Monceau, La Physique des Arbres: où il est traité de l‘anatomie des plantes et de l’économie végétale, (Paris: Desaint, 1788), ii.

distinguish one from the others, assign them names: this one will be the reds, and that one the blues,

these the half-turned, these ones the bells, etc. And there you have it, a species of nomenclature, but one that can serve only those who made it; and it cannot extend itself beyond a small number of plants.”117

What separated the botanist from the accidental and everyday Adam was the adherence to

rules and the extension of names that made plants knowable to people who had not seen them in

place; that is, the use of a universal language.118 Moreover, that system was to extend beyond the plants in private gardens adjusted to French climate; “it must still know how to force nature to succeed in raising foreign plants within greenhouses, with the help of hot beds and furnaces.”119

Although Duhamel did not say it, naming needed to extend to practical husbandry, too. In so doing,

it would take into it the worlds of medicines, dyes, marquetry and other specialty trades and

manufactures the plant materials that added to individual and national economic wellbeing.

As the prior quote indicated, botany had value when it could “force nature to succeed in raising foreign plants.” While foreign annuals had played only a minor role in the Traité, Duhamel was particularly concerned with foreign trees that could be used within the manufacturing arts.120

Already trees such as the holm oak (yeuse), elm, walnut, beech, black locust (faux-acacia), plane

(platane), hackberry (micocoulier), cherry, hornbeam, maple, mulberry, whitebeam (cormier), dogwood, medlar, wild pear and apple, different species of poplar, birch, chestnut, horse chestnut, willow, pine, fir, larch, cedar, cypress, and many other species, deciduous and evergreen had been introduced and acclimatized. 121 The naturalization of still more would further diversify France’s manufacturing

abilities, especially for construction, charcoal production and military applications. Duhamel’s world,

117 Ibid., ii-iii. 118 Ibid., iii. 119 Ibid., iv. 120 Duhamel du Monceau, Du transport, de la conservation et de la force des bois, (Paris: L. F. Delatour, 1767), 1. 121 Ibid., 2.

after all, was one in which a country’s everyday heating and cooking, commercial and manufacturing,

as well as war-making needs were measured in the verdancy of its forests.

The capacities of foreign stocks to enrich French agriculture and manufacturing were a

consistent theme of Duhamel’s works on trees. But so too was the ability to form, maintain,

reestablish and exploit the forests and woods of any and all types. In this, whether foreign or

domestic, the key was to understand the age, size, quality and species of the tree.122 For while there were few principles that had been established that were applicable to any and all trees, an intelligent amateur could, by paying attention arrive at the utility and pleasure of any tree, as well as the proper means of its multiplication.123 Observation was central to sow and raise the trees, to treat them in

accordance with the terrain, to transplant them with consideration for the exposition and the quality

of the soil as was most convenient for their success.124 Moreover, one had to deny the tendency to,

upon failure, “lash out at the gardener,” and thereby persuade “ourselves that these trees cannot

succeed in our climate.”125 By this means Duhamel had himself known “the pleasure of seeing these

different trees succeed almost as in their natural soil, without almost any culture.”126 It is that remark

that beckons the synthesis of the New Husbandry with trees to form a permanent agricultural

approach to improvement.

Although the New Husbandry often focused on the expansion of wheat cultivation at the

expense of all else, it simultaneously acknowledged that there were soils unfit for wheat. On these,

the farmer was to sow small grains, fodder crops and artificial grasses that could benefit the farmer’s

subsistence and the keeping of livestock. Yet trees do these things, too. By variety, a tree’s leaves can

122 Duhamel, Traité, Vol. I, iii. 123 Ibid., xii-xiii. 124 Ibid., xiii. 125 Ibid. 126 Ibid.

serve as fodder,127 its mast or fruit for subsistence and livestock fodder, its body for tools, buildings,

and heat. What is more, by not requiring constant cultivation, they are a means to gain without

added annual labor. And although Duhamel did not emphasize this at all, through their dense root

networks, trees are a means to hold the soil in place, to act as wind breaks during inclement weather,

to hold more moisture in the local environment, and through their senescence, to build up soil

fertility over time.128 Farmers that put trees into their crop regimes were able to accomplish the goals

of all non-wheat crops but without added expense for tillage. In exchange, what was needed was

more time – something that is free but flows in only one direction, unlike capital.

Duhamel’s works listed over a thousand species of trees.129 Among those varieties was the

potential for profit, and ease in labor, that the expansion of acre after acre of wheat could not

provide. And it could be attained even in marginal spaces otherwise underutilized. For where the

farmer could not devote a solid piece of property to trees, there were spaces where thickets, arbors,

avenues and borders might bear fruit. Planted in these locations, trees could break the flow of the

landscape, chart the passage of time in splashes of color and diversify the holding, while rendering

sweetness and flavor.130 If varieties were selected so that fruit matured during slack seasons, trees

could provide added value without distracting from wheat cultivation or livestock management. In short, trees, and berry-yielding bushes too, could supplement the New Husbandry perfectly.

In contrast with measuring cereals yields and animal output, which favors the arable and pasture, how about a model based on permanent crops? Nut-giving trees provide food for humans

and livestock. Their flowers feed bees, and therefore facilitate honey production. When they reach

maturity or their yields decline, their wood is among the most desired type, being generally

127 Duhamel du Monceau, The Elements of Agriculture, trans. Philip Miller, Vol. II, (London: P. Vaillant and T. Durham, 1764), 135. 128 J. Russell Smith, Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture, (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1929). 129 Duhamel du Monceau, Traité des arbres et arbustes qui se cultivent en France en pleine terre, Volume I, (Paris: H. L. Guerin and L. F. Delatour, 1755), xxi. 130 Ibid., l-lvi. I draw attention to these pages because they contain a calendar that indicates on which plants the farmer would be working, in accordance with their flowering.

hardwood. Moreover, they are difficult to steal, whether at the hands of thieves or predatory

animals; and they attract live game, a source of animal protein that does not require human

management. Lastly, their nuts can be ground into flour suited for desserts, bread and gruel.131 They

can also be pressed for oils while nutshells and husks produce dyes.132 The versatility of trees, as

Duhamel emphasized, places them at the heart of agriculture. Finding room for them in our assessments of the value of agriculture and its products is a beneficial way to reenvision farming and

the multiplicity of ways to produce food open to all farmers with suitable climates.

Nuts, of course, are also seeds. So unlike a tranche of meat that does not have the capacity

to reproduce, nuts can easily be carried over long distances and grown. This made nut-bearing trees

one of the easiest types of trees to bring to France from abroad. 133 The difficulty was that

reproducing trees “by seed it is not certain to have precisely the kind of tree that is desired.”134

Those who work with trees refer to this as not growing ‘true to type.’135 It explains why a large nut produces a tree that develops small nuts, or apple and cherry seeds that produce fruit dissimilar in taste, flavor, texture and aroma to the fruits from which they came. Consequently, waiting the necessary years to test the quality of seed-grown trees can be a serious investment of time. However, as the lives of plant breeders such as Luther Burbank, the famous American plant breeder responsible for the Russet potato and the Santa Rosa plum,136 makes clear, it can also give rise to a

131 Ibid, 133-136. These comments are based on Duhamel’s account of the chestnut. They can be equally extended to other temperate nuts, especially the filbert/hazelnut and walnut. 132 Duhamel du Monceau, Traité des arbres et arbustes qui se cultivent en France en pleine terre, Volume II, (Paris: H. L. Guerin and L. F. Delatour, 1755), 53. 133 Duhamel du Monceau, Avis pour le Transport par Mer des Arbes, des Plantes Vivaces, des Semences, et de Diverses Autres Curiosites d’Histoire Naturelle, (Paris: de l’Imprimerie Royal, 1753), 49-57. 134 Duhamel du Monceau, “Recherche d'une méthode pour faire réussir les boutures & les marcottes, principalement à l'égard des arbre,” in Memoires de Mathématique et de Physique tirez des Registres de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, (Paris: Mémoires de l'Académie royale des sciences, 1744), 2. 135 Michael Phillips, The Holistic Orchard: Tree Fruits and Berries the Biological Way, (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2012); R. J. Garner, The Grafter’s Handbook, (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013). 136 Phillip Thurtle. “The Poetics of Life: Luther Burbank, Horticultural Novelties, and the Spaces of Heredity,” Literature and Medicine, 26:1 (Spring, 2007), 1-24

spectrum of new varieties.137 Essentially, every seed has the capacity to develop into a fruit or nut

that has never existed before, with a flavor, smell or characteristic that lends special qualities that can

be passed on through the use of cuttings and grafts. This is why Duhamel preferred both cuttings

and grafts – for they clone what is already experienced and familiar into a plant or branch with

renewed vitality – but he also made use of seeds.

Cuttings and grafting presented the farmer with a unique resource for plant propagation. In

comparison with wheat, in which a portion of the harvest is held back to use for next year’s seed, a

tree could be divided into pieces and used to produce more trees, without necessarily diminishing its

yields. A farmer who timed the collection of cuttings and grafts could exploit a year’s new growth

turning it into future yield without reducing that year’s harvest. This was done by extracting only the

newest, slimmest branches and leaving the existing, mature growth intact. This is where the variety

of the tree came into play – for not all cuttings developed roots when placed within the soil.138

As with the production of any annual, with the cultivation of trees the quality of soil

mattered. Just as wine, grain and vegetables take on qualities of the land and climate in which they

are grown,139 the characteristics of soils impacts the physiognomy and usability of wood. This was

asserted in Duhamel’s works on trees as well as in his works on the manufactures, like that of pipe-

making, in which only certain regions, in accordance with soil acidity, tenacity and color, yielded

wood appropriate for smoking.140 This observation has two noteworthy implications. First, where

137 Jane S. Smith, The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants, (New York: Penguin Press, 2009). 138 Duhamel, Traité des arbres et arbustes qui se cultivent en France en pleine terre, 32. 139 There are innumerable studies, historical and otherwise, that discuss the subject of terroir, (literally meaning “land” or “local” but also something akin to “the spirit of the place”). Excising the sense of sacredness that is sometimes included, Duhamel’s object was similar. He stated, unequivocally, that “some part of the terrain passes into the fruit, and contributes to the good or the bad quality of the wine,” (196). The same was so for other products of the soil. “It is true that we notice in fruits particular flavors that seem to come from the soil in which they are planted, and which we call for this reason, the taste of the soil (goûts de terroir); but these flavors connected with certain terrains, are equally observed in all fruits of different species which grow there” (210). The outcome was that the spirit of that place was conveyed not by a single species but by everything that was grown there. It is that meaning that I wish to emphasize here. For these passages see La physique des arbres; où il est traité de l'anatomie des plantes et de l'où il est traité de l'anatomie des plantes et de l'économie végétale, Volume II, (Paris: H. L. Guerin and L. F. Delatour, 1758), 196, 210. 140 Duhamel du Monceau, L'art de faire les pipes à fumer le tabac, (Paris: L. F. Delatour, 1771), 8-10.

50 the soil allowed, superior quality woods could be grown to make superior quality products. Second, where the soil did not allow for the highest quality product, familiarity with the diversity of tree species gave the farmer greater flexibility in determining what to grow, for what purposes, either to supplement the arable and livestock of the farm itself or to cater towards specialty product manufacturing. Crucial to both was an understanding of which domestic and foreign trees to utilize, the range of usable soils for each tree variety, what could be produced in relation to the topography and exposure of the site, and grasping at what age it was best to cut the wood for highest quality.141

Duhamel provided this information for nearly every species he discussed.

Through his attentions to soils Duhamel noted two significant tendencies of his time. “It is proper to remark that in long-established agricultural countries, such as France, only poor quality lands remain wooded. The land of forested counties is ordinarily below mediocre; but a portion of this type of land has been cleared recently according to a sense for the cultivation of the vine, which is more advantageous to the proprietor.”142 The result was that the best lands had been converted to arable leaving only the poorest soils forested. Among those poor soils, conversion to vineyards allowed the proprietor to earn an annual profit that forests did not necessarily provide. This translated long-term investment into short-term return. The reason being that, in time forested soils would improve through the disintegration of their litter into humus, as well as stumps rotting back into the soil after trunks were harvested. Vines, on the other hand, did not have an ameliorating effect on soil fertility. They had to be maintained through inputs of manures. At best, they would keep the soil in a similar state of fertility. But the soils would not necessarily improve, especially if they were regularly cultivated instead of permanently under a leguminous grass, as is sometimes practiced in vineyards today. Forests, on the other hand, could have served as a long-term fallow, a means for farmers to alternate arable with woods, a scale that almost transcended the span of human

141 Duhamel du Monceau, De l'exploitation des bois, Volume I, (Paris: H.L. Guerin & L.F. Delatour, 1764), 2-4. 142 Ibid., 61.

51 lifetimes but was nonetheless an effective approach to food and material production in both temperate and tropical forests.143

Trees were the counterpoint to the New Husbandry that might have been. They were yet another alternative for the modification of so-called inferior lands into productive resources. They were a means to take intervals that held fences, walls, and ravines and render them sources of food, lumber and profit. Moreover, in place of the grasses and meadows that could sometimes occupy this niche, and that required annual management through seeding and manuring to maintain fertility and the quality of their stands, woods required next to nothing. In sum, for the farmer who did not have the capital, labor, lands or climate suited for perpetual grain cultivation and/or grass husbandry, trees were a viable option.

Trees were perfectly synthesizable with the New Husbandry; in fact they could extend the applicability of the new model through a greater diversification of farm products. The same logic of rationalized production that saw grain planted evenly within equidistantly spaced rows, sought a maximization of profit on a minimization of inputs, yielded a market-oriented (yet subsistence compatible) point of view for fruit production. “It seems most reasonable to prepare for yourself a succession of fruits, so that one is not always in abundance to the point of superfluity, and one is never in extreme need.”144 That is, farmers were “to plant the species and the varieties of trees whose fruits succeed each other, from the earliest to the latest, making sure to proportion the number of each species according to season in which it matures.”145 In so doing, farmers would always have fruit available and could consistently enjoy them or retail them, for reliable income.

143 Ester Boserup, Conditions of Agricultural Growth, (Chicago; Aldine Publishing Company, 1965), 29-33. I cite this work as evidence for the feasibility of this viewpoint, not out of any sense of technical specificity. Should that technical specificity be desired, I encourage an examination of Saishin nōgyō gijutsu dojō sehi, (Tokyo: Nōsangyoson Bunka Kyōkai, 2009-2017), particularly the third volume. 144 Duhamel, Traité des Arbres Fruitier, Vol. I, v. 145 Ibid.

The New Husbandry concerned itself with rationalizing space; when that logic was applied

to trees, it led to a rationalization of time. Farmers had to understand varietal selection so that they

could have the longest-lasting harvest of fruit, by type, throughout the year. Farmers who possessed this logic unlocked a means to sweetness on their tables, and the possibilities of added income. That gain was not the product of adding more labor or capital. It was attained through categorizing and understanding the natural world and organizing it around the needs of the stomach, the eye and the coin purse. A farmer who cultivated trees alongside grain, grass/fodder and livestock could thereby

have a system that produced grain, vegetable, milk, flesh, fruit and timber, with a reduction in costs

and labor compared to only arable farms. A farm based on this model would replace annual

investments of capital and sweat-equity with the conscious cultivation of time, as manifested in an expanding canopy from which protein, sweetness, warmth and stability could flow.

Safeguarding Harvests

“What, in fact, is Agriculture?” Duhamel asked. “It is a science which teaches us so to

cultivate the earth as to enjoy its utmost produce; and, as the fruits of the earth are the more durable

substance, the surest support of states, and the true basis of commerce, it follows that the earth

properly or improperly occupied, the works of Agriculture well or ill executed, exert their influence

on the riches or poverty of the inhabitants.”146 Such a view used science to correct inadequacies in

practice, attaining a way of farming, and through it a way of living, that could at least conceive of

lessening poverty. This fit with Duhamel’s hopes for the smallholder and with the potentials of

growing trees on vacant lands. It was conceptualized when Duhamel resumed his work in

diagnosing and treating infestation, this time within the granaries of France. Only now, with the

methods of assaying and verifying from the Traité well developed, preserving the products of

improved agriculture promised to free France of famine.

146 Duhamel, The Elements of Agriculture, Vol. I, v-vi.

In Duhamel’s estimations the difference between having enough and not enough was

“about two-thirds of a good [harvest],” though if grain prices weren’t too high a “half-harvest well- economized nearly suffices to prevent famine.” 147 Therefore, harvests needed to be sufficient

enough to bring down prices and replenish reserves. In Duhamel’s appraisals, back to back fertile

years were enough to fill the granaries, cause moderate prices, and meet the requirements of France

without relying on foreign grain. The problem was in those years that were not abundant, “A harvest

that is entirely lacking, is always followed by a great famine, though it was preceded by several good

years.” 148 Preventing famine, Duhamel reasoned, required an improved system for storing and

managing the products of those good years.

In Duhamel’s thinking, France didn’t have a production problem.149 It had a storage problem.

Based on the size and infrastructure of France, it was impossible to stock warehouses (magazins) and then safeguarded within them in every province.150 Still better would be to assemble them in just a

few places. 151 Moreover, through centralization, the storehouses would be able to utilize the

machinery necessary for conservation.152 But there were several obstacles to this. The memory of

famines of 1741 and 1752, famines so bad that large landowners and urban residents donated their

own resources to provide for the rural poor, had left a mark within the peoples’ minds. As a result,

communities and families had established their own granaries and made efforts to provision

themselves, which some alleged had an effect upon the overall grain market. While Duhamel

147 Duhamel du Monceau, Traité de la conservation des grains, et en particulier du froment, (Paris: Hippolyte-Louis Guerin and Louis-François Delatour, 1754), iv. 148 Ibid., iv-v. 149 Perhaps this is why Duhamel did not concern himself with the impact of wheat specialization on famine and the grain market. If Duhamel truly held to the notion that “The realm produces more wheat than is necessary to nourish its inhabitants, when several fertile years come together,” (Ibid., iii) the issue of increased wheat production was one of farmer profits and not of food supply. In deep contrast with both Young and Ōkura, there is a general lack of concern for the food supply within his country, at least as an impetus for agricultural improvement. 150 Duhamel, Traité de la conservation des grains, vi. 151 Ibid., vi-vii. 152 Ibid., ix.

disputed this, and saw such localized efforts as exciting only public claims of mal-intent, he

suggested that the best policy was to make such exertions irrelevant. 153

Supposing that there was a regularized pattern of ten or so years of decent yields followed by one bad harvest, he suggested that the grain of the eighth and ninth years be portioned for the survival of the eleventh. The major encumbrance to this was farmers of meagre incomes who were forced to sell each year, with each harvest. The New Husbandry would play a role by increasing supply. But then warehouses needed to serve the purpose of regulating prices, smoothing out the discrepancies between abundant harvests, which ruined farmers with their low prices, and poor years, when everyone was harmed. 154 Such a warehouse system had an added benefit in that it would

eradicate dependence on foreign grain, in any capacity.155

The next difficulty was the physical storage of grain. As heads of households who set aside

reserve grain sufficient knew, their provisions were diminished daily by rats, insects, mold and decay.

Outside the sheer loss, when insects reproduced within the grain it could be sold at only a low

price.156 However, if the grain were heat-treated before storage, even by means of a small oven, a

great quantity of grain could be stored without wastage or added expense, and the owner could

retain the hope of selling at a reasonable price.157 Moreover, because this method allowed for the

preparation of grain by river and sea, there was a capacity for export.158

The method Duhamel devised to achieve this was astounding for its simplicity of thinking

and familiarity of practice. The solution was to expose grain to heat above 50 degrees on Réaumur’s

153 Ibid., x-xvii. 154 Ibid., xvii-xxiii. 155 Ibid., xxiv. 156 Ibid., xxvi. 157 Ibid., xxvii. 158 Ibid., xxxii.

thermometer (a scale on which water freezes at 0˚ and boils at 80˚) 159 for 12 hours.160 The resulting grain was dry but could still germinate.161 After cooling, the grain was winnowed to remove any

particulate loosened during heating. Then it could be stored. The grain only required stirring from

time to time within the granary.162 Grain thus treated could be stored for ten years.163 In comparison

to the use of cats, charms, poisons and traps to ward off animals, this was the definition of

Duhamel’s vision of improvement.164

Duhamel’s experimentation with heat treatments continued for years. He found that grain

that had already taken on humidity and carried a disagreeable odor could be somewhat salvaged by

time in the oven. Such grain made “passably good bread” and could be placed into storage. 165

Findings such as this meant that even poor quality grain from abroad could be, once heat treated,

used to feed the people or replenish grain stores. Further experimentation with storage structures,

ventilation systems and oven/furnace configurations led to a greater diversity in granary systems.

But even with these revisions, little of the initial method changed. The appropriate temperature

range for cleaning the grain rose to 50-60 degrees Reaumur; although Duhamel insisted that going as

high as 85-90 degrees was needed to thoroughly cleanse grain of all insects and their eggs.166 Yet this

appears to have affected the quality of the flour, such that heated grain was deemed inferior in a

taste test with unheated grain.167

159 Benjamin Martin, Thermometrum magnum: or, grand standard thermometer, (London: printed and sold by the author, 1772), 7-9; Jean-François Gauvin, “The Instrument That Never Was: Inventing, Manufacturing, and Branding Réaumur's Thermometer During the Enlightenment,” Annals of Science, 69:4 (2012), 516, 521. 160 Though at one place in the manual, he noted six hours at 40-50 degrees; see: Duhamel, Traité de la conservation des grains, 273. 161 Duhamel, Traité de la conservation des grains, et en particulier du froment, 18. 162 Ibid., 274-275, 23. 163 Ibid., 275. 164 Ibid., 24. 165 Duhamel du Monceau, Supplément au traité de la conservation des grains, (Paris: H. L. Guerin and L. F. Delatour, 1765), 1. 166 Ibid., 23-24, 47-48. 167 Ibid., 104-105.

According to Duhamel, bread could be made from barley, oats, buckwheat, rye and/or

wheat. His method of conservation was applicable to them all.168 Furthermore, it allowed for a great

volume of grain to be stored in a small space, which was a notable improvement over large-scale

warehouses that did not optimize their capacities.169 Yet where were barley, oats, buckwheat and rye

in the New Husbandry? Had Duhamel expressed support for a greater range of crops, maintained a

crop rotation that gave those crops place within improved agriculture, and analyzed their

comparative benefits in terms of their subsistence value, he might have articulated an improved

agriculture that fit with his proposed granary system. But a France that held to his ideas on the

arable would not have had the small grains to fill its improved granaries.

In putting forward the New Husbandry, his ideas for arboriculture and his findings for the preservation of grain, Duhamel articulated three pathways of improvement that were not completely synchronized. Had the Traité continued as an agricultural journal, it is likely his correspondents would have helped unite them, expanding the New Husbandry into a holistic, ecological approach to agricultural improvement. In imagining some of their elements, particularly those applicable to a range of land types, topographies and cropping conditions, we can identify latent capacities in

Duhamel’s agronomy that were not attained and remain of potential value in the present day.

Duhamel’s Agronomy

With interests as diverse as they were interconnected, Duhamel sought to create a way of knowing that impacted the ways people worked and lived. This implied that knowledge was measured at least in some fashion by its usability. Himself concerned with the feasibility of his findings, the experimental model that he helped to articulate had its goal in improvement of the material conditions of agricultural production as well as in the quality and preservation of its

168 Duhamel, Traité de la conservation des grains, et en particulier du froment, 1-3. 169 Ibid., 13.

harvests. Among the works surveyed here, Duhamel’s contributions can be counted among the

disciplines and sub-disciplines of forestry, pomology, soil science, botany, plant physiology, vegetable and cereal production, fodder crops and artificial grasses, as well as many more. But it is sufficient for our purposes to amass them together under the categories they were then known as: agriculture and science.

Duhamel’s conception of agriculture was at times bleak. He acknowledged that the labor was arduous, at the same time that he chastised farmers for not giving it their all. Yet the improvement of agriculture was a solution to even this. For if the work could be made both simpler on the body but more complex in the mind it might yield the necessities of daily life, economy and society, without enacting a cost on its conducers. In this we can identify a vital component of Duhamel’s thinking: there was no association of nobility, or inhumanity, with farmers and farming. It was an occupation, like any other. But its import lay in its centrality to human life, in its existence as a hub of all human enterprises. Its improvement was therefore tantamount to the improvement of the conditions of human existence and agriculture, as the heart of scientific inquiry, made perfect sense.

On that basis, I have prepared Duhamel’s agronomy as the following principles, to be used in Chapter 4’s comparative analysis:

1) Utilize row cultivation 2) Substitution of fallow with grain and fodder cultivation If not substitution, than interval planting, whereby swaths of grain interspersed among the fallow allowed for the field to be perpetually cultivated in preparation for the next year’s wheat, and gave benefit through whatever wheat was produced 3) Economize inputs, including reductions in seeding rates and fertilizer use 4) Use available tools a) replace and improve them when necessary and able b) but overwhelmingly, use them consistently and efficiently Necessary tools defined as hoe and spade for hand-cultivation and plow, seed drill and cultivator (horse-hoe) for holdings exceeding 90-100 arpents 5) Cultivate trees in all locations fitting for them, with attention to the details of their use, and the necessities of their type a) Importation of varieties suitable to France and the needs of its manufactures b) Use of seed, cutting and grafting to fit with needs of farmer 6) Apply varietal selection to produce constant harvest throughout the year 58

7) Improve grain storage

They reflect a rational approach to agricultural improvement, grounded in experiment and

experience. While the influence of Tull remains clear in the opening entries, Duhamel’s

modifications and proscriptions, as well as the implications of their application, are made clear by

the latter ones.

These principles, derived from reading Duhamel’s collected treatises, distinguish his

agronomy as two connected tracks of land use: higher-quality land, used for arable and fruiting trees,

and lower-quality lands, used for pasture and for wood. These systems are compatible. They are not

distinct. Indeed, they work better in terms of production, and sustainability, when they are combined.

When these systems are placed together they reveal an attempt to rationalize both space and time, to yield an agriculture that was improved and perpetual.

Anyone who has dabbled with gardening or farming knows that it is easy to sketch successful models. Working on paper, all seeds germinate, all flowers bloom, all plants produce.

Such is not the case when we work with soil, water, insects, animals and weather. We cannot commit to models that have not been tested; and this was precisely why Duhamel published no findings that had not been attempted by himself or the contributors who communicated with him directly. This style of knowing made knowledge dependent on experience, experience that had repeatable results.

This was not without its errors. Duhamel’s experiments did not have the controls to prevent his findings from being muddled by multiple, changing variables. Nevertheless, he succeeded in modifying Tullian agronomy in ways that made it more generally successful. This was the case in

France as it was in Britain. The comments Duhamel issued on the reception of his own works, and the comments attributed to Duhamel in the preface to his English translations confirm this. Yet

Duhamel’s New Husbandry did not mature to its full potential. It’s emphases on monocultural wheat as well as mechanical cultivation undermined his efforts to expand improved husbandry

59 among smallholders, disposing readers to undervalue crop rotation and to overvalue technology.

The actualization of an agricultural system that integrates arable, pasture and trees into a perpetually productive landscape is as of yet still in a state of becoming.

The practices of uneducated husbandmen have been generally despised or neglected, and we are apt to imagine of certain countries, that better cultivated ones can learn nothing from them; but this is a great error; on the contrary, I believe that the very worst have practices worth knowing, at least I may assert, that I have not been in any, where something useful to the best, might not be acquired. To discover, collect, and bring to light those scattered practices unknown but to the inhabitants of a district, is the proper business of a farming traveler.170 -Arthur Young, Annals of Agriculture (1787)

Chapter 2. Arthur Young (1741-1820): Improvement as Alchemy, Art and Science This chapter uses Arthur Young’s The Farmer’s Kalendar (1771) to assess his early perspectives

on farming and traces their evolution through The Annals of Agriculture (1783-1808). It examines

Young’s earliest, complete approach to farm management and evaluates how changing goals in

British and world-wide agriculture encouraged its adaptation. This approach reveals how and why

alternative practices emerged, while underscoring the perpetually fruitful agricultural systems contained within Young’s agronomy.

As in Chapter 1, I reduce Young’s approaches to a set of principles that can be contrasted with the other case studies. However, whereas the other writers I discuss remained more or less consistent in their outlooks, Young’s thinking shifted over his career. As a result, it is beneficial to compare his work with those of Duhamel and Ōkura Nagatsune as much as with his own. The sheer volume of texts Young produced or oversaw makes this a difficult proposition for one tome, let alone one chapter. Moreover, his controversial, sometimes inaccurate and otherwise contradictory views would suggest the task is imprudent.171 Nonetheless, by sticking to the particulars of his

techniques, this chapter illuminates Young’s practices and goals.

Young saw agriculture from three interrelated viewpoints: as alchemy, art and science. So while he observed the transmutational abilities of soil and dung to become articles of human need, he also emphasized agriculture’s capacities for personal expression and its potential for universally

170 Arthur Young, Annals of Agriculture, Volume 8 (1787), 331. 171 Robert C. Allen and Cormac Ó Gráda, “On the Road Again with Arthur Young: English, Irish, and French Agriculture during the Industrial Revolution,” The Journal of Economic History 48:1 (March, 1988); Liam Brunt, “Rehabilitating Arthur Young,” The Economic History Review 56: 2 (May, 2003); P. M. Jones, “Arthur Young (1741-1820): For and Against,” The English Historical Review 127: 528 (Oct. 2012).

applicable knowledge and practice. Thus experiments with too many uncontrolled variables might

not yield repeatable findings but they could demonstrate passion and conviction. They displayed the

farmer’s hopes and unearthed the farmer’s art.172 For art was not merely the farmer’s intentionality in

what was to be grown but how the fields and animals looked and the artifice or skill to make it so.

Yet farmers did not need to grope blindly for what might work well both widely and often. Thus the

scientific method, as well as strict book-keeping, could temper alchemy and art, declaring what steps

could be taken, and how, to arrive at regularized outcomes. But science was not for Young what it

was for Duhamel. A system of knowing in and of itself was not the goal. Young sought a place

where the products of transmutation as well as the personal expression and the passion of and for discovery blended into a representation of the farmer such that farm and farmer were reflections of each other.

The Kalendar’s Contents Young published the The Farmer’s Kalendar following on four years of managing more than

one hundred acres. The book was received well and went through several editions, rapidly. 173

Young’s intended audience included farmers who had chosen agriculture as their profession later in

life and poor farmers whom he would show “that a book may be of some use: a truth they will not all

acknowledge.”174 That Young addressed his readers as farmers and not as specific sub-categories

based on particular scales of holdings indicates Young conceived of his audience as an occupational

group, not a social class.175 The following discussion will illustrate his hopes for the amelioration of

farming practices as its own category of thought, disconnected from his readers’ depth of experience,

capital, status or class.

172 In his own words: “The intention of an artist is always to be considered in examining a production of his art; and a man’s agriculture, for information or for pleasure, should no more be condemned because the result is not profit, than a painter, who produces a Venus, should be ridiculed for not having drawn a Hercules.” Arthur Young, Annals of Agriculture, Volume 28 (1797), 18. 173 Young, The Autobiography of Arthur Young, 29-30. 174 Ibid., a2- 175 Arthur Young, The Farmer’s Kalendar; or, Monthly Directory, (London: Robinson and Roberts, 1771), 1-2.

In the Kalendar, Young sought to differentiate his work from already available agricultural

treatises. 176 Rather than provide an expansive yet shallow sketch “with as much missing as

present,” 177 his would encompass a farming model. His book therefore incorporated crops and

livestock, as well as how to prepare for and maintain them, in addition to the management of

buildings, coppices, and other infrastructure. Young’s model is further distinct in its explicit

rejection of Jethro Tull’s widely practiced “false principles.” 178 In contrast to Tull’s belief that

manures were unnecessary if a farmer produced a fine tilth through repeated plowings and

harrowings, Young consistently, almost obsessively emphasized how to make and utilize as much

manure as possible. He details and repeats the best means for doing so in every applicable section, of each month, throughout the text. Such repetition was necessary to ensure that this elementary and foundational component of improved farming would be emulated on readers’ farms.

One of the principal ways Young distinguished himself from other farm books was his stress on record keeping. He wanted a record “for every article in the farm,” one for every arable field, and one for all land under grass.179 These were the kinds of records he came to expect during his tours,

evidence of what was and was not worthy of replication. In their compilation and calculation, Young

advised farmers to divide the cost of rent among the fields so that every parcel’s profit to loss

adjustments encompassed it. Moreover, tithe, miscellaneous expenses, and sundries were to be

included on a plot-by-plot basis. Once these expenses were included, the farmer could see profit and

loss in terms of every field, in the context of the farm as a whole. This was “a point of great

consequence,” for it allowed farmers to view which animals and crops paid best.180 Record-keeping

was thus the means by which farmers determined what worked, as well as what to replace. If records

176 Works such as John Hill’s Eden: or, A Compleat Body of Gardening (1757), John Mills’ A New and Complete System of Practical Husbandry (1762), and Henry Stevenson’s The Gentleman Gardener Instructed in Sowing, Planting, Pruning, and Grafting Seeds, Plants, Flowers, and Trees (1769), all stand in contrast to Young’s methods and intents in the Kalendar. 177 Young, The Farmer’s Kalendar, a2-a3. 178 Ibid. 179 Ibid, a3. 180 Ibid., a4-a5.

were kept well, a farmer did not have to look further than among his own fields when considering

what practices to extend or reduce. That is, on-farm problems could be solved with on-farm

information and experience.

Nonetheless, Young did not reduce all of agriculture to profit/loss analysis. So while the

economics of agriculture are visible, and are often the details scholars utilize most, Young

simultaneously stressed agriculture as art, advocating that observers had to understand “the intention

of the artist” as the only means of judging a farmer’s husbandry.181 For this reason what Young deemed “good” was not linearly connected with profit. There were times farmers had to do what was good for the land even if it was not good for the wallet. Often what could be deemed “good” husbandry came from weighing the principal factors of the farm against its management, considering its soil, its situation (whether it was flat or slopped, what directions it faced, the nature of the sub- soil, the height of the water table, its exposure to wind and propensity for frost, etc.), the distance from market, and the size and type of animal teams employed on site, among other factors.182 What

a farmer could or could not do with these was a reflection of capital, labor, time and know-how.

Capital, labor, time and know-how happened to be the means by which Young conceived of

agriculture as investment in the future. For these inputs were to be plowed into the farm, just as

manure, not merely to create a profitable season but to generate the conditions of perpetual

production. Successful, improving farmers understood this, embracing the re-investment of profits,

the never-ceasing application of human and animal labor and the maximization of time.183

181 “Result of Viewing a Farm,” Annals, Volume 28 (1797), 17-25. 182 This is precisely what Young wrote when discussing how to select a farm: “Let the farmer, that is debating, whether he should hire a farm that is offered him, examine the soil well, to be able to determine its nature, the stiffness, moisture, exposure, levelness, slope, stoney-ness; what draining, manuring, fencing, &c. &c. will be wanting: let him see to the roads, distance of market, prices of commodities, labour, &c. let him fully acquaint himself with the state of tythes or gathering; if the latter, let him at once reject the farm. He should know the poor rates, attend to the compactness of the fields, and consider well the covenants relative to the cropping them; for many such are extremely detrimental to a good conduct of the land,” (Young, The Farmer’s Kalendar, 305-306). 183 Ibid., 368-370.

Such a pathway to improvement did not rely on a specific scale of landholding, or of capital.

In this Young was perfectly clear: a well-managed farm could earn a 30-40% return on capital,

annually, even if the initial sum was only a few hundred pounds sterling.184 This may strike some as

particularly interesting, given that Young is believed to have strongly favored large holdings. Yet his

words are hard to mince, “A good farmer will always remember, that there is more profit in a

masterly cultivation of a few acres, than in the slovenly conduct of many.”185 Of course, how many acres constituted ‘a few’ and ‘many’ is subject to debate. Yet two examples clarify the matter. In the

Kalendar, Young provided a hypothetical case of a well-cultivated farm of 45 acres that, through an improved crop rotation, generated roughly 40% gain on investment.186 In the Annals when he and his correspondents went smaller scale, contemplating one to three acre parcels, they proposed a

400% return, on albeit much smaller invested capital. 187 Of course, the agricultures to be practiced

on these respective lands were not the same. But what they shared in practice and mentality, that is

the practices of Young’s improvement-oriented agronomy, enabled their potential.188

With this in mind, let us approach the Kalendar as a treatise on farm management that

encompassed ideas, mindful of conditions of long-term fertility and of economic benefit, applicable to farms regardless of their scale.

Tasks and Techniques of a Farm Ideal “HUSBANDRY is an art so extremely various in its operations, its professors have such a perpetual call for their attention, and every month brings so many works, that must be executed in a given time, and some of them almost to a day, that scarcely any business requires a better memory,

184 Ibid., a5, a6-. 185 Ibid., a6. 186 Ibid., a7- to a8. 187 Sir John Sinclair, “Observations on the Means of Enabling a Cottager to Keep a Cow by the Produce of a Small Portion of Arable Land,” Annals, Volume 37 (1801), 241-243. 188 Young, The Farmer’s Kalendar , a6-.

none a stricter observance of seasons.”189 In other words, farming is complex and requires acumen.

Yet there is something more to these opening lines of the Kalendar than just an acknowledgement of

the intricacies of agriculture. Young would have the reader know that to be a successful farmer

required knowledge yoked to the management of time and memory. Otherwise, the farmer could

not hope to operate, simultaneously, the tasks of the Kalendar: the supervision of sheep, cattle and

laboring animals, fodder crops, the collection and processing of manures, the preparation and

maintenance of grain and their supplement through cash-cropping madder, licorice, hops, hemp,

flax and coleseed. This was not a farm that merely produced grain, meat and dairy,190 but rather a

model for the widest-range of produce a farmer could hope to obtain without relying on hot-beds,

greenhouses and orchards.

Like the Western calendar, Young began with January. However January does not initiate a

season nor is it when a farmer begins any of the many tasks of arable or pasture. The over-wintering

grains, like rye, wheat or winter-barley, should already have been planted. The preparations for

winter-feeding of livestock should already have been made. The fields to be planted in spring should

already have been plowed. In fact, a farmer who came into this line of work with this book in hand

in this month would be struck by the realization that they had already missed too many preparations

and would be playing catch-up all year.

No matter what has been written of it, winter was not an off-season on well-managed farms.

Horses or oxen were to cart on-farm manures, conduct road work, transport grain and, if there were

nothing else to do on the farm, go back and forth to the nearest town for manures.191 Laborers

threshed grain, 192 repaired fences, dug drains, cleared ditches, water-furrowed over-wet fields,

189 Ibid., 1. 190 Joan Thirsk, Alternative Agriculture A History: From the Black Death to the Present Day, (Oxford University Press, London, 1997), 3, 104-118. 191 Young, The Farmer’s Kalendar, 13-15. 192 Ibid., 383-386.

manured grass-lands and green wheat, attended the farm yard, repaired buildings, thinned and

maintained woods, broadcast grass seed to serve for hay later in that year, cut irrigation channels for

watered meadows and, once the ground was dry enough, gave final plowings in preparation for

spring planting.193 Just as within the bodies of perennials, winter was a time of provision for the

coming spring.

For Young, the most critical labor of winter months was caring for livestock and managing

their manure. “Always remember, that the raising [of] dung in winter is the grand pillar of your

husbandry,” 194 he admonished. The quantity of dung that a farmer managed was “the most

important, convincing proof” of “being a good farmer.”195 For farmers who, in many cases, did not

have the opportunity to purchase manures, dung was the only and best chance of creating fertile

fields and the excellent series of crops that came by them.196 From December through March or

April 60 loads of “excellent stuff” for every 100 sheep would rain down upon the farmyard whereas

the same flock, pastured on dry grass, would not manure a single acre.197 In the same period, a cow

could produce 15-20 loads and a hog 10 loads. 198 And dung wasn’t the only thing dropping from

animal backsides in the season, for advanced ewes lambed in December and January.199 This made winter into one of the most crucial seasons of the year, the period when farmers assessed the materials for their arable and the young lives that would come to maturity on their pasture.

By Young’s style of management, farmers could generate greater quantities of manure by controlling the feeding environment, switching the animals to green foods, and littering them.200 All

193 Ibid., 16-23, 42-52. 194 Ibid, 12. 195 Ibid., 132. 196 Ibid., 132-134, 386-388, 396. 197 Ibid., 3-10. 198 Ibid., 132. 199 Ibid., 3-10. 200 Cutting fern (brakes/bracken) for use in the farmyard was considered profitable labor. If stacked and placed beneath cattle, they were treaded into dung; if used in littering stables they absorbed animal urine before composting. Young considered the farmer who harvested fern from personal holdings and purchased from neighbors to be a “good farmer.”

of these tasks required the management of labor and various resources. The farmer had to carefully

plan and orchestrate the movement of animals and their foodstuffs, the collection and allocation of

bedding and litter, and the storage of dung. The benefits were not just the manure but healthier,

fatter animals who, no longer underfed on dry grasses for three or four months, were marketable

when the price of meat was still high. And, the manure that was generated was better quality than

the stuff that came from underfed animals because potatoes, carrots and cabbages, as well as the oft- mentioned turnip, are more nutrient-dense than grass. Consequently, they enable animals to fattening faster than grass. However, they also have more indigestible substances which result in more and higher quality manure. For instance, livestock usually transform between 5 and 45% of the nitrogen in plant proteins into muscle and fat. The remaining 55-95% of nitrogen is excreted. So while the use of these alternatives foods enabled higher stocking rates in comparison to grazing systems, 201 it also meant more nutrients on farmyard floors. Cycling this manure back into the

cropping system gave farmers more and better fertilizer for their crops, unlocking greater yields.

More animals therefore enabled higher yields, which in turn could allow for higher animal stocking

rates. In this light, manure was the keystone that balanced intensive livestock management with

intensive crop production.

While storing, heaping, transporting and spreading manure required much more labor than

folding, 202 it allowed farmers to deposit dung in the desired quantity at the chosen location. The

preferred method was to spread it before the plow,203 whereby it was largely placed in the middle of

Stubbles could be used in the same way. Cutting and carting them back to the farmyard yielded more of that desirable manure and removed an encumbrance to the plow (Ibid., 288-290). 201 Sven G. Sommer and Morton L. Christensen, “Animal Production and Animal Manure Management,” in Seven G. Sommer, Morten L. Christensen, Thomas Schmidt, and Lars Stoumann Jensen (eds), Animal Manure Recycling: Treatment and Management (West Sussex: Wiley, 2013), 5-7; Lars S. Jensen and Sven G. Sommer, Manure Organic Matter – Characteristics and Microbial Transformations,” in in Seven G. Sommer, Morten L. Christensen, Thomas Schmidt, and Lars Stoumann Jensen (eds), Animal Manure Recycling: Treatment and Management (West Sussex: Wiley, 2013), 67. 202 Young stressed that folds were always to be horse-hoed so as to bury the manure, and hand-hoed if too narrow to permit the horse-hoe (The Farmer’s Kalendar, 198-199, 224). 203 Ibid., 56.

the ridges as they were cut. Such a position was ideal for plant roots. It also ensured that the sun and

wind could not attenuate it. If the field was also water furrowed and drained, the possibilities of

leaching were correspondingly diminished. But these results depended on the depth of plowing.

Deep plowing, which emerged within the Annals both as the preferred preparation for root crops

and the means of plowing under green manure crops,204 could place fertilizers too deep for seedlings

to utilize. This is a point that can be considered when scholars make comparisons between shallow

and deep plowing, their accompanying applications of fertilizers, and the transmission of either to

foreign farmers through European agronomists.205

Cultivation could, depending on the season, begin in February with black oats, hog peas or beans, which enabled farmers “to banish the unprofitable custom of fallowing.” 206 Preparatory

plowings for barley, carrots, cabbages and potatoes could start as well.207 The latter were especially

important for farms on clay soils. They were the crops that allowed larger flocks of livestock, which

in turn provided the dung requisite to making heavier soils easier to work.208 Where crops like beans

and peas were to replace fallow, Young recommended they be drilled, allowing the farmer to plow

between rows, save on hand-weeding and hoeing, and keep the land finely pulverized.209 These are

the elements of Tull’s husbandry that Young maintained. Young so strongly advocated them that

one wonders whether the repeated passages of the horse and hoe would have damaged crops of

beans, peas and potatoes that had stretched or fallen into the intervals. It is exactly out of fear for

204 Examples can be found in: James Young, “On Land Draining,” Annals, Volume 8 (1787), 164; Hutcheson Mure, “On Drilling Turnips,” Annals, Volume 9 (1788), 432-436; Arthur Young, “A Day at Mr. Ducket’s,” Annals, Volume 10 (1788), 190. 205 By the middle of the nineteenth century deep plowing was so widely accepted among European agronomists that those hired by the Meiji state to improve Japanese farming practices were especially dismissive of Japanese practices because they did not plow as deeply as European counterparts. For one example, see: Iinuma Jiro, Japanese Farming: Past and Present, (Tokyo: Nobunkyo, 1995), 154. 206 Ibid., 26. 207 Ibid., 26-42, 51-51. 208 Ibid., 40. 209 Ibid., 26-27.

that kind of damage that Young stressed repeated horse-hoeings were not to be conducted with

grains.210

The fusion of a modifiable crop rotation with animal husbandry enabled Young’s system to

amass fertility over time. The inclusion of legumes in his crop rotation, whether clover, lucerne or a

pulse, such as beans and peas, provided at least some of the nitrogen needed for their own growth

and, as discussed in Chapter 1, had the capacity to bring large quantities into the soil as a whole.

Secondly, the cultivation of fodder crops produced more usable vegetable matter than grass, exactly

because so much of grass’ growth occurs below ground and is not easily prepared for livestock

consumption.211 Plants that produce accessible, extractable roots, especially those with edible tops,

increase the quantity of vegetable matter that can be consumed by livestock. As we have seen, this

allows for more manure production which in turn generates higher yields allowing for higher animal

stocking rates. Thirdly, Young had to roll his grasslands and pastures otherwise worm-castings

obstructed scythes when the fields were mown. 212 While we lack the ability to quantify their volume,

the presence of so much worm dung indicates the potential for significant impact. Worms improve

soils by increasing nutrient availability, adding porosity, and generally encouraging the growth of

microbes beneficial to the plants humans want to grow. They also manage some disease-causing

agents.213

210 Ibid., 30-31. 211 There are various estimates for what proportion of growth occurs above as opposed to below ground. Nonetheless there is consensus that grasses deposit carbon in the soil, primarily through root growth and senescence. This is part of the reasoning behind the use of grasses in long-term and permaculture agricultural systems. See: Peter J. Gregory and Stephen Nortcliff (ed), Soil Conditions and Plant Growth, (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013); Stefanie Heinze, Joachim Raupp and Rainer Georg Joergensen, “Effects of Fertilizer and Spatial Heterogeneity in Soil pH on Microbial Biomass Indices in a Long-Term Field Trail of Organic Agriculture,” in Plant Soil 328 (2010); Jules Pretty. “Agricultural Sustainability: Concepts, Principles and Evidence,” in Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences 363: 1491, (Feb 12, 2008). 212 Young, The Farmer’s Kalendar, 126. 213 These are widely known benefits of worm activity on agricultural soils. For more information on the transformation of particular substances, or the bioavailability of specific nutrients, see the following: Patrick J. Bohlen and Clive A. Edwards, “Earthworm Effects on N Dynamics and Soil Respiration in Microcosms Receiving Organic and Inorganic Nutrients,” Soil Biol. Biochem. 27: 3 (1995), 341-348; Clive Edwards, Earthworm Ecology, (Boca Raton, FL; CRC Press, 2014); Nakamura Yoshio, Mimizu to tsuchi to yūki nōgyō, (Tokyo: Sōshinsha, 1998); Nakamura Yoshio, Mimizu no hataraki: tsuchi wo tagayasu, koyasu chikyū no mushi, (Tokyo: Sōshinsha, 2011).

An improved crop rotation coupled with animal husbandry required flexibility. For this

reason, Young accentuated and thoroughly discussed alternatives. Discussions of multiple crop rotations that made use of different ameliorative crops, and could make use of fallow, are the most straightforward to review. 214 Young identified crops that could replace each other without

destabilizing the rotation, allowing farmers to adapt their cultivation. This kind of information

permitted farmers to replant when a crop failed without losing an entire season.

The presence of fallow is particularly striking given that so much of improving agriculture

was predicated on its removal. Yet to allow for diversity of practices on a variety of soils and in

different exposures and climates, Young knew he could not mandate the abolition of fallow. To do

so would contradict his approach. Nonetheless, Young did further particular ideas about proper

crop management. The substitution of a pulse for clover was deemed bad management because they

did not prepare the land as well for wheat.215 Clover, able to remain on the ground for years, was to

be constantly fed off by livestock or mown for hay; it had the added benefit of acquiescing to a grain

crop that “will be extremely fine.” Clover could also be multi-cropped with barley (or oats) in

spring.216 Sown over the land as spring-grains sprouted, it grew throughout the summer and was

well-established by fall harvest. Clover therefore had the capacity to replace a fallow without leaving

the land bare, and without added labor costs, for no added plowings, harrowings or hoeings were

needed other than those given for the spring grains. Lastly, if the clover grew in thickly, it smothered

weeds.

214 In discussion of barley: 1) turnips, 2) barley, 3) clover, 4) wheat, or 1) cabbages, 2) barley, 3) clover, 4) wheat, or 1) fallow, 2) barley, 3) clover, 4) wheat (Ibid., 56-57) In discussion of peas: 1) turnips, 2) barley, 3) clover, 4) wheat, 5) peas or 1) cabbage, 2) oats, 3) clover, 4) wheat, 5) peas (Ibid., 65) Without listing further examples, we can already identify notable elements of Young’s approach. Turnips and cabbages are replaceable with one another, as are oats and barley. But a successful rotation will always include wheat after clover and barley after a preparatory crop, including fallow. 215 Ibid., 267-269. 216 Ibid., 58-59, 65, 84-87.

In line with Young’s stress on multiple appropriate techniques and adaptable approaches,

much of the Kalendar was an attempt to convince farmers to incorporate ameliorating crops into

their field rotations. Young drew attention to which plants succeeded during which season, with

consideration to the soils that matched them best. For instance, there was a pea for every kind of

soil, even on heavy, wet clays and light lands;217 carrots could be inserted into regular courses on

average soils; 218 on stiffer soils, where carrots tended to grow deformed, parsnips performed better;219 potatoes could be adapted to arable fields, sown into grassland, planted on borders or, if

planted in equidistant rows, introduced into the horse-hoeing husbandry as long as they were amply

manured; 220 cabbages performed well on rich land when well-manured; 221 rape- or coleseed, as

exhausting crops, were to be sown in the same manner as turnips, on a field recently fallowed;222 ray-

grass, often sown mixed with clover, thrived on most light soils, including sands, sandy loams,

gravels or poor gravelly loams, but not heavy, wet loams or clays, where it became a weed;223 lucerne

was to be planted on sands, gravels, limestone and chalk soils;224 sainfoine should be grown on dry

soils, no matter how poor;225 burnet was suited to most soils, but would not do well on those soils

suited to sainfoine;226 hemp and flax should only be sown on the strongest, richest soils, as both

were exhausting unless used to make dung.227

Other crops were mentioned for the benefits their cultivation could provide. Buckwheat was

recommended on all soils, except those that were heavy, as a green manure that allowed the weeds

217 Ibid., 63. 218 Ibid., 71-72. 219 Ibid., 73. 220 Ibid., 73-80. 221 Ibid., 81. 222 Ibid., 210. 223 Ibid., 87. 224 Ibid., 106, 139-140. 225 Ibid., 108-109, 140-141. 226 Ibid., 110-111. 227 Ibid., 170-172.

to grow before plowing them all under in preparation for another crop.228 Madder “a work of very

great importance in modern husbandry of the improved kind” 229 required deep tillage, water-

furrowing, the earth plowed and harrowed fine, likely without horse-hoeing because it tore the

horizontally-growing roots too greatly.230 On the other hand, licorice, which was more commonly

cultivated on account of its vertically-growing tap root, responded positively to deep plowing and

hoeing the intervals. The best soils were not only plowed they were dug, which in turn meant the

soil was rendered appropriate for plants that required deeply prepared soils, afterwards. 231 Such

detail has been given here because when it is presented in this manner it is easy to identify which

plants form convenient accompaniments. Knowing which plants succeed on what types of soils

made designing a crop rotation rather straightforward.

Experimentation was a vital component of Young’s methodology. We have already seen that

Young frequently stressed that all farms were to make use of off-farm manures when able. However,

how was a farmer to know the best modes of application? Young did not tell his readers to accept his

calculations as their own. His application rates were meant to inform readers of what worked for

him. Instead, he suggested farmers apply the materials for a year or two, “to see what at a given

price will suit your land the best,” and he recommended using half-acre, contiguous plots well-

marked out and each received a different manure. 232 Applications rates were to be determined by

the price of manures rather than equivalent volumes. Once harvest came, the farmer was to weigh

the crops and determine which had yielded more heavily. With this information, the farmer would

be equipped to decide which manures, at which prices, best suited the farm’s soils. This was also the

means to avoid expending large quantities of cash on manures without knowing their benefit – a

228 Ibid., 100-101, 138-139. 229 Ibid., 101. 230 Ibid., 100-104, 342. 231 Ibid., 104-105, 343-344. 232 Ibid., 43-44.

73 term Young acknowledged was difficult to measure because some manures stimulated vegetative growth whereas others achieved heavier yields.233

Experimentation was consequently a means of knowing what could expand on the standards inherited by customary practice. It was also the means of checking customary practice for errors.

Such was the case with Young’s attack on the bias against pea cultivation. In his mind, the problem was not that peas were an inferior plant, or that their cultivation was inherently incompatible with crop rotations, the demands of livestock, or the market; rather the problem was that farmers had sown peas when the land was exhausted. As a result, yields were irregular and not exactly welcoming of extensive cultivation. Young argued that the correlation of practice, plant and outcome had not been in the plant’s favor and that a trial cultivation of the plant, on properly prepared soil, would show this to be the case. The outcome, then, would not be the plant’s inferiority but a confirmation of the “slovenly conduct of bad farmers.”234

The Principles of Young’s Early Farm Management Based on this reading of The Farmer’s Kalendar, Young’s initial agronomy can be presented as the following principles:

1) Acceptance of the seed-drill and horse-hoe 2) Rejection of Tull’s view of manures 3) Modifying crop rotations to include legumes and fodder crops, 4) Altering the proportion of arable to pasture 5) Purchasing off-farm manures, when and where feasible 6) Raising flocking rates as high as could be maintained throughout the winter and early spring to generate larger quantities of dung and attain earlier, high meat prices 7) Improvement of arable, not only for the increased production of fodder crops but for grain, industrial and cash-crop production

What these principles represent is an agronomy that combined land-extensive pasture farming with comparatively labor-intensive cropping and animal keeping. Like Duhamel, it translated garden- and kitchen-crops associated with small-scale cultivation into large-scale cultivars. By selecting crops that

233 Ibid., 44-45. 234 Ibid., 32.

fit with the needs of animal husbandry, Young ensured that anything that was not marketable could

be fed through livestock, generating a profit through the production of milk, meat and dung.

Farmers were thereby freed of risks inherent to the marketplace. Then by integrating labor-saving techniques and reallocating that labor to other elements of farm improvement, Young rationalized its use on the farm. He attempted to maximize what could be accomplished in a year, engendering as many profit-generating enterprises as could be maintained.

While there would not have been a farm in all of Britain capable of carrying out all the processes Young detailed in the Kalendar to their fullest extent, savvy farmers could utilize their land,

labor, capital, time and know-how to attain as much as possible. That is why Young advised readers

to undertake those tasks that would yield future benefits, even if it was on the scale of decades.235

Farmers were told to view their wastes, their waters and adjacent rivers as sites of future fertility.

The Annals of Agriculture The Kalendar serves as a baseline for Young’s farm management in his early career, before he

earned the status of agricultural expert. For by the time he assumed the editorship of the Annals that is what he had become. Correspondents from across Europe, North America, Asia and Africa wrote him for advice, sent specimens and gifts, and appealed to him for input on how to handle the challenges of their holdings. These kinds of exchanges and the topics they engendered comprise much of the 45 volumes of the Annals. Topics range from experiments in veterinary science, competitive plow trials, a debate on the appropriateness of fallow, the use of seed steeps and other forcing or stimulating concoctions, livestock shows, the formation of agricultural associations, controversies over whether the horse, ox or ass was the best draft animal, the cause and cure of mildew, theories of plant nutrition and the gradual development of a systematic understanding of manures. All were attempts to understand, and in many cases advocate for, the place of agriculture

235 This was the reason for why expensive manures like marl, clay and chalk were worth applying.

within the economy and the nation, making the Annals “the most significant of agricultural journals

during the latter part of the eighteenth century.”236

The contributors to the Annals, including Young, spoke of agriculture as art, philosophy and

natural history. They wrote of experiments, proof, evidence and analysis in terms of convictions, beliefs, feelings, hints and hunches. They made claims based on trials and observations at the same time as hearsay. Even when faced with a series of experimental facts, they disputed claims as reflections of personal reputation rather than dispassionate theories. As a result, they created a polycentric mess in which the reader was swayed from pole to pole, driven to switch attitudes based on the best argument and facts or, better yet, experiments on their own lands. When this occurred,

it was the greatest achievement of the Annals. Thus despite his own star power, or that of his most

celebrated contributors, the readers of the Annals were not expected to receive and obey Young’s or

anyone else’s accepted practices. The goal was to encourage diverse, personally-tested, carefully

orchestrated farm management that would see farmers, and through them the British nation,

prosper.

For these reasons, Young found himself in many roles within the Annals. As the editor, he

selected what made publication and what did not, often contesting ideas and practices,

complimenting those of value and adding questions for future inquiry. As author, experimenter and

contributor, he was an inquisitive, opinionated and dogged adherent to some ideas while thoroughly

flexible on others. As translator of foreign works, and of his own correspondence, he was a conduit

for distant practices. He could be inspiring, reminding readers that failure was an ingredient of

success. He was also a forwarder of ideas, circulating the pamphlets and publications of government

bodies, agricultural associations, or esteemed contributors, and regularly issuing queries on a range

236 Nicholas Goddard, “Agricultural Literature and Societies,” in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Volume VI, 367.

of agrarian concerns, including climatological events and local cropping conditions.237 In these roles,

Young amassed a larger body of agronomic literature than had likely ever existed. That assortment

of personal, practical, experimental and theoretical information was a stimulus for the

transformation of his own agronomic system.

An Altered Agronomy? Juxtaposing Young’s farm management from the Kalendar with his work in the Annals

identifies how Young’s thoughts on agricultural practices shifted. It assesses the impact of the

Annals on Young and the best practices of the era. For it exposes the capacities of information to

influence practice even among experts of the day. Although the Annals are not the measure of

British agronomy as a whole, Young’s emblematic status allows for the consideration of British

husbandry and its capacities through him. Each principle from the Kalendar is discussed in relation

to the Annals below.

Acceptance of the seed-drill and horse-hoe The Kalendar made frequent reference to drilling, almost in preference to broadcast; the

Annals demonstrate otherwise. While his correspondents steady converted to both the seed-drill and

horse-hoe over time, Young became skeptical and remained so for the rest of his life. In 1788,

seventeen years after the Kalendar had been published, Young found drilled and broadcast turnips to

be equally good, raising doubts for whether drilling was an improvement.238 This skepticism led

Young to slip his misgivings on drilling into the Annals whenever possible. It became standard for

237 An incomplete list includes inquiries on the season (particularly when there was a severe frost, heavy rains or a delayed spring), the state and appearance of crops and livestock, general and local information pertinent to trade and manufacture, grain prices and volumes, the prices of provisions, coal and fabric; the proper management of grass land, whether to limit the use of barley for alcohol production (i.e. “the distillery question”) as well as causes of and cures for mildew. 238 Hutcheson Mure, “On Drilling Turnips,” Annals, Volume 9 (1788), 432-438.

him to cite the farming practices of renowned non-drillers.239 Young used their husbandry to dispute

the claim that drilling was superior to broadcast.240

All the while, Young continued to experiment with drilling on his own lands. In his attempts

to make chicory (Chicorium intybus) into a wide-scale livestock food, he drilled it.241 It is difficult to

ascertain whether this was due to the superiority of the drill or an attempt at seed-saving. As

proponents of the drill often argued, one of the chief benefits of drilling was using less seed.242 In

cases such as chicory, where large quantities of seed were hard and expensive to obtain, drilling

lowered costs. Young and many of his correspondents regularly made use of drills when they did

not have sufficient seed for broadcast.

As more and more articles appeared favoring drilling, its use expanded from grains to turnips,

and carrots to artificial grasses, including modifications that allowed for fertilizer to be sown

simultaneously.243 Moreover, farmers provided increasingly clear prescriptions for which soils, and upon which conditions, drilling answered best. Refinements were made to farming implements with

tinkerers creating drill-compatible mechanisms.244 Yet Young remained unconvinced as broadcast

fields still appeared equally productive with drilled counterparts. At the end of an article in which the

author reported that the best farmers of his community, farmers who had been oppositional to the

drill, were now practicing drill husbandry, Young wrote “I must still adhere to my former opinion:

the point is not yet proved.”245

239 “Death of Mr. Ducket,” Annals, Volume 38 (1802), 625-630. 240 Arthur Young, “A Day at Mr. Ducket’s,” Annals, Volume 10 (1788), 196. 241 Arthur Young, “Note Concerning (Chicorium intybus) Succory,” Annals, Volume 10 (1788), 216. 242 John Exter, “On Drilling Corn,” Annals, Volume 30 (1798), 26-29. 243 Joseph Burrell, “Drill for Cake Dust,” Annals, Volume 41 (1804), 76-77. 244 Hutcheson Mure, “Drill Harrow,” Annals, Volume 16 (1791), 384; Volume 17 (1792), 361; the description was provided in Volume 16 and plates in Volume 17. 245 Lewis Majendie, “On the Drill Husbandry,” Annals, Volume 17 (1792), 432.

A rejection of Tull’s view of manures In the rejection of Tull’s view of manures Young was entirely consistent. The Kalendar

stressed every task, in every season, that could increase the production of manure. The Annals

expanded that sentiment to include materials Young had not considered such as river weeds, 246

green manures,247 sea sand,248 salt,249 and a variety of off-farm manures that will be discussed below.

Young, like his correspondents, showed a willingness to try anything that would benefit his

husbandry. In one particularly colorful instance, a farmer tried to replicate a Chinese recipe for

returning barren fruit trees to production. It had been reported that the Chinese applied an aged

gelatinous substance to sterile trees. While it seems likely that this was a nightsoil or compost

mixture,250 the farmer deduced it was some kind of animal matter and elected to boil puppies until

they obtained the desired consistency. It was deemed a remarkable success. Of the trial Young, ever

the practical farmer, found the information worth remembering but expressed doubt for widespread

practice based on the availability of puppies.251

One way in which Young expanded his emphasis on the use of all available on-farm manure

was to experiment with, find beneficial and then recommend humanure. In 1784 he wrote, “the

effect of night soil in this trial is prodigious; it just trebbles the produce: in all the experiments I have

made on this manure, I have ever found this result almost uniform.”252 In 1799 he noted that while

the French refer to it as “l’espéce de fumier que la politesse empêche de nommer,” that is a type of manure

politeness prevents from naming, and the English say of it “’tis more decent and better to let alone,” he

246 Thomas Barnard, “River Weeds for Manure, &c.,” Annals, Volume 6 (1786), 93-95; Agricola, “River or Pond Weed, as a Manure,” Annals, Volume 34 (1800), 107; “River Weeds,” Annals, Volume 37 (1801), 451. 247 Anthony Songa, “On Fallowing, &c.,” Annals, Volume 6 (1786), 362; Young was particularly fond of using buckwheat as a preparation for wheat or turnip cultivation. 248 Edmund Bennet, “Note Concerning the Use of Sea Sand as a Manure in Cornwall,” Annals, Volume 12 (1789), 35. 249 Davies Giddy, “Experiments on the Use of Sea Salt, as Manure,” Annals, Volume 27 (1796), 200-204; “On Salt as a Manure,” Annals, Volume 41 (1804), 330. 250 F. H. King, Farmers of Forty Centuries or Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan (Madison, Wisconsin; Democrat Printing Company, 1911), 199-200, 251. 251 “A Fact in Manuring,” Annals, Volume 28 (1797), 672. 252 “Experiments on Manures,” Annals, Volume 2 (1784), 84.

continued to find it both decent and efficient. One could consider “human ordure as the very best

manure that can be procured.” If farmers were true in their attempts to utilize all on-farm manures,

they would manage their household chamber pots with malt-dust, saw-dust, fine-textured soil or

sand and by such means have enough manure for one to two acres, annually. “These things appear

to be trifles,” Young commented, “but in a large family they are by no means such.”253 Young wrote

that nightsoil be purchased and mixed with fossil manures, such as chalk and marl, which mutually

improved their value. 254 Young’s praise for the material did not seem to garner much public

declaration for experimentation. Outside of these instances, references to nightsoil in the Annals are

scant, with allusion to its use in Flanders, France, Italy, China and Japan, but hardly any appearances

within Britain.255

One significant alteration from Young’s prescriptions in the Kalendar was a change in his

preference for the storage and application of dung. Young ultimately shifted away from winter

placement, in which manure was left exposed for months at a time. In this he was greatly influenced

by his correspondents, who laid out an increasingly convincing set of proofs for why manures were

not be taken out of their heaps until they were ready for use. By the end of his career he had

accepted that the best composts and manures were those that had been disturbed the least, so as not

to have lost their most volatile elements either through off-gassing or run off. Like the jellies of the

Chinese discussed above, this ‘black butter’ was a viscous substance rich in fertility.256 This change

in application indicates that Young had a preference for maintaining and preserving the fertility of

253 “An Essay on Manures,” Annals, Volume 33 (1799), 602-603. 254 “Notes on Manures. Of Composts,” Annals, Volume 39 (1803), 282. 255 Paolo Balsamo, “Some Particulars Relating to Flanders Husbandry,” Annals, Volume 14 (1790), 337-338; X. B. “On the Nature and Effects of Manures,” Annals, Volume 19 (1793), 22-24; “An Essay on Manures,” 600, 604. 256 X. B. “On the Nature and Effects of Manures,” Annals, Volume 19 (1793), 1-28; this entry provides a clear summary of the advice given by farmers in Britain and France for the first twenty or so volumes of the Annals. The topic is further treated in a series of essays by Richard Kirwan, James Headrick, John Ralph Fenwick, Senebier and Young in Volumes 23, 33, 34, 39, 43, 44 and 45, with Young’s most direct discussion of the differences between summer- and winter-made dung, their storage and handling, found in “Doubts Concerning the Season of Making Farm-Yard Manure,” Volume 39 (1803), 603-606; yet even as early as the first volume (1784) Young remarked that one load of dung left uncovered was worth but half of a load that remained covered (187).

manures over labor-saving approaches to spring field preparations, which had been the rationale for

winter-applications of dung.

Modifying crop rotations to include legumes and fodder crops, In the Kalendar Young provided multiple rotations indicative of his views on improved husbandry. The rotation of his hypothetical small farm, 1) potatoes, 2) carrots, 3) cabbages, 4) barley,

5) clover, 6) clover, 7) wheat, more or less contained within it the shorter rotations he also preferred

1) turnips, 2) barley, 3) clover, 4) wheat and 1) cabbage, 2) oats, 3) clover, 4) wheat, 5) peas. Within

these rotations Young allowed for fallow, treating it as comparable to the first year’s growth, similar

to an ameliorating crop. He also presumed that barley and oats were replaceable with each other;

and he concluded that turnips, cabbages, potatoes, etc. were all fine preparations for a spring grain.

Over the course of the Annals, Young complicated these rotations with new crops, revised his views on clover, and sought to completely eradicate fallow.

Young embraced new crops throughout his career. While he remained a supporter of the turnip, its weakness to frosts and the turnip fly, its propensity to rot going into spring feeding, and its inability to grow on strong, heavy soils lead to its gradual replacement with cabbage, which suffered none of these defects. Yet another alternative, introduced via Scotland, was the rutabaga, or the Swedish turnip. Cold hardy, of stronger flavor and texture than turnips, fit for animal and human consumption, and a fine grower on strong lands, it was considered by some as another acceptable substitute for turnips (and cabbage). Though Young did express doubts for the scale of its cultivation, he ultimately wrote that its introduction to the kingdom was a fortunate event for the agricultural interest.257

257 Robert Bogle, “Roota Baga,” Annals, Volume 11 (1789), 342-344; John Anstruther, “Roota Baga,” Annals, Volume 16 (1791), 172-174; Thomas Goldhawk, “Culture of Carrots,” Annals, Volume 24 (1795), 6-7; W. Robertson, “Swedish Turnip,” Annals, Volume 26 (1796), 459-461; T. Smith, “On Transplanting Turnips and Rootabaga,” Annals, Volume 28 (1797), 601-602; Arthur Young, “Practical Hints for May,” Annals, Volume 32 (1798), 649; Arthur Young, “Of the Culture of Green Crops,” Annals, Volume 32 (1799), 596; Arthur Young, “Remarks on the Late Severe Winter and

Likewise, Young was informed of and sometimes trialed recent introductions and

popularizations. Among them were potential ground cover and forage crops such as Serradilla (likely

Ornithopus sativus, though it may have been Ornithopus compressus or Ornithopus perpusillus),258 Siberian

melilot and timothy grass, 259 considered alongside pastures of parsley, teasel, coriander and

caraway. 260 The root of scarcity, the mangel wurzel, was measured for both human and animal

food.261 Lentils were met with approval, but could not be found referenced more than once.262

Meanwhile the search for cash-crops, especially those that could replace expensive imports,

led to experiments with Galium verum (a dye-yielding plant), 263 vineyards, 264 silk-rearing 265 and

rhubarb.266 That final item met with more attention than the others because it was used to make a

treatment for flatulence, an apparently significant issue for well-to-do horses and urban denizens as

they took to the comforts of richer foods and sedentary lifestyles.267 This non-comprehensive list,

alongside botanical reports of new and exciting plants in other lands and Young’s observation of the

conversion of grasses to arable (and vice versa), the draining of marshes, the cultivation of hills,

Backward Spring,” 33 (1799), 403; G. Lingley, “Observations on the Swedish Turnip,” Annals, Volume 41 (1804), 529- 531. 258 Arthur Young, “Serradilla,” Annals, Volume 27 (1796), 503-508. 259 Arthur Young, “Experiments on Some Grasses,” Annals, Volume 27 (1796), 395, 399, 406. 260 Ibid., 397; John Sewell, “Teasel, Caraway, and Coriander,” Annals, Volume 21 (1793), 53-56. 261 Earl of Orford, “Experiments on the Mangel Wurzel,” Annals, Volume 11 (1789), 49-51; William Pitt, “Observations on the Mangel Wurzel, or Root of Scarcity,” Annals, Volume 11 (1789), 51-54; James Bernard, “An Account of the Mangel Wurzel, or Root of Scarcity,” Annals, Volume 11 (1789), 131-137; Thomas Wilson, “Mangel Wurzel,” Annals, Volume 12 (1789), 382-383; Mordaunt Martin, “Mangel Wurzel,” Annals, Volume 32 (1799), 274. 262 John Sinclair, “On Lentils,” Annals, Volume 42 (1804), 503-505. 263 Stephen Cottrell, “Galium Verum,” Annals, Volume 18 (1792), 385-386. 264 Edward Harries, “Agricultural Observations, and on Vineries,” Annals, Volume 21 (1793), 366-367; Arthur Young, “Notes on Silk,” Annals, Volume 38 (1802), 125-128. 265 In the aforementioned article, “Notes on Silk,” Young declared, “There cannot be any doubt that silk may be produced in England,” (125-126). 266 While some of these are associated with the gardener and not the farmer, let us not forget that much of the New Husbandry was occupied with translating intensive gardening practices to extensive fields. This point of comparison can be reinforced by Young’s entry of “The Cottager’s Garden Calendar,” in which he listed radishes, parsley, cabbages, shallots, chives, leeks, parsnips, carrots, potatoes, turnips, savoy, onions, rosemary, rue and chamomile, mint, kale, and a variety of fruits and berries (Volume 37 (1801), 145-146). It is not difficult to identify which of these garden-associated crops had already been applied to arable fields. But what remained to be assessed was how many of these plants might have had uses outside of the kitchen garden. 267 William Norford, “On the Flatulent and Spasmodic Colic in Horses,” Annals, Volume 14 (1790), 443; William Fordyce, “The Great Importance and Proper Method of Cultivating and Curing Rhubarb, &c.,” Annals, Volume 18 (1792), 24-32; Thomas Martin, “Cultivation of Rhubarb,” Annals, Volume 37 (1801), 1-11.

vales and mountains, the construction of water meadows, the laying of grasses on thin soils and the

cultivation of plantations on degraded rocky soils, helped to assure Young there was no such thing

as lands that could not be cultivated for human ends.

Among all these potentials, perhaps his most intriguing deviation was to move away from

artificial grasses, like clover and alfalfa (lucerne), in preference for native grasses. It appears this was

the result of a correspondent asking Young why, out of the hundreds of grasses native to England,

only one (ray-grass) was raised for seed.268 The year following that inquiry, on a tour of the Isle of

Wight, Young observed an old pasture of mixed grasses and asked whether its excellence originated

in the “almost infinite diversity and discordant qualities of the plants?” He continued, “does not its

agreeableness arise from a happy mixture of contrarieties, as well as its salubrity? And why not

expect the same good effect from a variety of native grasses, which, coming to perfection at

different periods, a succession of fine pasturage is kept up?”269

Young continued to develop an appreciation for native grasses, particularly through his

interaction with water meadows, which taught him that even the worst grasses, when watered,

became succulent and tender.270 Then having noticed that native grasses displaced white clover on

pastures, Young trialed a perennial mixture of oat-grass, cock’s foot, meadow fox-tail and meadow

fescue.271 Success with different mixtures led to his preference for them over foreign grasses. In his

records for the winter maintenance of livestock, he wrote that he believed he could further increase

his stocking rates by replacing artificial grasses, like the burnet he then had, with native

counterparts.272 A year later he extended this opinion. Native grasses were not merely targets for

winter fodder but for year-round livestock maintenance and Young energetically declared that he

268 Mr. Curtis, “General Observations on the Advantage Which May Result from the Introduction of the Seeds of our Best Grasses,” Annals, Volume 12 (1789), 356. 269 Arthur Young, “Wheat Crop in the Isle of Wight, 1790,” Annals, Volume 14 (1790), 440. 270 Thomas Davis, “Watered Meadows,” Annals, Volume 22 (1794), 126. 271 “Experiments on Some Grasses,” 374. 272 Arthur Young, “Experiments on the Winter and Summer Support of Sheep, for the Year 1797,” Annals, Volume 31 (1798), 210.

had 50 acres of them.273 These accounts, in combination with surveys circulated throughout the

kingdom, identified the “decided superiority” of laying lands down with native grasses, though it

was found their cultivation in separate fields, as opposed to intermixed, answered best.274

Young’s embrace of native grasses was likely related to his gradual and measured dissatisfaction with clover. The realization that clover was not a panacea for pasture and arable, as the land could grow tired of it, a condition referred to as “clover sickness,”275 required that other

grasses or crops replace it. Upon assay, some clover varieties appeared to engender sickness more

easily than others, and those that did seemed not to cause sickness when grown in shorter intervals.

The search for non-sickening clovers, replacements and preventatives yielded some results.

Correspondents claimed a new species of clover at the same time that they announced a

replacement for red clover on sands.276 In addition, Young heard that clover performed well when it

followed parsley.277 For these reasons Young never concluded that clover be discarded.278 On the

contrary, he maintained his scorn for regions that had never integrated it into crop rotations, and

continued to advocate for clover within a general approach to field management, all while having

more or less moved away from it on his own lands. Clearly, clover, while fallible, remained an

important component for the improving farmer.279

The last significant alteration to Young’s crop rotation was his former allowance of fallow. It is true, even within the Kalendar it was deemed undesirable. However, Young allowed it within his

early writings, and may have made use of it on his farm, because it was a viable technique based

273 Arthur Young, “Experiments on the Winter and Summer Support of Sheep, for the Year 1798,” Annals, Volume 33 (1799), 190. 274 “Review. Communications to the Board of Agriculture, Vol III. Part 1,” Annals, Volume 38 (1802), 463-464. 275 Thomas Smith, “On the Declension in the Productiveness of Wheat,” Annals, Volume 43 (1805), 425. 276 Thomas Whitesmith, “A New Species of Clover,” Annals, Volume 24 (1795), 530-531; P. A. H. Drummond, “A Substitute for Red Clover,” 533-534. 277 Arthur Young, “Parsley,” Annals, Volume 22 (1794), 445. 278 Arthur Young, “Experiments on Some Courses of Crops,” Annals, Volume 41 (1804), 111, 143. 279 In the final volume of the Annals, Young asked for the proportion of acres sown with wheat, barley, oats, peas, beans, tares, turnips, fallow, clover, rape, hemp and flax. Clover’s inclusion in this list of the most commonly cultivated field crops demonstrates its continued centrality to the cropping system, despite the chances of sickness, (Volume 45 (1808), 514).

upon local land and labor conditions, as well as considerations for available capital. In essence, early

on Young was not ready to dispense with it entirely. This would not be the case for much longer.

Nearly from the beginning of the Annals, the ‘Fallow Question’ became the first and longest lasting

agronomic quandary of the journal, being not definitively resolved even as of the final volume. This

was due to the question’s interlocking dependence on many unresolved issues in agricultural

production, such as plant nutrition, the role of soils and the parts played by the atmosphere and

sun.280

In the face of this unknowing, the argument for fallows was inherently one in favor of

situational assessment. “May not fallowing land be compared to physic for the human body, the

necessity and frequency of which, will entirely depend on the constitution; the care taken thereof,

manner of life of each person, and the like?”281 Individuals tended to argue that by fallow they

achieved good tilth, destroyed weeds, were able to manage heavy clay lands, and in some instances

could gain a crop cycle without the application of manures.282 The anti-fallowists contended through

experiments on their own lands, appeals to foreign practices, and theorization that the benefits of

fallow could be accomplished simultaneously through the cropping of certain plants based on those

same local and individual particulars. Though, there was no attempt to salvage the idea that crops

could be had without applications of manure.283

Entirely consistent with his view that all lands should be cropped with something useful to

human needs, Young rejected apologies for fallow.284 Not only did it fail to produce a volume of

280 Solomon Norman, “On Summer Fallowing,” Annals, Volume 6 (1786), 56-82. 281 A practicing farmer, and lover thereof, “Miscellaneous Hints,” Annals, Volume 6 (1786), 242. 282 William Belcher, “On Fallowing,” Annals, Volume 8 (1787), 124. 283 Thomas Bernard, “On Summer Fallowing,” Annals, Volume 7 (1786); Duprè de St. Cotin, “Experiments on Fallows and Preparatory Crops,” Annals, Volume 8 (1787), 333-340; J. Billingsley, “On the Culture of Potatoes,” Annals, Volume 21 (1793), 3; Nathaniel Kent, “On Norfolk Turnips and Fallowing,” Annals, Volume 22 (1794), 24-30. 284 William Macro, “On the Fallowists and Anti-Fallowists, &c.,” Annals, Volume 6 (1786), 438-441; Young, “A Day at Mr. Ducket’s,” 188; “Result of Viewing a Farm,” Annals, Volume 28 (1797), 20-21; Arthur Young, “On Fallowing, and the Extirpation of Weeds,” Annals, Volume 32 (1799), 217-220; “Notes on Summer Fallowing, 1779,” Annals, Volume

usable materials, either for humans or livestock, but it required sizable labor inputs to be done

correctly, which was rarely carried out appropriately.285 A plethora of crops were thereby preferable,

especially those that yielded large amounts of usable fodder (by this means producing manure) while

improving soil quality for the succeeding crop. Yet just as he did in the Kalendar, Young allowed for

its place within crop regimens.286 Even as of the last volume of the Annals, in a query to ascertain

ongoing practices, Young included fallow among a list of the most common field rotations in

Britain, an acknowledgment of its ongoing practice.287

Despite having written passionately about fallow alongside wastes as among the greatest

wrongdoings in British and European husbandry,288 Young accepted that fallow had its uses. What

had changed was that he no longer offered advice on how to manage it, nor saw it as acceptable for

the truly improvement-oriented farmer. The reason for this was rather simple: a reliance on fallow

would fail to yield the profits necessary to keep farmers on their lands.289 It was therefore not to be

encouraged.

Altering the proportion of arable to pasture In the Kalendar, Young emphasized the use of clover, lucerne, burnet, sainfoine and ray-grass.

The first four were so-called artificial grasses, in that they were not native to Britain. These grasses

were considered instrumental to increasing food supplies for livestock, particularly in regions with

39 (1803), 199-215; see Arthur Young, “A Singular Course of Crops,” Annals, Volume 45 (1808), 186-190, particularly. In this entry Young took a successful farmer’s course and sought to further improve it by replacing fallow with various crops. 285 Young, The Farmer’s Kalendar, 26, 86-87, 147, 181, 221, 258, 294-295. 286 Arthur Young, “On the Courses of Crops Throughout England,” Annals, Volume 32 (1799), 1-23. 287 “Grand Distillery Question: Will stopping the Malt Distillery by injurious to the Agriculture of the Kingdom?” 514. 288 “On the Courses of Crops Throughout England,” 19-20; Arthur Young, “Encouragement of Agriculture,” Annals, Volume 39 (1803), 122-123; Arthur Young, “On Planting,” Annals, Volume 23 (1795), 402; Arthur Young, “Waste Lands,” Annals, Volume 33 (1799), 13-57. Young also took the matter personally. “The older I grow, and the more I extend my observations, the more convinced I am of the present inferiority of our husbandry, to what it will be in some future period of the world; nor can I view these boundless heaths and wastes, without regretting to my heart, that being fixed in a country improved, though very far from perfection, yet from the natural quality of the soil, worth 12s. or 13s. an acre in any state, admitting of few highly useful exertions; whereas, if I had the same property, amidst such wastes as these, I should have an opportunity of exerting my experience, and of applying the reflections I have been making for five-and-twenty years, in a line of great and essential service to the public as well as to myself” (Volume 19, 441-442). 289 Arthur Young, “Notes on a Fallowed Farm,” Annals, Volume 43 (1805), 101-110.

inconsistent ground cover and on newly opened, or reclaimed, lands. The first two, as nitrogen

fixers, could also significantly increase nitrogen availability for successive crops. However, as Young

became aware of clover sickness, and as he sought grasses that did not require perpetual re-seeding,

he pursued two particular improvements: a grass that could be grown in many conditions,

particularly a grass that was frost-resistant and drought-tolerate, and a grass or grasses that could

yield luxuriant growth in succession, with the least amount of labor. As we have seen, for the latter

Young took to native grasses. For the former, happenstance offered a possibility.

On a trip to France he noted a wild plant growing on poor border soils, and growing quite

well. 290 This succory (chicory) seemed to be a worthwhile forage crop on mediocre lands. So upon

his next pass through Paris he purchased ten pounds of seed, the recommended amount for one

acre. Once home, he sowed some of it among barley and other grasses. It did not do well. However

a small plot of 60 square feet, planted by drilling, and planted alone, flourished. The horses to which

he fed it ate it all. Given that chicory is a perennial, he supposed the second year would be better

than the first. He therefore recommended his readers try the plant and promised to secure more

seed. 291 That was Young’s initial experiment, conducted in 1787-1788. It does not read with the

exuberance Young had for other themes. And it did not seem to garner much attention among his

readers. But it initiated a series of experiments that would last through at least 1802.

In 1790 the Annals included an article from a French correspondent who stated chicory was

a fine food for cows and sheep.292 However, there was as yet no indication that British farmers other

than Young were attempting it. In the following year, Young translated an article from the French

on chicory. Its contents emphasized that it had long been a food for animals but it had only recently

been tried on a large scale. What made the plant attractive was its drought-tolerance, its resistance to

290 Ms. Betham-Edwards (ed), Travels in France During the Years 1787, 1788, 1789, (London: George Bell and Sons, 1906). 291 Arthur Young, “Note Concerning (Chicorium intybus) Succory,” Annals, Volume 10 (1788), 216-217. 292 Cretté de Palluel, “On the Advantage and Economy of Feeding Sheep in the House with Roots,” Annals, Volume 14 (1790), 133-138.

inclement weather, including heat and frosts, and its early growth. Grown under the right conditions, it could be cut three or four times in one year, yielding earlier than other grasses and producing more per harvest. A comparison of chicory to lucerne showed that a farmer could take 11 tons per

acre per year of the former to only 4.5 tons per acre per year of the latter. Young admitted that

chicory did not dry well because of the volume of its growth, and so recommended it be used green.

“We do not pretend to say, that this plant ought to engage the attention so as to neglect the culture

of the others, that commonly form artificial meadows; but we are convinced, that there are many

cases in which it might be of the greatest advantage, and become the utmost utility to those who

cultivate at the same time lucerne, trefoil, sainfoin, &c.”293

Gradually readers took notice. A submission on grasses noted that chicory did as well as a

recent introduction from America.294 Readers announced when they ordered seed.295 Initial reactions were positive. It was hailed as promising “to be a great and valuable acquisition in rural

œconomy.”296 One farmer noted of his neighbor’s trial that “its growth and produce is amazing.” He

would therefore make an experiment of his own.297 Yet this feedback was likely not the steady flow

that Young wished to see; for he continued to promote it heavily, including an article on the subject

in each volume of the Annals that followed.

In 1792, Young figured that based on four years of cultivation, chicory had averaged 30 tons

of hay per acre per year, even with drought. He also acknowledged that chicory performed better as

a border, where it had room and air, and considered whether it would pair better with drilling than

broadcast.298 He experimented with different combinations of grasses to see whether it performed

293 M. de Broussonet, “Cultivation of Chicory,” Annals, Volume 16 (1791), 382. 294 Jonathan Stokes, “Remarks on Trifolium Medium, and Trifolium Pratense; and on the Kinds of Couch-Grass,” Annals, Volume 17 (1792), 37-38. 295 R. Procter Anderdon, “Experiments on Gypsum,” Annals, Volume 17 (1792), 298. 296 George Salmon, “On Chicory, the Drill Culture, and Gypsum,” Annals, Volume 18 (1792), 365. 297 Charles Mordaunt, “Experiments in Agriculture,” Annals, Volume 20 (1793), 49. 298 Arthur Young, “Chicorium Intybus,” Annals, Volume 17 (1792), 202-206.

best in isolation or with a particular companion. So did some of his readers.299 As of April, 1793 he had 74 acres of it, an increase of 14 acres from the previous spring. With this he considered himself to be the largest cultivator of chicory in all of Europe. He congratulated himself further. “I am well persuaded that it will prove a most valuable acquisition in British husbandry;--and I think that I may, without the least vanity, take some merit for having introduced into the farms of this kingdom, a new article of cultivation, which will certainly establish itself, and prove, I trust, of lasting importance to the national interests.”300

His approach to chicory and grassland promotion had an impact. References to chicory in

other farmers’ accounts increased, though not significantly so, as did Young’s observation of it on

tours. 301 His experiments continued, at least one each year, eventually finding themselves

incorporated into flocking rate trials. Within these, his experiments widened even further, with

Young applying new or lately popularized techniques to grass cultivation to assess whether yields

might be further improved. By the end of the Annals, Young considered chicory as among common

crops, listing it alongside native and artificial grasses, and referring to it as if it were easily available,

just as the Board of Agriculture did in a premium of 1802.302

In his own mind, chicory was likely his greatest contribution to British husbandry yet it was not without its issues, as Young himself pointed out. The plant showed a propensity to turn weed on account of its deep shooting roots, and it wore out just as many other grasses. 303 Yet the plant

became an inspiration to at least one correspondent who looked upon the transformation of chicory

299 Arthur Young, “Some Notes Concerning the Drill Husbandry,” Annals, Volume 18 (1792), 316. 300 Arthur Young, “Experiments on the Chicorium Intybus, 1792,” Annals, Volume 20 (1793), 203. 301 Young found it being grown in Lancashire in 1794 (Volume 22 (1794), 348, 443-444). 302 “Premiums Offered by the Board of Agriculture, for 1802,” Annals, Volume 39 (1803), 86; Chicory can be found alongside wheat, rye, barley, oats, peas, beans, tares, buckwheat, turnips, cabbages, rutabaga, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, clover, lucerne, sainfoin, hemp, flax and hops. 303 Arthur Young, “Experiments on the Winter and Summer Support of Sheep, for the Year 1798,” Annals, Volume 33 (1799), 190; Arthur Young, “Doubts Concerning the Season of Making Farm-Yard Manure,” Annals, Volume 39 (1802), 605; Dr. Parry, “Chicory,” Annals, Volume 45 (1808), 399-400.

from French weed to profitable field crop and wondered, what other weeds might be beneficially

employed?304

During the time when he was occupied with the acclimatization and popularization of

chicory, Young became familiar with two variants on pasture management rouen (alternatively

rowen, aftermath, lattermath) and fogging. Rouen entailed mowing grasses in the fall and then

leaving them untouched until the following spring, rather than releasing livestock onto them to feed

them down immediately after hay-making. They were therefore allowed to grow before hardening off (i.e. acclimating to falling temperatures), such that they remained green throughout the winter and came back quickly and vigorously in spring. The practice ensured fresh fodder when it was otherwise scarce. Alternatively, fogging was the practice of leaving grasses alone as early as May, so that they developed all summer and could be used from December onwards. In this manner livestock did not require any hay, straw or other foods during winter. It was also reported that fogged fields improved over time, such that they out-yielded the best acres of hay. By these practices, dairying could be continued, with the butter as high-quality as any other time of the year. 305

Since pastures were already allocated to livestock, gains in yield from rouen or fogging were

something for nothing. At worst, they required farmers to compensate for seasonal feeding either in

fall (in the case of rouen) or in summer (for fogging). At best, stocking rates could be increased

without expanding acreage or relying on off-farm feedstuffs. Added benefits came through labor

savings. In essence, all of the steps detailed in the Kalendar attendant with hay-making and storage,

livestock management in yards throughout the winter, and the carting of however many loads of

dung became unnecessary because the animals would now eat and deposit their manure in place.

As a result, Young claimed the grasslands would be in a state of constant improvement

while the arable would decline without dung. The degradation of the arable was not a cause of

304 William Spence, “Culture of Melilot Proposed,” Annals, Volume 41 (1804), 312. 305 Arthur Young, “On Keeping Grass a Year before Feeding,” Annals, Volume 23 (1795), 406-408.

concern, however, because pastures and meadows were “stores of future corn.” To access them,

farmers were to plow up their grasslands and treat them as arable, turning former arable fields down

to grass to compensate.306 In place of all the human labor that carted and spread fodder and manure

in the Kalendar’s management system, grasses and livestock would become farm laborers, growing,

feeding and manuring all on their own. That’s why “grass, therefore, should be considered as the ultimate point of improvement, for all lands that will profitably produce it, whether it be considered in an individual, or in a national light.”307

This was a strong reversal. Young had once privileged the arable over pasture. Now pasture was the medium for attaining fertile, though temporary arable. This meant that as much land as possible was always be under pasture where it would continue to improve until it was demanded for

its “stores of future corn.” It was the ability of grasslands to provide for human foodstuffs while

ameliorating their fertility that made them superior to arable, as arable required constant inputs of

labor and manure to remain productive.

The reworking of arable-to-pasture balance in favor of the latter meant farmers could have more livestock. And that is exactly what occupied Young for the remainder of his career. Young’s improving agriculture became dependent on superior grassland and increased flocking rates in the

context of convertible husbandry rather than the translation of garden-crops to large-scale

cultivation, labor-intensive applications, and the feeding of green crops to yard-kept animals to

provide manure for maintaining productive arable.

By 1794, Young’s trials were peaking and his point of view on pasture vs. arable was verified.

He declared rouen better and more valuable than most crops.308 The following year, he deemed

306 Ibid., 410. 307 Ibid. 308 “Experiments on Chicory, and the Summer Support of Sheep, 1794,” 27.

rouen superior to turnips. 309 Over the coming years he played with their proportionality, all the while swelling the number of animals he could support on the same acreage. While he never totally supplanted fodder crops and the use of hay, he did reach a more or less constant rate of 7-8 animals per acre, which disappointed him. Young was certain he could do better.310

Through these experiments Young sought a means to increase output without having to increase the costs of production. By switching to chicory and native grasses, and then through rouen and fog, he identified that modifications to plants and cropping practices could unlock gains without requiring consistent inputs. If such a system had been applied to unproductive grasslands and wastes as Young wished, of which there was estimated to be 6,044,698 acres in 1799,311 it would have had a

measured impact on British food supplies. That impact would have been obtained without the

allocation of the labor or capital inherent to the maintenance of all that acreage under arable.

Purchasing off-farm manures, when and where feasible This is yet another instance where Young’s agronomy remained consistent. Farmers were to

make use of any available off-farm manures when and where able. Because so many of these

materials go unmentioned in the secondary literature and are significant in our consideration of the

range of potential fertilizers, the spirit of experimentation that verified them as manures, and the

extent to which various materials, currently not utilized in agriculture might be once more deployed,

they are provided by name. These included the dung of geese, ducks, turkeys, rabbits, pigeons, cows,

pigs, horses, and various domesticated fowl, rotten vegetables, straw, stubble, turf, whale oil, fish

offal, seaweed, sea ooze (the slimy mud that accumulates on the shore), butcher’s leavings (blood,

bones, skin, hair and bristles, hooves), the remains from industrial arts (woolen rags, tanner’s bark,

309 “Experiments on Chicory, and on the Winter and Summer Support of Sheep (for the year 1795),” 490. 310 “Experiments upon the Winter and Summer Support of Sheep, for the Year, 1796,” Annals, Volume 28 (1797), 258; “Experiments on the Winter and Summer Support of Sheep, for the Year 1797,” 204-210; “Experiments on the Winter and Summer Support of Sheep, for the Year 1799,” 416-418. 311 “Waste Lands,” 31-32.

etc.), oil-cake (coleseed, turnip and linseed are specifically stated), soot, ashes, peat, charcoal, coal

dust, marl, chalk, clay and lime.312

Young conducted manure experiments from the first volumes of the Annals through the last,

testing many of the above materials alongside drachm salt, magnesia, cream of tartar, hartshorn,

gunpowder, oil of vitriol, soda, tallow chandler’s graves, pearl-ash, spirit of nitre, charcoal fluid,

nitrate of pot-ash, sulphate of lime, soap, Arabic gum, bay salt, iron filings and spirit of wine.313

Young further variegated his experiments by forming admixtures among them, particularly when he

found one to be beneficial in isolation. Among these experiments, there was a gradual shift from on-

farm, organic manures to off-farm, synthetic substances. This indicates a willingness to fit

chemically-synthesized manures into British husbandry before the advent of a mineral theory of

plant nutrition, which emerged in 1843, a few decades after Young’s death.314

Young’s correspondents also led trials of their own. Their results were mixed, though they

did inspire vocal advocates who purported the benefits of particular materials and preparations. The

least well-recognized is likely that of whale oil, sometimes known as train oil. It had an eager

audience not only for its suggested fertility but for its possible insecticidal properties. It was

proposed that a combination of whale oil with dung would yield a high-quality field dressing that

also prevented the turnip fly. In these instances, no attempt was made to apply whale oil to plants

312 This is an aggregated list from many entries across many volumes, most already cited. 313 Young’s experiments began as field trials, with each substance receiving equal portions of land usually within the same field to control for soil variation. After a few of these, he shifted to container (pot) trials, to exercise more control over growing conditions and to ensure that the soil was prepared in the same manner for all experiments; Arthur Young, “Experiments on Manure,” Annals, Volume 2 (1784), 17-25; Arthur Young, “Experiments on Manure,” Annals, Volume 3 (1785), 63-81; Arthur Young, “Experiment in Manuring the Soil of Bogshot Heath,” Annals, Volume 40 (1803), 97-98; Arthur Young, “Experiments in Manures,” Annals, Volume 43 (1805), 436-438; Arthur Young, “Experiments on Manures,” Annals, Volume 45 (1808), 300-331. 314 W. A. Shenstone, Justus von Liebig His Life and Work (1803-1873), (London, Paris & Melbourne: Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1895), 81.

directly; it was only applied to the soil. Initial responses were positive but latter experiments turned

dismissive.315

This had not been the first attempt to use whale oil as insect control. The same aim

undergirded its application as a seed steep.316 Young had tried the oil before it became something of

a fad. But he did not weigh in on the matter, except to emphasize that knowledge of it was

important to agriculture, and that it was beneficial manure when it was cheap. After an initial fervor,

whale oil was less prevalent in both individual records and experimental logs, however it continued

to pop up here and there in matters of transport and trade. 317

Young was a constant advocate for the acquisition of fertility in any form. Out of a firm

belief that soil in “good heart” produced quality crops and high yields, Young’s concept of fertility targeted soils. On this basis, large, expense fertilizer applications were investments, not burdens, because the profit they created was always higher than their expense. Farmers who could not purchase their manures were advised to make their own. Thus even after Young had accepted convertible pasture farming, in which preference was given to grasses and livestock as a preparation for arable, Young recommended stall-feeding animals to secure their manure.318 In doing so there

were now two approved agricultural systems in Young’s mind, each fitting to different conditions.

Pasture farming was his personal preference but the model from the Kalendar remained applicable

for farmers who could not access marketed manures.

315 Christopher Baldwin, “On Oil Used as Manure,” Annals, Volume 13 (1790), 500-506; A. Wilkinson, “On the Use of Oil Compost; On Paring and Burning; and On Laying Land to Grass,” Annals, Volume 15 (1791), 344; “An Essay on Manures,” Annals, Volume 33 (1799), 618-620. 316 Earl of Orford, “On the Time of Sowing Barley,” Annals, Volume 9 (1788), 389; John Mitchell, “On Steeping Turnip Seed,” Annals, Volume 14 (1790), 168-169. 317 “Miscellaneous Information,” Annals, Volume 41(1804), 483. 318 “Notes on Manures. Of the Quantity of Manure,” Annals, Volume 39 (1803), 334-335.

Raising flocking rates as high as could be maintained throughout the winter and early spring to generate larger quantities of dung and attain earlier, high meat prices Young’s experiments with stocking rates were also communicated in the discussion of

altering the proportion of arable and pasture. In them, Young’s use of fog and rouen seemed a

reversal of the Kalendar’s agronomy. Without stall-feeding, Young appeared to lose out on

mountains of manure. Without that dung, improvement of existing arable would have been

negligible except where off-farm fertilizers were available. But as we have seen, this was not the case.

Because what was the pasture became arable and the arable became pasture, the firm dichotomy

between these types of lands was obliterated. The improvement of pastures was an amelioration of

the future arable while the degradation of existing arable was recompensed by a return to grass.

In contrast, as was just mentioned, Young also continued to emphasize the fattening of

livestock in farmyards for the acquisition of manures needed for the improvement of existing arable.

The Annals are heavy with experiments on the best foods for such tasks with sheep, cattle, oxen and pigs. What distinguished this system from Young’s pasture farming was its labor. Most if not all of the tasks of harvesting, carting, preparing, watering and feeding and then bedding down and mucking out livestock spaces were to be done by hand. Rouen/fog required none of these and yet produced similar outcomes: fattened animals and improved fields. Young’s early agronomy was therefore maintained as well as diversified and its goal of increasing livestock rates was retained.

Improvement of arable, not only for the increased production of fodder crops but for grain, industrial and cash-crop production Throughout the Annals Young accepted alternative crops or practices that did not risk soil

quality thereby decreasing future grain yields. As we have seen, that approach was malleable. If

practice included longer periods under grass, by which farmers collected meat, milk and dung in the

meantime, it was deemed excellent. Profit, in any shape or size, was the desideratum as long as it did

not risk the future fertility of the farm. Such was also the case with cash crops, industrial crops and

alternative cropping cycles. Thus even so-called exhausting crops, like hemp and flax which were

considered to take much out of the soil, were encouraged where enough manure could be raised to

compensate for them. Young therefore solicited cultivation and processing “hints” with the goal of

providing readers the means to benefit from parliamentary acts that rewarded their cultivation.319

One of the strongest indications for Young’s continuing focus on the quality of arable, even

after he had turned mostly to pasture on his own farm, were his comments on the production of

food in times of scarcity. Young was heavily involved in debates concerning what to do with the

poor, conversations that included contributions from Jeremy Bentham320 and Thomas Malthus.321 In

the latter volumes of the Annals, when continuous poor weather and the pressures of the

Napoleonic Wars combined to drive up the price of provisions at the same time as decreasing land

access increased poverty among the agrarian working class, famine seemed imminent. 322 In

difference with those who advocated for alterations in poor relief, Young was among the loudest

calling for lands to be given for personal maintenance. While there was much debate over whether

the land was to be given or rented, a series of workable systems were produced and trialed, with overwhelmingly positive results.323 These schemes showed that a poor family could feed itself on a

small quantity of land without decreasing their labors on neighboring farms, or relying on parish

relief. This was achieved through potato cultivation and the keeping of a cow, pigs and poultry.

Rural workers could now live and flourish even in times of dearth despite inadequate wages. The

foundation of this system was a microcosm of the Kalendar, the use of livestock to generate the

319 See: “Act for Encouraging the Growth of Hemp and Flax,” Annals, Volume 9 (1788), 74-75. 320 See Volumes 29 and 30. 321 See Volume 41. 322 Young wrote in 1797, “we have already been tottering on the very brink of a famine, and just escaped from the jaws of perdition; yet no measures are taken to relieve us, by the adoption of wise and salutary laws, from the apprehension of similar calamities,” (Vol. 29, 118). Two years earlier he had said of the scarcity of provisions that it is dire but it is not famine (Vol. 24, 542). 323 Henry Vavasour, “To the Rt. Hon. Lord Carrington, P. B. A. &c.,” Annals, Volume 37 (1801), 246-248; Thomas Babington, “Account of Some Cottagers,” Annals, Volume 44 (1806), 101-119.

manure needed to keep the arable in good heart, a well-founded crop rotation, and labor-intensive

crop management.324

Young’s flexibility on arable land use was therefore a key component of his agronomy throughout his career. Identifying it reveals that as much as Young the traveler could be judgmental and dismissive, as much as Young the correspondent could make universalizing comments on what

was worthwhile and what was foolery, within his own thinking on agricultural practice flexibility was

both feasible and necessary. Flexibility on crop rotations allowed farmers to continue production in

the face of domestic and international pressures that reworked the value of farm products and

challenged the profit of farms. Flexibility was the means by which farms could answer their

communal and national obligations to feed people in times of scarcity. In sum, flexibility was good,

as long as it ensured profits without undermining fertility.

To be clear, and before any accusations are made about attempts to make Young look more

ecologically sensitive and aware than he was, a complex understanding of soil fertility and

environmental well-being were absent in Young’s work. 325 Whatever overlap existed was purely

because healthy soil produced healthy crops and healthy crops led to profits. It just so happened

that as long as soil was the target of fertility, as long as soil was seen as the origin of a farmer’s

success, it could achieve both present-day and contemporary goals of maintaining the conditions of fertility and generating profits. But that in itself is significant. It suggests that one of the leading

324 Outside the entries already cited, the following offers a summary of the oft-discussed approach: John Parkinson, “Cottagers’ Land.—Crops in Fallow Open Fields,” Annals, Volume 36 (1801), 360-363. 325 This is not to say that Young cannot be a source for any of these. Within Young’s agronomy are components of value to present-day readers. For instance, while there wasn’t an understanding of companion cropping, the Annals are full of preliminary findings on behalf of the idea. They undergird much of the thinking on crop rotations, both in terms of inter-planting and in terms of succession strategies. In terms of biological remediation, one of Young’s correspondents emphasized that ducks made excellent destroyers of weeds and insects, if one provided some troughs in the fields (Vol. 6, 195). While it was for profit and not out of thoughts of pollination, the keeping of hives, and the best plants for easing bees through thin seasons, was a constant if under-discussed theme. Finally, the search for crops that could variegate and improve human pleasure were assessed, like the use of carrot and marigold to color and flavor winter-made butters (Vol. 12, 169-170; Vol. 14, 422), or the making of brandy from carrot juice (Vol. 9, 168-173). These are but a tasting of the ideas the Annals provides.

97 causes of the present-day crises in agriculture stems from a mineral theory of plant nutrition, which enables farmers to think of chemical input-to-commodity yield without consideration for soil health.

Implications The consistent elements of Young’s agronomy, like the rejection of Tull, an appreciation for manures, and arable cultivation mixed with livestock husbandry, convey his understanding for what keeps farms perpetually productive. But the changes indicate emerging needs and considerations.

Despite the miracles that could be worked by clover, crop rotation, and higher stocking rates yielding more and better dung, without the labor for all of the heavy work of managing these diverse operations, farmers had to simplify. Simplification could come in many ways. It could come through specialization, like that proposed by Tull and Duhamel; but it could also come through intensive grassland management, in which the farmer used know-how to create the pastures upon which grass and livestock did the heavy lifting. The maxim thereby became: reduce human labor and put plants and animals to work, without sacrificing the improvement of the arable.

By contrasting the husbandry within the Kalendar with that of the Annals, we can see how

Young possessed two workable and in many ways complementary agricultural systems. Both were livestock centered. Pasture farming was land-extensive, delimiting the costs of labor and capital.

Arable farming relied on extensive and intensively-managed lands, labor-intensive cultivation and labor-intensive livestock management. Both operated according to the situation of the farm and the capacities of the farmer.

These systems were workable, according to Young’s own findings, on small-holdings as well as large-holdings. If the farmer had the know-how to balance the proportion of arable and pasture, understood how to utilize animals to engender fertility and profits, all the while keeping the fields in good heart, then the farmer could attain the best of what agriculture had to offer. For in converting grass to meat and dung and then dung to wheat or madder, hemp and flax, there were

98 transformations at play that defied explanation and yet could be attained consistently, profitably and without end.

There are people who think of farming as simple, merely plowing and hoeing; however, agriculture is the most important task of humanity. In the timing of planting and the selection of good soils, there is an important difference in outcomes for those who are familiar with these matters and those who are not.326 -Ōkura Nagatsune, 豊稼録附録

Chapter 3. Ōkura Nagatsune (1768-1860): Improvement as Security and Prosperity

Famine defined Ōkura Nagatsune. Those of his lifetime, the Tenmei (1783-1787) and Tenpō

(1833-1837), were long-lasting, oscillating between regional and country-wide events. 327 They

penetrated into the consciousness of their survivors generating the perception that serious famine

was a regularized phenomenon.328 Yet Ōkura did not think people were helpless. While he noted

that “the coming and going of famine, like a sickness of this world, cannot be understood,” farmers

who acted as if “without doubt, next year will be a famine,” were prepared. These “admirably

prudent farmers” were the ones who survived.329 It was his goal to increase the number of prepared

farmers, equipping them with a wide range of practices, plants and business ventures that ensured

there was always something to eat.

Ōkura also conceived of food security as the basis for prosperity. Not only could farmers

outlast scarcity through improvement but once they were stable they could thrive. His manuals

fixated on the components of improved husbandry that could keep farmers alive in times of dearth

and put coin in their pockets in all others. They centered on superior production, bettering quality of

326ONS 1, 豊稼録附録 (Hōkarokufuroku), 377. 327 Ann Bowman Jannetta, “Famine Mortality in Nineteenth-Century Japan: The Evidence from a Temple Death Register,” Population Studies 46:3 (Nov., 1992), 428. 328 In the 農家心得草 (Nōkakokoroekusa) (1834), written in the second year of the Tenpō famine, Ōkura stressed that while the elderly said natural disaster, pestilence or famine came every 30-50 years, the young (which he defined as forty- years-old or younger) had no experience of any of these and therefore did not think about nor make preparations to endure them (ONS: 2, 113). In an earlier work, the 豊稼録 (Hōkaroku) (1810), Ōkura used the Tenmei famines to emphasize that it was through capital- and labor-intensive interventions in rice cropping that insect damage leading to crop failures could be minimized (ONS: 1, 113). This is to say, that when one looks for famine within Ōkura’s books, it can be found without much effort, regardless of the theme of the work itself. 329 NNZ 50, 製葛録 (Seikatsuroku), 279.

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living, lowering labor requirements and intensifying farming household resilience. They operated as

if farmers and farming were the foundation of society, and the means of its perpetual reproduction.

Accordingly, this chapter considers Ōkura’s agronomy in terms of two handles, security and

prosperity. Conceiving of human life as a vessel to be held from two sides simultaneously, it

discusses the complementarity of Ōkura’s recommendations, detailing his improvements to rice

cultivation and processing, a variety of cash-generating enterprises and approaches to famine

prevention and relief. Like handles, security and property can be grasped unevenly and yet the vessel

may be transported safely. But it is unlikely that anyone, holding only to one handle, could carry it

for very long. Thus readers were to seize both, to some degree, that they could maintain resilience

and affluence.

One Handle: Profit and Prosperity Ōkura was not an agricultural idealist. While open to the potentialities of improved

production, and perhaps overoptimistic about the possibilities of wide-scale acceptance, he knew

adopting new crops altered crop rotations and farm management. He understood that farmers could

be resistant to change, slow to adopt new practices and in need of evidence through demonstration.

Consequently, he did not see all of Japan’s agricultural systems improving to their highest levels of

production within his lifetime. Rather, it would be several hundred years before even the rate of land reclamation in eastern Japan matched the skill and speed of that in the west. 330 In this way, he

grasped that agricultural development was uneven and that successful, country-wide efforts would

take time.

Ōkura also understood the mentalities of farmers. Those willing to take risks on new crops

were in a hurry to turn a profit. In that urgency, they made mistakes and sometimes failed. Then

they walked away from the endeavor with less than pleasant things to say. This could lead to

330 NNZ 14, 公益国産考(Kōekikokusankō), 56.

101 campaigns against new crops, including efforts to ban their cultivation outright.331 Ōkura insisted that, in these instances, the issue was not a problem with the crop but with the cultivator.332 That is,

“profit and loss are determined by the skill of the farmer,”333 not by the capacities of the crop. This is why Ōkura distinguished between crops that were simple to cultivate and those that required higher levels of skill; yet in all cases, he detailed approaches that would enable success, often making the claim that those who had read and understood the content of his book(s) would not fail.334

Ōkura’s hope was that something from among the many cases he provided would be applicable and seductive enough to prompt change, regardless of location, regardless of local market conditions.

Hence his simple style, coupled with attentive detailing of yields are best seen as informational and infomercial. Ōkura was selling something and he knew it. These are his main points of sale.

Seedbeds and Transplantation One singular characteristic of East Asian agriculture is the use of seedbeds, often weeks to months before transplantation. By planting seeds densely, in intensively managed spaces that could be carefully fertilized, wedded and watered, farmers cultivate crops of longer growing times in regions with shorter growing seasons. In some instances, it also enables farmers to take successive crops on the same field in the same year, unlocking the potential for two, three or more harvests on the same parcel in a twelve-month period. While seedbeds and transplantation require more labor and coordination, they increase food production using a constant increment of land.

For Ōkura, the use of seedbeds and transplantation were already typical. Improvement could be achieved through better placement and higher standards of care. Farmers, he claimed, often used the same seedbed for a long period of time. Yet those who moved their seedbeds annually raised

331 Ōkura wrote in the Kanshataisei (1818-1823) there were efforts to ban the cultivation of sugar because of wide-ranging failures to grow it outside of Ryukyu. His book was a retort of that point of view. It argued that the only failures were in practices and not the plant itself. For such comments, see NNZ 50; 141-145. 332 ONS 1, Hōkaroku, 121-122; ONS 2, Nōka gyōji kōhen, 275-276 333 NNZ 15, 綿圃要務 (Menpoyōmu), 372. 334 Such an assurance is made throughout the Kōekikokusankō (NNZ 14), as well as his books on individual plants, like sugarcane, coleseed, cotton and wax tree (NNZ 50, 45, 15 and ONS 1 and 2, respectively).

102 superior, healthy seedlings with fat stalks that grew and matured quickly.335 Fewer vigorous sprouts were required to fill a rice field in comparison to seedlings raised in standard seedbeds. They grew more quickly, produced more ears and therefore more rice.336 Ōkura said the same of other crops as well, particularly cotton. 337 By planting comparatively thin, seed saving could be achieved. By planting fewer sprouts, less time and labor were necessary. Other gains included using less fertilizer, as it was applied in proportion to plant density. Farmers who proactively removed pests and applied insecticides could also reduce labor and inputs by having to treat fewer plants. Healthier, faster- growing and faster-maturing grain was the outcome, a means to securer, higher volume yields.

Better seedbed placement and preparation would not require significant alterations in crop rotation, new technologies, or new capital inputs. It was something of great value for, potentially, nothing more a change in thinking. The trick to producing a good seedbed was to plow it the previous winter, breaking up clods, raising ridges and fertilizing it with humanure-laced water. The field over-wintered this way, exposed to repeated freezes and thaws that developed the desired texture for spring planting. When it came time to sow, the soil was pulverized again, watered, and the ridges smashed down to make an even surface. In some places, mountain grasses were cut and mixed into the seedbed, with a layer of earth cast over them. Generally, rice seeds were soaked for three days before planting, a layer of soil mixed with ashes used to cover them. One notable practice

Ōkura recorded was the use of minced tobacco treaded into the seedbed. This was a preventative against insect damage, one people claimed extended to the open fields once seedlings were transplanted.338 Tobacco is an effective pesticide, as the nicotine it contains is a quick-acting nerve

335 ONS 1, Hōkarokufuroku, 373. 336 Ibid., 374. 337 NNZ 15, Menpoyōmu, 360 338 ONS 1, Hōkarokufuroku, 373.

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toxin. In the assessment of horticultural scientist Jeff Gilman, it is so effective that “it’s just too darn

dangerous” to use;339 Ōkura, however, provided no indication that it was hazardous.

For farmers dealing with water scarcity, seedbed practices could condition rice plants to perform well with less moisture. The key was to reduce water in the seedbed so when seedlings were transplanted into comparatively wetter conditions they grew quickly, even if the paddy wasn’t fully flooded. One caveat was that such seedlings were never be planted into fields that were always flooded, for they did not grow well under those conditions.340 In this regard a point of clarification

would be helpful. Most people assume that rice must be grown in irrigated fields to achieve high

yields. While it is well-known that the roots of rice plants adapt to water levels and can grow in

flooded conditions, it not accurate to suppose that their fields have to be flooded. Not only are there

dry-land varieties that perform best in lower moisture conditions, like the variety known as ‘champa

rice’ of which Ōkura wrote,341 but even varieties typically grown in flooded fields can yield heavily

when grown on non-flooded fields. Supposing the plants’ minimal moisture requirements are met, it

is the temperature throughout the growing cycle, and not the amount of water in the field that

determines yield potential.342

Ōkura’s seedbed practices were about economizing space and time. First, they freed up the fields for other uses while seedlings grew in their beds. Then they allowed farmers to practice intensified plant selection. Before planting, seeds were been tested for fertility by suspending them in water. Infertile seed floats while fecund seed sinks. By discarding floaters, farmers reduced the chances of poor germination and plant fatality during the growing season. Then seedbeds

339 Jeff Gilman, The Truth About Organic Gardening: Benefits, Drawbacks, and the Bottom Line, (Portland: Timber Press, 2008), 104; this from an agronomist who argues that within the world of pesticides the much maligned glyphosate, of Monsanto fame, “doesn’t even come close to the top of the chart,” for pesticides worth vilifying (see 57-58, 65). This tells us something about the potency of tobacco as a pesticide. 340 ONS 1, Hōkarokufuroku, 374-376. 341 Ibid., 377. 342 Fukuoka Masanobu, The One-Straw Revolution, (Emmaus, Rodale Press, 1978), 44-54; D. H. Grist, Rice, (Longman: London, 1986), 16-20.

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encouraged another round of selection because they allowed farmers to prick out stunted, slow

growing, or oddly shaped plants before transplantation. Through selecting for preferred shape and vigor, farmers could develop their own variety that met their specific needs. Thus by the time fields were planted, only plants with preferred characteristics were placed. In comparison to broadcast or seed drills, which exposed the seed to predation and poor germination resulting in reduced yields and higher weed incidence, transplantation ensured even field coverage. Seedbeds were therefore an extension of human control over plant growth to increase the odds of superior harvests.

Seedbeds were also to play a role in improving the food supply. Inspired by what he had heard of India, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia where two, three or four rice crops were taken on the same land in the same year, Ōkura contended that the adoption of double-cropping would end famine in Japan.343 The key was combining seedbeds with varietal selection. Farmers were to start

with their fastest-ripening local rice and utilize the best quality, earliest-ripening stalks as the next

year’s seed. This would give farmers their own fast-growing variety. When the first crop was a

month from maturity in the main fields, farmers were to start the second planting in the seedbeds.

By the time the first crop was harvested, racked and drying and the second was transplanted, roughly

two months of crop growth would be saved because of improved seedbed management.344

Tool Time

In agriculture, tools have a decisive role in what comes to harvest as well as what toll will or

will not be paid by human bodies. For Ōkura, tools were so determinative of success or failure he

thought those looking into specialty-good production should first heed the agricultural tools needed

to cultivate them.345 This sometimes meant adopting new implements and in other cases it entailed

343 NNZ 70, 再種方 (Saishuhō), 260-261. 344 Ibid. 345 NNZ 14, Kōekikokusankō, 60.

105 adapting existing mechanisms to new tasks. But no matter the change in crop or cropping method, tools had to be an article of consideration.

Japan already had a rich collection of tools. As the author to one of Ōkura’s prefaces commented, “in terms of the shape of utensils, out of the 30-40 villages I have passed through, there have been none that were the same.” 346 To him, each tool was a physical representation of its location and soil. Its scale and weight had been created, intentionally, to fit with specific wants. They were therefore illustrations of the thought of their users, items worthy of celebration. Ōkura did not dispute this. However, he saw the spread of superior mechanisms as a means to reduce the drudgery of some farm labor, improving the quality of life for farmers and engendering new practices that could become custom in itself.347

According to Ōkura, no matter where one traveled the principle tools of agriculture were the same: the hoe (kuwa) and the plow (suri).348 However the shape of the blades, the angles at which they bit into the earth, and therefore their cutting power changed by task, soil and location. For instance, in the same locale the hoe for cutting ridges was different from that used in preparing fields for transplantation. Merely traveling one village over yielded a different set of customizations for the same tasks. Yet when one considered what was needed and how best to accomplish it, Ōkura was certain there were both practical and impractical specimens to be evaluated by their merits. In this, village leaders required instruction as much as average farmers. Ōkura’s hope was to present an indispensable selection of tools which, regardless of region, would be effective.349

For every tool he provided, Ōkura discussed the size of the handle, the width and length of the blade, and its price of construction. He also explained any special or non-intuitive uses. Plates showed not only shape but often the means of assembly.

346 NNZ 15, 農具便利論 (Nōgubenriron), 130. 347 Ibid., 131-132. 348 NNZ 15, Nōgubenriron, 137. 349 Ibid., 138-139.

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When one examines these plates closely, it is clear that the majority of tools were not of solid

metal construction. Rather, they were wooden, mostly of pine, with metal tips.350 This suggests a

major limitation for Japanese farmers of the era was access to high-quality metal. For example,

consider the Hiroshima-style kumade, or rake, against the kizarae type. The hiroshima was a solid piece

of metal, with share and tines cast together. In contrast, the kizarae was of wooden construction with

metal tipped tines. The former was said to do three hours of work in only one hour, and could

successfully replace the hoe. The latter was best suited to sandy and dry soils. The kizarae could not

replace the hoe on all lands but the solid metal hiroshima could.351 Farmers with access to full-metal

tools stood to reduce their labors more than farmers with access to only metal-tipped implements.

As this example indicates, Ōkura’s maxim was “it is best to use tools that match the soil.”352

When so done, intensive labor and its coordination could be made less burdensome.353 Ōkura had in

mind the reduction of all labor to the point where it could be done easily “by even a ten-year-old

girl.”354 This was not a comment on gender. It was about utilizing all available labor with the least

exertion possible. Take for instance the anatsuki or “hole-puncher.” It consisted of a studded wheel

on a long handle that a farmer pushed across the field surface to achieve equidistant holes. Modified

versions could be used for planting seed, inserting fertilizer, or placing potato sets. 355 With the

anatsuki a child could perform all of these tasks. Therefore better tools didn’t just mean better profits

through higher yields, it meant less drudgery and an increase in the number of eligible workers; for

350 Ibid., 156-159. 351 Ibid., 161-164. 352 ONS 1, 老農茶話 (Rōnōsawa), 108. 353 Ibid. 354 NNZ 15, Nōgubenriron, 183. This is something of a refrain throughout the manual and strikes me as an indication of which tools were particularly worthy of trial. Whenever Ōkura stressed the ease of a tool’s use, it usually indicated that it could replace the hoe or plow in ways that made the amount of labor, and therefore the burden of that labor, significantly easier. 355 Ibid., 184-186.

107 the formerly too young or too old, their contributions would ease the family unit’s burden; and any device that reduced time spent bending or stooping was an improvement beyond measure.

Simplification was the primary goal but so was improving the conditions of agrarian life.

With modifications to footwear, Ōkura concerned himself with farmer suffering. Walking on deep paddy, where farmers might otherwise sink in mud up to their navels, or slip and hurt themselves in wet, icy or snowy conditions were not merely job-related difficulties; they induced misery, pain and sometimes death. By means of bamboo poles placed parallel over deep paddy, farmers could walk across the surface, and therefore cultivate it, without being submerged.356 By means of the ashioke or

“foot bucket,” farmers could enter winter-chilled waters to wash their produce without getting soaked and cold.357

Innovation did not necessarily require the replacement of human bodies with complex machinery; it could operate by supplementing and simplifying human labor. Such is the case with the mizukakeoke, or hanging watering bucket. Built for vegetable production, it consisted of two casks suspended from a pole that fit across a farmer’s back. Each bucket had a hole at the bottom from which a cotton sack extended. When the farmer removed the stoppers, water would flow slowly and evenly through the sack onto the field surface, without the farmer having to bend over.358 A farmer could thereby water two ridges at the same time by merely walking. If the ridges had been cut so that a shallow declivity ran between the plants, the water coming out of the cotton bags would not run down into the furrows. Farmers could therefore fill these buckets with water-based fertilizers, whether urine mixed with water, soaked oil cake or fish fertilizers, or even fermented humanure.

Moreover, by means of the cotton sacks, the material would be deposited exactly where it was needed most, along the root-line.

356 NNZ 14, Kōekikokusankō, 114-117. 357 NNZ 15, Nōgubenriron, 196-197. For more on footwear, see 209. 358 Ibid., 218-223.

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Racking Rice How to dry rice remains one of the decisive factors in Japanese agriculture. A variety of

techniques, many of which place rice stalks in various formations near or directly upon the field

surface, leave the rice exposed to weather and insect damage, while the field cannot be re-sown in

the meantime.359 The result is and was a decrease in the quality, and therefore in the value, of rice

and straw. 360 For Ōkura’s part, the concern was multifaceted. First, he was anxious for farmers

whose rice was disallowed for tax payment as a result of its poor quality. Nothing was worse than

laboring all those months only to have the products of that labor rejected. Second, he worried for

communities where poor quality rice was grown and therefore lower quality food was available. This

anxiety was extended to the country as a whole when scarcity ensued.

According to Ōkura, the chief problem with leaving rice to dry on the field’s surface was its

exposure to rain and dew as well as moisture and sulfur in the soil.361 Wetness not only impacted the

rice directly but mixed with the sulfur and, once heated by the sun, volatilized to do even more

damage. This explained why imperfectly, field-dried rice germinated before it could be eaten, lacked

the gloss of higher-quality rice, was weaker in flavor and quality, and was difficult to thresh.362 Yet

such rice, literally called “dead rice” (shinikome), could be completely avoided through the use of

racks.363

Racking entailed horizontally-suspended poles that held rice stalks so that the grain hung

below their frame. The grain was thereby exposed to the sun and air, drying it more quickly, while at

least some protection was provided against dew, rain and insects.364 Because racked rice could be

harvested even in the rain, the processing technique freed farmers from the fickleness of autumn

359 They have been systematically assessed by a present-day agronomist. For those with interest, see Inano Tōichirō, Hasa to niho, (Ikeda: Hisatonihonokai, 1981). 360 This is a point made by Ōkura in all of the manuals cited in this section and an observation of my own from watching farmers discard unmarketable, poor quality straw every fall for the last four years. 361 ONS 1, Rōnōsawa, 83. 362 ONS 1, Hōkaroku, 122. 363 Ibid., 124. 364 ONS 1, Rōnōsawa, 83.

109 weather, one of the chief obstacles to producing high-quality rice across the country.365 As racked rice was always higher quality, it was never disallowed for tax payment, or deemed too low quality for sale. By Ōkura’s logic, this was equivalent to an increase in production.366

According to Ōkura’s manuals, racking reduced the amount of land used for rice drying, allowing farmers to plant wheat and vegetables immediately after harvest. Racked rice was easier to thresh, allowing the entire family to participate in the process. Ōkura envisioned the labor becoming so easy that farming families threshed quietly in the evening as a way to unwind before bed. Racked rice was also higher quality and therefore fetched higher prices. It did not fracture while being polished and reduced only 10% in volume, as opposed to customarily dried rice that saw a 30% diminution. This made racked rice ideal for sake production. In one instance Ōkura claimed that a farmer’s racked rice was of such high quality and so delicious it was asked for by name, hinting at the possibility that farmers across the country could develop their own specialty product.367

By Ōkura’s figures, racking did not consume nearly the quantity of labor that some supposed.

Really, it wasn’t the rack that was the greatest obstacle to the practice but the standardization of harvesting. Here the trick was to work steadily with measured, disciplined steps. Farmers were to take handfuls of rice stalk in one hand, cut it, and place the straw towards their bodies with the rice facing away. Another handful would then be taken, cut and placed over the first bundle to form the shape of a V. Using ten strands of stalk, the bundles were to be tied together. As the farmer proceeded through the field, each V-shaped bundle would be even, determined by the size of the farmer’s hand; and the bundles would naturally fit over the rack, dangling to either side at the place where they had been skirted.368

365 Ibid., 89. 366 ONS 1, Rōnōsawa, 85-89; ONS 1, Hōkaroku , 128-129. 367 ONS 1, Hōkaroku (republication), 357. 368 ONS 1, Hōkaroku, 125-127; ONS 1, Rōnōsawa, 89.

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Other methods of tying and bundling were provided but the outcome was the same. By

regularized cutting and tying, women and children could participate, increasing the labor pool and

thereby decreasing the amount of time required to finish.369 By this means “the amount of lost rice

decreases and rice quality improves.”370 These were indisputable benefits that did not affect only

racking communities. Ōkura regarded increases in the grain supply as a “clear national benefit.”371

That gain was estimated to be in the quantity of a few liters of rice per field but once extrapolated to

the level of the country came to the order of hundreds of thousands the annual rice requirement of

one adult.372 Here was a benefit that could be realized without land reclamation or modifications to the crop rotation.

Field Conversion and Improvement What enabled rice farmers to diversify production was the conversion of wet-fields to dry

soils. This entailed some manner of drainage. The most labor-intensive approach required a series of

trenches to be dug in a fan pattern extending from the entrance sluice. This allowed excess water to

seep below the root-line and the soil surface to dry. These trenches were packed with rocks and then

filled with soil. The trenching permitted a late summer, fall or over-wintering crop to be taken in the

same place that rice was grown.373 It is not clear how this impacted future rice production or water

use, however. But it seems to have been intended for fields that were so wet, and deep, that they

were otherwise difficult to cultivate.

Outside of this, the primary means for field conversion regarded intercropping paddy, not by

draining but by raising soil. There were two techniques for this, both operating on the same

principle. Handa, meaning “half-field,” consisted of building flats well above the water level within

and alongside paddy. Dry-land crops, principally wheat, coleseed and cotton, would be cultivated in

369 Ibid. 370 Ibid., 127. 371 ONS 1, Rōnōsawa, 88. 372 Ibid., 85-88. 373 Ibid., 104-107.

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two rows per flat, with rice cultivated in the flooded portion below. The other tactic, kakiageda, meaning “brushed up” or “raised upwards,” was the mounding of soil from the paddy into high ridges. Treated in the same manner as the flats in handa, they were planted with dry-field crops.

Stiffer soils, like those of the south and west, were better for kakiageda because they did not erode as

quickly as the tender soils of the east.374

By fertilizing the flats and ridges, farmers did not have to fertilize the paddy. Moreover, if

high ridges were built using straw to stabilize them, the fertilizer applied to the ridges could be

reduced. 375 It seems coincidental that by intercropping rice, wheat, cotton and coleseed farmers

would have implemented a more complex cropping system that had greater resiliency to

climatological events. If the weather did not favor one crop, it was unlikely that all four would fail in

the same year. Moreover, by growing plants of different types, each acted as a break on the spread of

pests and diseases that affected the others, whether across that specific field or the farmer’s holdings.

Finally, because cotton was sown into the wheat stubble, there was the capacity for a reduction in

labor. Rather than having to plow and hoe in preparation for cotton, farmers could merely broadcast

the seed into a standing crop.376

Oiling the Waters From his interviews with experienced farmers across the country Ōkura learned that leaf

hopper (inemushi) emergence correlated with cold, wet weather.377 Hoppers were deemed a major

disaster as the possibilities of rice harvest, already bleak due to unseasonable weather, declined in

consequence with predation. If left unchecked, hoppers could completely destroy standing rice

plants, leading to no harvest at all. That’s why hopper-induced famines, like Kyōhō 17 (1732), were

classed alongside earthquakes, typhoons, fires, drought and flood, as calamities. Yet according to

374 NNZ 45, Yusairoku, 144-149. 375 Ibid., 149. 376 NNZ 15, Menpoyōmu, 355-356. 377 NNZ 15, 除蝗録 (Jokōroku), 19-22.

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Ōkura it was precisely during the outbreak of 1732 that a farmer stumbled upon a means of insect

control. On a night when farmers gathered to bang drums and bells to “sendoff” the destructive

critters, a man saw a hopper jump into some oil and die.378 He presumed oil the enemy of hoppers

and turned to experiment. He poured oil on the waters of one section of a particular field and saw

that in that section, and that section only, the hoppers died. So he increased the application rate and

observed. Oil present on the fields, day and night, allowed the plants to regain their vitality and

come to yield. This was the first account of oil’s effectivity in insect control.379

Ōkura began writing on oil and hopper control in 1804. Thanks to the experiences of

farmers across the country,380 Ōkura grasped a systematic approach, with regularized applications using standard measurements of oil.381 This practice was the greatest preventative of famine, Ōkura

wrote, and he hoped that village leaders would quickly apprehend the method then teach and

implement it to alleviate disaster.382

Initially, Ōkura described the practice as he had seen it in western Japan. The exit sluice of

the paddy was dammed so the water of the paddy rose. Next, someone poured oil onto the water

and bent the plants over into it. Hoppers attached to the rice stalks would be coated in the oil, slip

off into the water and drown. The field was then unstopped and the leafhopper-laden water and oil

were conducted downstream. But, the choice of oil mattered. If farmers used fish oil, livestock

378 ONS 1, Hōkaroku, 114-116. 379 NNZ 15, Jokōroku, 12-13. Ōkura’s books contain two distinct methods. The one on which he focused most was the application of various oils and powders to paddy. The second, as discussed above in the section on seedbeds, was the use of tobacco stems to control insect outbreaks. He claimed that plants raised in such seedbeds never experienced problems with insects attaching themselves after transplantation (ONS 1, Rōnōsawa, 103-104). I did not find any instances where these methods were combined. This is curious and cannot be explained, other than to suppose that for reasons not provided by Ōkura seedbed insect prevention and paddy insect suppression were not correlated. 380 Of his many examples, one is particularly important. Ōkura gave the account of a farmer along the Oi River who divided his field into three sections. In one section he applied a certain amount of oil, in the next three times that amount, and in the final five times. At harvest, the section with the most oil had the highest yield and the section of the lowest volume of oil had no yield at all. Ōkura spoke to this farmer and saw the sections himself. Accounts such as these reveal not only the means of constructing an effective and regularized method but the importance of information sharing and gathering in developing a system for insect control (See NNZ 15: 15-16). 381 NNZ 15, Jokōroku, 12-15. 382 Ibid., 17-18, 25.

113 would not eat the straw. However aburagi (Japanese tungoil tree) and coleseed did not have this effect.383

After more research, observation and trial, Ōkura further complicated the procedure and his prescriptions. For starters, he no longer thought that fish oil, tungoil or coleseed were effective options. 384 Whale oil was the best oil to use, for it could preserve 50-80% of the crop, whereas other oils might only save 30-40%.385 In southern and western Japan where this was known, thousands of barrels of whale oil were purchased every spring and doled out to villages if hoppers were discovered. The oil was quickly applied. The number of hoppers declined and the harvest was saved.386

Why was whale oil superior to the others? It was a definitive product. Unlike fish oil, which was made from a variety of species and therefore inconsistent and potentially diluted, whale oil was constant. As oil control relied on knowing exactly what kind of oil was in use, so that application rates could be calibrated with reliable results, using an inconstant oil was risky.387 Evidence of the superiority of whale oil also came from testing it on various insects, not only hoppers. Applications of whale oil to trees, flowers and buds showed that it killed, by direct application, a variety of insects.

383 ONS 1, Rōnōsawa, 103. 384 In its most detailed and mature form, the practice was as follows: when the sunlight was strongest, between 10 am and 2 pm, and the water was warm, the drainage sluice for the field was closed so the water rose. Carrying the oil in a jug on the left arm, and a dipper in the right, farmers entered the paddy, ladling out the oil evenly, ensuring that it was distributed between the plants. Alternatively, the oil was poured into the field through the in-take sluice as the water- filled the paddy. The water was then whisked to spread the oil evenly. After the oil was in place, the rice stalks were dunked into the oil-covered water, pushed down from side to side with a bamboo rod. This was to be done in the same direction in which the wind was blowing to prevent shattering. The more fully the stalks could be submerged, the better chance of getting hoppers that had climbed to the top of stalks to escape. After their oil bath, farmers used long-handled brooms dipped in the oily water to brush the plants, knocking off insects that remained. Once the entire field was treated, the drainage sluice was opened and the water carried off the dead. Since there was no chance of the drowned insects coming back to life, Ōkura argued that other farmers should be thankful for the free fertilizer that came via the oil and not worried about spreading infestation. If needed, a second application was to be given. If a third became necessary, the volume of oil was increased in proportion to the number of hoppers remaining (ONS 1, Hōkaroku, 118- 121, NNZ 15, Jokōroku, 40-41). 385 ONS 1, Hōkaroku, 113. 386 Ibid., 114; it is curious that the dead insects were not collected to be used for human or animal feed. If farmers applied food-grade oil, the insects were not rendered inedible at death. Ōkura knew of this, for he drew attention to their palatability and the possibility of using them in place of the rice they had destroyed. 387 Ibid., 117.

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Whale oil placed in drainage ditches caused insects not even visible to emerge and die. Whale oil, that is, was not only a suppressant, in that it clogged the air holes of an insect’s carapace and therefore suffocated them, or gummed up wings and legs and prevented escape, it was an insecticide.388 But not all whale oils operated in this fashion. There were 16 types of whales, Ōkura claimed, and only certain ones produced insecticidal oils. He therefore offered anyone living nearby to visit him or his family so they could gladly teach how to tell the difference.389

Nonetheless in years of heavy outbreaks, local whale oil supplies were exhausted even in the south and oil had to be purchased from central markets, where it was 50% higher in price. 390

Farmers therefore required alternatives to whale oil if they were going to be successful in not only adopting the practice but in doing so cost-effectively. This applied all the more to farmers outside the south who never had access to local whale oil supplies. So while he maintained whale oil was the best, and was always to be preferred, Ōkura expanded on possible controls. Cotton, tungoil and coleseed oils were now equally effective with whale oil when applied in higher volume. The brackish liquid left over from making sea salt, mustard oil, morning glory (asagao) oil or powder and a steep made from basunuboku (asebi in modern Japanese) or Japanese andromeda (Pieris japonica) were also effective.391

By providing exact rates of application and the means to convert so much whale oil into another available insecticide,392 Ōkura enabled farmers to utilize local resources and/or make their own. This was particularly significant for mountain villages that would have struggled to procure off- farm products. After all, protecting the rice crop was something all farmers had to do. It could not

388 Ibid., 117-118. 389 Ibid., 118, NNZ 15, Jokōroku, 39. 390 Ibid., 117. 391 Ibid., 117, NNZ 15, Jokōroku, 32-34, NNZ 15, 除蝗録・後編 (Jokōroku kōhen), 74-101. 392 NNZ 15, Jokōroku kōhen, 101.

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be something that required farmers to spend too much money for then rice would become an even

greater losing venture.

Regardless of the oil a farmer selected, this practice necessitated a new way of thinking

about natural disaster. No longer were insect outbreaks occurrences beyond human control. With

rationalized agriculture, farmers could produce or access the ingredients to push back insect

incursions that threatened human communities. Observation and perpetual reassessment coupled

with standardized metrics for application and specific steps for individual and communal practices

had the capacity to transform rice management. This was not the case, as with fertilizers, were more

expended capital meant higher yields and therefore greater profit. This was an instance where the

food supply had to be safeguarded through more capital and more labor. But it was never a question,

in Ōkura’s mind, as to whether or not this was worthwhile. As he stated in his manuals on the

subject, this practice was the means to end hopper-induced famine in Japan.393 And as a survivor of

famine, Ōkura held no doubts as to whether or not that was worth the added money and time.

Agricultural Improvement as Economic Development Ōkura’s counterpoint to insecticides was diversification. A diversified agriculture relied on a

wider variety of cultivars. This prevented the collapse of the food supply if the most common crop

failed. Moreover, the cultivation of a variety of plants in the same space meant that one pest or

disease could not wipe them all out. Diversified agriculture therefore promised that something

would always be available to eat, even if it wasn’t the carbohydrate of choice. As Ōkura argued it,

diversification also happened to be the basis of economic strength.

393 This is why, in his 1844 update to his first manual on insect control (1826), he stated that where nothing can be done about typhoon, or floods, in 5-7 days of work 60-70% of the rice harvest could be preserved. Hopper-induced famines were therefore no longer natural disasters. If they came to pass, it was because of human inaction, see: NNZ 15, Jokōroku kōhen, 64-65.

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Ōkura’s notion of economic development was bottom-up.394 He claimed that “an enriching

economy first strengthens the common people and then benefits the lord.”395 To accomplish this,

rulers were to be engaged in the improvement of agriculture so that farmers were taught the best

methods and the most productive crops. It was precisely because soils were deep and shallow, fertile

and infertile, wet and dry, that people had to know what would grow well, and where, so that “labor

and land are not consumed in vain; for if practice is off-base it damages the soil.” 396 In such a

formulation, the success of farmers (and therefore their society and economy) relied on

understanding and utilizing the environment without jeopardizing it. For Ōkura this was “the course

of heaven and earth,” or the natural way of things.397 That is, if farmers undermined the conditions

of prosperity, they destabilized personal, social and economic wellbeing.

This did not mean that the role of cereal cultivation was diminished. Ōkura perpetually emphasized that “for farmers, the most important task is that of producing the year’s grain.”398 The problem was that grain only got a farmer so far. To survive poor market conditions farmers required

access to cash; and cash came best from non-grain crops.399 In contrast to doubling down on grain

and expanding its cultivation, Ōkura presumed average farmers could replace ornamental plants near

their homes with those that produced human provisions. They could use mountains and plains to

grow trees. They could cultivate the intervals between fields, and the spaces along roadsides. By

394 Readers might also find of interest the work of Ando Shoeki (1703-1762). A doctor who was oppositional to the Japanese state, his work has been stressed for its social and ecological components. It would be appropriate to see his point of view as also stressing bottom-up social and economic formations. For more see: E. Herbert Norman, Ando Shoeki and the Anatomy of Japanese Fuedalism, (Washington DC: University Publications of America, Inc., 1979); Yasunaga Toshinbu, Ando Shoeki: Social and Ecolgocial Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Japan, (New York: Weatherhill, 1992). 395 NNZ 14, Kōekikokusankō, 27. 396 Ibid., 27-28. I have translated tsumi wo ousuru as ‘damage’ for the sake of English comprehensibility but the Japanese is clearer in its implications. Literally the phrase could translate as the “bearing of sin.” That is how reprehensible the damaging of soils was (and is). 397 Ibid. 398 NNZ 14, Kōekikokusankō, 52. 399 Ibid., 217-218.

117 unlocking the potential of unused or under-used lands, they could add to their incomes without risking their livelihoods because the main fields and crop rotations remained unaffected.400

That is why Ōkura stressed alternatives that fit neatly into specific niches of farm management. He wrote of oil-bearing crops like coleseed and sesame that could be grown as catch crops on paddy. He described cash-crops such as sugar, tea, hemp, indigo and tobacco, which could be grown on paddy, in intervals, or on non-irrigated fields. He emphasized trees like Japanese cypress (hinoki), cinnamon (nikkei) and mulberry that could be placed on hillsides and in ravines.

Fruits such as oranges, grapes, persimmons, pears and plums fit neatly in the spaces near and around homes. Maize, taro and sweet potato would produce calories on sloping lands, or non-irrigated fields.

In the end, it didn’t matter what a farmer picked. What counted was growing it well and producing a high-quality, marketable product. If a farmer could harvest something people asked for, or better yet created a brand, the potentials for profit were unending.401

Among all these possibilities, Ōkura particularly emphasized trees because, as perennials, they required less annual labor, produced over human lifetimes, and provided even through their death via wood. Trees were consequently investments in the future. That is why, in some places, they served as dowries. Based upon type, they generated an annual income in fruit, seed, or charcoal.

Their lasting power, and their yearly yield, was the means to provide offspring not with a fixed sum but an endearing source of income.402 The same logic applied to anyone who cultivated them.

The trees Ōkura stressed (cedar, Japanese cypress, pine, cinnamon, wax tree, tungoil, and lacquer) each produced specialty products, like incense, sap, wax and oil, in addition to their use as lumber. Fruit-bearing trees, in which tea was included, were yet another category by which farmers

400 Ibid., 340-341. 401 This is my summary of Ōkura’s argument in the Kōekikokusankō (NNZ 14). His comments on making a “brand” item have been referenced earlier. In other writings, Ōkura discussed the “four trees and the three grasses,” tea, mulberry, paper mulberry and lacquer; benihana, asa and ai, (ONS 2, Nōka gyōji kōhen, 237), as the chief alternatives to cereals. While trees are under discussion in the chapter itself, I want to note that those grasses would have provided the raw materials needed to supplement the cotton industry, then booming, through the production of dyes. 402 NNZ 14, Kōekikokusankō, 52-53.

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could expand their offerings. This was particularly so for farmers near cities, who could sell fresh

fruit. But the processing of fruit, such as persimmons, and their shipment across the country in large

quantities, enabled even rural farmers to participate in an urban demand for sweetness.403

No matter the variety, trees were treated carefully in their early years. Nurseries were

prudently prepared; tree development was monitored; fertilizer application was determined by growth; grafting was regularized, as was shaping to ensure reachable harvests. 404 Saplings were

protected with straw placed around their roots in winter, or the construction of temporary shelters

to keep frost and snow from settling on the crowns and boughs. By the time of transplantation,

saplings were already shaped so as to require no further investments of labor. Yearly care was limited

to weeding, and perhaps an application of fertilizer. It was through trees that Ōkura’s maxim, “a soil

that can be planted must not be left alone,” or “barren soils must be planted,” became achievable.405

Nonetheless, not all trees were relegated to poor soils. The paper mulberry was said to favor

high quality soils.406 Its success in warm places, where the wind wasn’t strong, meant that it could

compete with oil-bearing crops, cotton and grains. One way to grow the tree without giving in to

competition was to place in the intervals between terraced fields, then plant daikon and other crops

beneath. Even wheat could be planted there.407 Another possibility was to place the tree on slopes.

This would prevent erosion, did not require annual re-planting, and still yielded annually.408

403 Ōkura wrote that in Akino persimmons were peeled, dried and then packed into boxes of fifty for shipment, (NNZ 14, Kōekikokusankō, 201). The practice is still common and yields a delicious preserve that can be enjoyed in the midst of winter, when fresh, locally-grown fruit is rare in most locales. 404 Ōkura’s method did not utilize ladders or long-reached cutting equipment. Rather, trees were shaped to human- height, so that pickers did not need to reach very far. 405 These quotes come from NNZ 14, Kōekikokusankō, 84 and 95 respectively. The cultivation style here described was the same for nearly all trees. For specifics, see 71-80 for cedar, 86-89 for Japanese cypress, 89-95 for pine, 301-308 for chestnut, 309-318 for tea, 342-346 for cinnamon, 363-369 for plum, 369-372 for grapes, 372-382 for pear, 382-394 for oranges. 406 ONS 4, 紙漉必用 (Kamisuki hitsuyō), 119. 407 Ibid., 121. 408 NNZ 14, Kōekikokusankō, 254.

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What made paper-making a viable enterprise was that the collection and grinding of plant materials, and the layering of pulp to form sheets, were tasks of traditional off-seasons. Three such windows were regular in the agricultural cycle. The 10th and 11th months, after wheat planting, the 3rd and 4th months, after wheat harvest, and 8th and 9th months, after summer labors but before rice harvest, were intervals in which families could make paper.409 The optimal word here was family.

Only families with enough labor to conduct the many tasks simultaneously could profit from papermaking. However, households without the necessary labor could make other marketable products like rope, mats, and thread. All such work, because of the role of water in the cleaning, soaking and layering of plant materials, favored households near rivers.410

Paper-making could play a role in agricultural and economic development because it, like coleseed oil, wax, cotton, silk, soybeans and kudzu was a major item of import.411 Yet why buy what can be made oneself? In Ōkura’s thinking, import substitution, the replacement of a purchased good with a self-made good, was a clear article of profit. To encourage it gave local growers the incentive to adopt new crops and then to further refine their cultivation and processing. This connected perfectly with Ōkura’s preoccupation with value-added processing on the farm. These were the ways for farmers to obtain the most profit directly; then through farmer success, rulers gained access to expanded wealth as well. But import substitution and on-farm value-added processing weren’t solely about profits. They were also matters of pride.

Ōkura wrote that there was no household, anywhere in the entire country, that did not use soy sauce. Yet when one looked at local and regional economies, there were many that did not produce their own. When he asked households why they did not manufacture their own soy sauce, they said that it was because purchasing a finished product was considered more cost-effective. Yet

409 This timing is relevant for central and southern Japan and not the north or east. 410 Ibid., 126-128; these comments are corroborated in NNZ 14, Kōekikokusankō, 30-32. 411 Each of these was discussed in the Kōekikokusankō as articles for import substitution.

120 when Ōkura thought about it, he couldn’t see how this was the case. Using the recipe he provided, farmers could brew soy sauce twice and use the remaining solids for miso, a condiment. As long as a household had at least three people, this was a cost savings. Households that produced superior quality products could even develop a local specialty and make money from it. Thus Ōkura found it more likely that farmers were buying soy sauce because they could not produce good tasting products on their own. That is, they were embarrassed.412 Ōkura identified similar issues with those who purchased tea, another everyday item. Any farmer with a little land could grow their own. “To not produce one’s own, to rely on another for no reason and expend coin is a stupid thing,” Ōkura declared. 413

Diversified self-production, then, was about agricultural and economic development as well as pride. Through import-substitution and on-farm value-added processing, Ōkura envisioned a future in which strong agricultural households produced most of what they needed and relied on local markets to provide only what they could not. In the meanwhile, the lord benefited from these transactions, especially when they were encouraged.414 When farmers succeeded, local economies strengthened and everyone grew richer, of which nothing was more important.415

The Other Handle: Famine Preparedness and Prevention In Ōkura’s thinking famines were facts, not hypotheticals. Rice-reliance coupled with simplified agricultural economies put people at greater risk. When famines came, a lack of food drove people to scraping the bark off trees, pounding it into paste and eating it like rice cakes.

Similar treatments were applied to grass roots. In one instance, people made dumplings from soil.

Usually in one way or another, Ōkura remarked, people preserved themselves. 416 However, the selection of something poisonous made scarcity fatal. If people knew what was safe to eat from what

412 Ibid., 224; for discussion of soy sauce making, see 219-224. 413 Ibid., 309-310. 414 Ibid., 266-267. 415 Ibid., 321. 416 ONS 2, Nōkakokoroekusa, 111, 126, 147; NNZ 50, Seikatsuroku, 279.

121 wasn’t more would survive. From this perspective Ōkura wrote frequently on edible and noxious vegetation, famine foods and medicine. They were the complement to best practices; for famine preparedness and agricultural improvement were interlocking pieces that constituted a whole.

On Poison and Famine Cuisine Writing in the second of what would become six consecutive years of famine, Ōkura closed

A Draft on the Mindset of Agricultural Households (Nōkakokoroekusa) (1834) with 16 plates, each holding three to five illustrations of poisonous plants.417 Some made you sick directly. Others made you sick in combination. A final sort could be, if salted and rinsed, made palatable.418 Ōkura believed that by publishing this material it would be shown to the people, internalized and remembered.419 Then, when needed, the people would be able to save themselves.420

In manuals on these subjects, Ōkura emphasized plants found around the country in mountains and plains. Their wide distribution and spontaneous generation, that is the lack of human involvement in their propagation and development, ensured they were backups when the wet- and dry-fields failed. Things like kudzu, bracken and various gourds were the most commonly referenced, appearing in multiple texts. From these and many others, he held three aims, 1) make the rice on hand last longer through the addition of foods that added substance, flavor and body, 2) use every available part of vegetables, like the leaves of radishes and sweet potatoes, that might otherwise have been discarded or used as livestock feed, 3) replace rice entirely with spongy and starchy foods.421

Urban residents, particularly their children, who did not understand the preciousness of rice, were of particular interest. Because they fed on fine foods so often, they failed to grasp the meaning of their food and to respect those who cultivated it. In effect, urban young did not realize the

417 ONS 2, Nōkakokoroekusa, 128-144. 418 Ibid., 127. 419 Ibid., 147. 420 Ibid. 421 ONS 2, 日用助食竈の賑ひ (Nichiyō joshoku kamado no nigiwai), 3-12.

122 fragility of their economy’s emphasis on rice because they were removed from its cultivation and processing. Famine was therefore something for which they were not mentally prepared. And lacking in that planning, they did not know how to preserve themselves. This had fatal outcomes.

Ōkura therefore stressed the capacities of “lesser” ingredients and encouraged readers to familiarize themselves with their preparation.422

By reaching out to city dwellers, Ōkura attempted to change Japanese food culture, to teach that “treating food preciously is important for the country.” 423 But it was also important for individuals and households. For access to cash was not, in itself, sufficient in times of famine. Ōkura consistently reminded readers that during major famines those with money died along the roadsides just as those without. It was not just access to cash but knowledge of what could be done that determined who lived and died.424 If everyone could be made to think the same way about food, particularly simple recipes and alternative ingredients, then there was a chance famine could become survivable. In other words, famine, internalized, would make people watchful and farmers diligent.

During the famine of the 1830s, Ōkura took these ideas further. Writing for a generalized audience, Ōkura claimed that people could not rely on government agencies for help; they had to apply themselves to their survival. They had to consider edible wild plants and the ways they could protect themselves.425 Focusing on plants he believed were found around the country, he provided information for their identification and processing. He also provided illustrations. The main steps for processing dense roots into edible starches were also represented in simple images.426

422 ONS 2, 徳用食鏡 (Tokuyō shokukagami), 25-27. 423 Ibid., 48. 424 Ibid. 425 ONS 4, 救荒必覧 (Kyūkouhitsuran), 137. 426 Compare the images on ONS 3: 144-145 with the images of NNZ 50: 261, 266-267. The processes are identical but the images have moved from heavily detailed to outlines.

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This kind of research continued the rest of his career. In 1848, he assembled all known edible plants and animals, terrestrial or oceanic, and assessed their “poison” content. Citing the

Japanese and Chinese works on which he drew and working in conjunction with a doctor, Ōkura simplified difficult medical texts into easily comprehensible lists.427 The work was encyclopedic in nature. Entries stated which foods were poisonous, either directly or in specific combinations. For instance, rabbit and orange were not to be eaten together, nor pickled plums with eel,428 something that is still said in Japan today. Another poor combination was honey with sushi, beef or shrimp.429

Although these are not straightforward examinations of harmfulness, they suggest that Ōkura wanted to improve human health by making causes of indigestion common knowledge.

The study of poisonous plants and the consideration for poor food combinations treated food production and consumption as a kind of preventative medicine, and not only for the treatment of famine. Ōkura’s interests extended to how food could be used to treat, and avoid, illness in general. For instance, in times of headache tea, ginger, daikon, white onion, mustard,

Japanese ginger (myōga), kudzu, jellyfish, oysters and loach (dojō) were okay to eat. Items like turnip, bamboo root, chestnut, pear, peach, tofu, sake, fried tofu, noodles, carp, whale, pheasant (kiji) and rabbit were to be avoided.430 Ōkura also sought solutions to conditions such as bed-wetting, difficult childbirths, bloody stool, chest pains, colds, horse bites, smoke inhalation and hair loss. He even tried to treat addiction. His cure for a love of alcohol consisted of inserting an eel (alive or dead is not stated) into liquor. Upon the next sip, the desire to drink would be gone. If not eel, cow sweat was just as effective.431

427 ONS 3, Shokumotsu nōdoku hen, 97, 129-130. 428 Ibid., 128-129. 429 Ibid., 129 430 ONS 3, 求民日用食物能毒集 (Kyūmin nichiyō shokumotsu nōdokushū), 137. 431 ONS 4, 山家薬方集 (Sanka yakuhōshū), 268

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Diversified Dependence Certain Observations on Famine Relief and A Draft on the Mindset of Agricultural Households repeat the information Ōkura provided in his work on kudzu,432 as well as his findings for tokoro, another starchy rooted plant, two types of gourds and bracken. Those who have partaken of Japanese mountain vegetables (sansai) are familiar with these foods. They remain meaningful components of

Japanese seasonal food culture. But for Ōkura, what made these plants useful was their ability to make lands that could not be actively cultivated into sources of sustenance. Whether it was the deep mountains or ravines in which kudzu flourished or the marginal borders where gourds grew, Ōkura emphasized these plants because they were readily available without intentional cultivation across

Japan; they could be processed using items of every-day use in farming families, and those products could be marketed. Here Ōkura’s agronomy fused with the realities of food scarcity. His earlier comments on farmers always behaving as if famine was coming coupled with a maximization of land and labor to yield safeguards in times of need. Then when harvests were plentiful, the same crops and processes were the foundation for prosperity through the production of marketable goods.

In these works Ōkura presented how to locate, dig, clean and process kudzu roots into a palatable starch or flour. It began with locating the vines, tracing them to the roots, then carefully extracting and evaluating them for their starch content. They were carried home where they had to be processed the day they were collected. After they were washed clean, the roots were pounded with wooden mallets. The mash was placed in a tub and mixed with water until it became the color of ashes and the root fibers separated from the pulp. The solids were squeezed, strained and thrown out. Time was given for the water to settle, such that all the particles giving the water its color settled at the bottom and clear water could be drained off the top. The milky residues were poured into another tub through a bamboo screen covered with a cotton bag. The contents of the bag were then squeezed before being laid out in the sun. Larger pieces were to be used for kindling while smaller

432 NNZ 50, Seikatsuroku.

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bits could be added to rice to add bulk. They were a food that could be prepared in advance and set

aside in case of famine. The remaining liquid was then poured into a cloth sack and placed within a tub where it drained. The starch settled within the sack, at least in part. Repeating this step yielded finer and finer quality starch. This was then shaped and dried, either in warm ashes or in the sun. It resulted in a gray kudzu starch that could be further refined to the highest quality, white starch. The remaining dregs formed black starch, fit for home consumption.433

Kudzu was a catch-all crop because in addition to its starch, the vines could be processed into

textiles, or fed to animals. Alternatively, the leaves could be used for fertilizer or minced and used in

place of tobacco. For these reasons Ōkura recommended that it be seeded where it did not grow

naturally. Left to its own devices, the plants would come in thick, spreading in dense, luxuriant

patchworks.434

His next major famine crop, tokoro, was treated in the same way as kudzu. It required no

special tools or handling techniques. Once the roots were pounded, soaked, and strained, the starch

was comestible and marketable. However in difference with kudzu, tokoro had both medicinal and

insecticidal uses that made it a more desirable plant. This was because in place of discarding the

water used in making starch, as one did with kudzu, tokoro water had a plethora of uses. The water

could be warmed for baths, in which it was said to assist with skin ailments, particularly itchiness.

After bathing, the water could serve as a fertilizer – one as efficacious as urine, the strongest of all

liquid fertilizers. Alternatively, tokoro water could be used for washing clothes, where it removed

both dirt and lice. The water could also be used to wash vegetable leaves, a quick means to remove

insects attached to their surfaces. It had a role to play in veterinary medicine, as a treatment to horse

and cow legs. Washing an animal’s skin with tokoro water removed insect pests. The root itself had

433 Ibid., 146-148; NNZ 50, Seikatsuroku, 253-263. 434 NNZ 50, Seikatsuroku, 241, 252-253. Ōkura actually formulated an argument for why introduction was justified. The logic is reminiscent of early-modern plant and animal transfers from around the world, few of which considered native ecological balance.

126 similar uses. Smashed tokoro inserted into paddy was as effective as whale oil, the strongest of the insecticides. Grated tokoro expelled pus when placed on wounds. It could be used in the treatment of burns. But perhaps the best aspect of tokoro, especially in comparison to kudzu, was that it grew close to where people lived, reducing the time to gather and haul. Because tokoro had the same culinary applications as kudzu, tokoro was a viable, multi-purpose plant for farmers to tap into, regardless of famine.435

Warehouse Management and a Scheme for Circulation (and Profit) Plants such as kudzu and tokoro allowed farmers to obtain food through allocating labor to non-cultivated spaces. What is likely preferable to most people would be a dependable and profitable yield on lands already cultivated and the means to store grain safely. Then kudzu, tokoro, or any other plant would merely become an off-season supplemental labor. It was Ōkura’s estimations that wheat would satisfy those requirements.

Wheat as an alternative for rice fit perfectly with Ōkura’s stress on cash crop production. It could be grown after rice was harvested, it yielded when rice failed, stored easily, was not as susceptible to rodent and insect damage and fluctuated less in price.436 Moreover, wheat was grown throughout the country, thus farmers were already familiar with it.437 Even if cultivation practices differed, farmers had the experience they needed to improve their harvests.

Ōkura maintained that improvement to wheat would come through the adoption of a tool called the nichōgake.438 It consisted of a double-shared, long-handled plow. In place of other sowing practices that used more labor and therefore time, Ōkura argued that by means of this tool one person could plow, one person could sow, and another could cover seeds with their feet. This would allow for three to four times the field surface to be sown in the same amount of time as standard

435 Ibid., 150-151. 436 ONS 2, Nōkakokoroekusa, 123. 437 Ibid., 118. 438 Ibid., 119 for a plate of the nichōgake; alternatively, the tool was discussed in NNZ 15, Nōgubenriron, 256.

127 methods. It also, due to the double-shared plow, put two ridges where there had been only one. The method therefore simplified the tasks of sowing, seeding and covering but maintained standardized ridge spacing; this ensured farmers could still enter the fields to weed, something broadcast prevented. It was further significant because it abridged wheat sowing when rice harvesting, drying, threshing, winnowing and polishing had to be done. Easier, less time-consuming wheat sowing meant more time for these other tasks as well as more land devoted to wheat cultivation.

Better wheat practices, and regularized planting, would mean better harvests. Since Ōkura was of the opinion that wheat did well even in years when the weather was poor for rice, he operated on the assumption that more farmers growing wheat would result in improved food supplies at local and regional levels. These supplies were to be managed through local government agents who would construct and oversee warehouses.439 They were to be erected with consideration for humidity and long-term use. This did not mean the same grain would be held in perpetuity.

Rather, the building site was to be considered in terms of annual use over generations. Warehouses made of earth, surrounded by partitions with pines planted in their intersections assured drier conditions, in which insects struggled to emerge.440

Ōkura suggested several iterations of the same scheme. The generalities were such that farmers brought their grain, whether wheat or rice, to the warehouse after harvest. It was kept there until the following spring when it was released back to the farmers, if necessary. Should there be famine, additional dispensations were made. If the grain were not needed, no returns were made. In the meantime, the warehouse operated a loan program. Members of the community could draw on the stores at a fixed rate of interest. Whether the loan was for home consumption or for sale did not matter. The borrower was responsible for repayment of the loan, with interest, at the end of the contracted period. Ideally, this was paid in grain. As long as harvests were good enough to ensure

439 Ibid., 121. 440 ONS 2, Nōka gyōji kōhen, 267-269.

128 repayment, the warehouse would be able to generate a small return annually, the food supply would be secure (and increasing), and those buying and selling grain on the market would be assured of a stable supply of goods.441

Wheat was better than rice for this system because its price was relatively stable and it was locally consumed. These conditions meant that the price of wheat climbed steadily from the tenth month through the third month of the following year, allowing those who borrowed at a fixed price to realize almost immediate benefits. Whether the loan was for a month or the entire season, borrowers realized gains when they purchased newly harvested, cheap wheat and used it to repay their loans. For instance, a borrower taking out one unit of wheat at 303 monme in the ninth month could sell that unit for 367 monme in winter, 389 monme around New Year’s and at 400 monme in spring. Assuming that the newly harvested wheat was cheaper than the price at the start of the loan, the borrower realized a gain.442

Whether the system benefited borrowers, the constant change of stored grain through its lending and return meant that supplies was perpetually renewed, reducing losses to moisture, rodents and insects. This benefited consumers. It also generated income for the warehouse through interest. The system therefore appeared to be a means for a local government agent to run a service that benefited the community without requiring funds from an outside administration. Ōkura had devised a system in which, if the yields were reliable and the weather amenable, a community could feed and support itself.

Farmers as Doctors, Fertilizer as Medicine, Agriculture as Preventative Care In his works on famine, rice racking and fertilizers, Ōkura articulated a theory of four elements, or nutriments, of life: water, oil, salt and soil.443 These were the building blocks of all living

441 ONS 2, Nōkakokoroekusa, 121-126. 442 Ibid., 126. 443 NNZ 68, Nōkakokoroegusa, 290.

129 things with absolutely no exceptions. Whether someone ate rice, wheat, millet, fish, vegetables, roots or fruit, within the stomach they were broken down into the four nutriments. The same could be said for animals and plants and their respective foods. Hence within all living bodies, all nourishment was broken down into four basic elements; excretions were composed of them; and during senescence, all living bodies returned to them.444

Ōkura’s evidence was based off experiment and reasoning, reasoning that was informed by

European sources.445 When plants were roasted they became ashes. Those ashes, immersed in water, revealed their salt and soil components. The oil was consumed in the fire and the water released as steam.446 All plants, whether grasses or trees, contained salt.447 That salt, which Ōkura attributed to enshō, or saltpeter, derived from the soil. Dissolved in water, it entered the roots and was transmitted upwards where it was used. The evidence for this was that all plants, when burned, rendered this salt, all animals excreted these salts in their urine and feces, and contained these salts within their bodies when they died. What could be the source of this other than the plants on which they fed, and the soil on which those plants in turn depended?448

In this system, salt and oil were fertilizers. All plants contain oil, Ōkura reckoned. It must have been absorbed by the roots, traveled to the leaves and thereby deposited in the seeds. The method for transmission was the same for salts. Both depended on water. That’s why dry fertilizers did not result in efficacious plant growth. Plants, just as humans, needed water to prepare their food.

The difference between plants and animals was the role of the soil. For animals, food entered the mouth then traveled downwards to the stomach, where the nutrients were extracted. For plants, fertilizers entered the soil where they mixed with water and were transmitted through the roots into

444 NNZ 69, Nōkahibairon, 104-105. 445 These details will be discussed in Chapter 4. 446 NNZ 69, Nōkahibairon, 34. 447 Ibid., 126. 448 NNZ 68, Nōkakokoroegusa, 290-292.

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the plant, a movement upwards. Soil was not the food of plants. It was the medium by which salts

became elements of growth.449

What determined a fertilizer’s efficacy was its oil and salt content.450 Yet of the two, oil was

less important. Oil-strong fertilizers, like fish and oil cake, performed better when they had been

expressed, taking the oil off towards other ends. Oil itself was overly strong, so as plant food it was

the same as humans eating only rich foods; it did harm to balanced growth. In fact, plants did not

require any applications of oil to grow successfully. As long as they had plenty of water and

sufficient sunlight, they would produce their own.451 This begs the question, why was oil one of the

four nutriments if plants could synthesize it? Ōkura did not address this. But having admitted oil

could be generated within plant bodies, Ōkura centered on salt.

There were two chief sources of salt – the ocean and soil. Humans drew on both, through

salt-making and eating plants and animals. Animals and plants, in turn, depended on soil-based salts.

The oceanic and terrestrial salt networks conjoined through human excrement, which rendered

marine salt palatable to the plant-animal salt network. Ōkura was convinced of this because the salts produced from the oceans and the salts extracted from soils were not identical. They tasted

different. 452 What enabled the land-based salt network to perpetuate itself, then, was human involvement in salt management. This was because proper agricultural management not only protected damage from being rendered to soils but it made use of fertilizers.453

Salts excreted from the human body came in two forms, familiar to us all. Liquid excretions

were considered a fermentation, a type of alcohol according to Chinese sources, that directly given

to plants caused them to wither and shrink.454 However, weakened with water and applied to plant

449 NNZ 62, Kadotanosakae, 195-197; NNZ 69, Nōkahibairon, 87. 450 NNZ 69, Nōkahibairon, 35. 451 Ibid., 35-36. 452 Ibid., 128. 453 Ibid., 36. 454 Ibid., 36-40.

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leaves, it had the same effect on plants as alcohol on humans – fleeting stimulation. Thus the best application method was not through the leaves but via the roots. Urine concentration differed by time of year, in accordance with hydration, so farmers were to be conscious of the period of collection and mix it in accordance with its salt density.455 Those purchasing off-farm urine were

advised to seek out laboring people whose urine was more concentrated. If the urine were not adequately attenuated with water it would overstimulate the plants and bring on disease. Only heavily diluted urine was recommended for seedbeds. Better to regularly apply to ensure proper growth than to overdevelop the seedlings.456 Urine was deemed the best fertilizer for a wide variety

of plants, including wheat, barley, millet, sorghum, maize, buckwheat, soybeans and adzuki. It was

thought to bring the color and flavor out in watermelon and to increase the sweetness of eggplant.457

Urine also had medicinal benefits, effective in the treatment of insect stings and expelling earwigs.458

In contrast, humanure (taiben, or fun), the solids, were best for fattening root crops. There

were no plants on which it could not be used, but there were some plants that did better with other

fertilizers. Cotton, for instance, became diseased more easily on humanure than oil cake or fish

fertilizers. Long stored and matured humanure did not harden, which was essential because once hardened it could be deadly to plant development. In contrast with urine, the best solids to purchase came from those who ate fish and meat. Near Kyoto, this kind of humanure was used to grow tea whereas lower quality humanure was not. The efficacy of humanure as fertilizer was determined by the quality of provisions from which it derived. Just as with urine, the month of collection determined the recipe for application. Humanure was to be mixed with specific quantities of water to ensure precise results.459

455 See NNZ 69: 38 for these recipes, or conversions. 456 Ibid., 40. 457 Ibid., 40-41. 458 Ibid., 43. 459 Ibid., 49-51, 54.

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Having identified that water was the means of fertilizer absorption by plant roots, Ōkura’s preferred application methods all combined fertilizer with water to render a steep or tea, in present- day parlance. As we have seen, solid and liquid humanure were applied this way. The same was true for even oil cake and fish fertilizers, which were to be soaked in advance.460 But the water to utilize

was a matter of both planning and conservation. Ōkura advised farmers to save all household waters

for this purpose. Water that had been imbued by cleaning fish, dishes or clothes was particularly

good because it carried plant nutriments. At the time of use, water and water-based fertilizers were

deposited in small cuts made within the ridges, so that it remained along the root-line. If the

household ran out of stored water, Ōkura recommended that drainage ditches and ponds be

harvested. In winter, snow and slush were to be drawn upon, and stored. In some instances, if the

water near the fields was rich on its own, just by watering plants could be fed. Ōkura knew that

there was salt in rain, well water, streams and rivers. This was easily proven by looking at the buildup

within containers used for transporting water. 461 But in this, farmers had to carefully assay salt content. Placing iron into a sample would identify at least some kinds of reactivity.462

In fertilizer application, balance was integral. Too strong or too weak and the plants would

not grow well. Just as medicine is to be applied in the proper dose to heal rather than to poison, it

was best to apply gradually so that no damage was done. This required the farmer to pay close

attention, to apply the suitable volume at the right time.463 Proper application of fertilizer mattered

because it maintained balance in plant health, and therefore human livelihood. An abundantly fed

plant, just as an abundantly fed human, attracted disease, and begged to be preyed upon. Plants

overly fed produced only leaves and little seed or fruit. The leaves attracted insects that consumed

those leaves, caused the plants to wither, led to a decline in the quality of the fruit and then spread.

460 Ibid., 61, 82-83. 461 Ibid., 47. 462 Ibid., 56-59, 63-65 463 Ibid., 59-60.

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By understanding fertilizers in relation to the ecological conditions of cultivation, as well as the

nature of plant nutrition, the farmer administered lands as the doctor cared for patients. To neither

over- or underfeed, to calibrate practice to the climate to ensure no bad harvest and no outbreak of

disease or pests, was to measure the pulse of the fields. Just as the doctor increased or decreased

medicines in accordance with the patient’s condition, the farmer regulated field health.464

Fertilizers, just as the plants that utilized them, were to be applied in accordance with soil

type and climate. The best of fertilizers, misapplied, would do not nearly as much as properly

applied fertilizers. 465 Farmers who could not afford to purchase the best were to consider local

alternatives. Ōkura explained at least twenty substances including ashes, river and ocean plants,

baked soils from earthen-work construction, mountain and pasture grasses, animal dung, rice bran,

cotton seed, soy sauce dregs, human hair, skin, nails and animal clippings.466 But farmers were to be

forewarned. Some fertilizers affected the flavor and odor of their produce. For instance, yamashiba, a

mountain grass, gave rice a smell similar to rodents.467

Such a view of fertilizers and fertilization was dependent on the four nutriments. Ōkura

could not have articulated this vision of human-animal-plant commonality, nor his sense for the

land-based salt cycle, without it. First of all, understanding that nutriments cycled, even if

imperfectly, enabled him to grasp the importance of human excretions in plant growth. Since Ōkura

believed that terrestrial salts traveled in an unbroken loop that suffered no losses along the way,468 he

did not stress sustainability. Yet he had written of how clipping grasses from one plot and

transferring them to another gradually degraded the former’s fertility.469 Had these ideas conjoined

464 NNZ 69, Nōkahibairon, 31-33. 465 Ibid., 30. 466 Ibid., 379-380. 467 Ibid., 380. 468 Ibid., 129. 469 “In the least you should know that if you take grasses and discard them on another spot, the land from which you took the grasses grows infertile.” NNZ 14: 411.

134 he may have pushed into some of the earliest, complete thinking on nutrient cycles and the means to preserve them over time. Second, by articulating a complex theory of nutrition, in which humans were indistinct from their animal and plant counterparts, he constructed an image of farmers and agriculture that valued both highly. By linking farmers with doctors, fertilizers with medicine, and agriculture with treatment or care of the societal body, he identified a way to think of farmers in a professional sense, with specialty knowledge of their own, and services that were rendered to communities. The implication of that association was not solely that farmers mattered. It was that farmers and farming were the basis of society and the means of its perpetual reproduction. For elites, the moral was clear. Support the base to unleash development. For village leaders the message was vibrant. Teach the best methods and encourage improved practices and superior crops. For farmers the meaning was unblemished. You matter. What you do matters. And you should be in a position where meaning and survivability, status and economic success, were united.

The notion that agriculture and medicine share a common vision is more than intriguing. In the present-day, in which doctors are gifted one of the highest professional ranks, and rewarded with both social and financial benefits, to contrast food producers with their work is potentially jarring. In a world obsessed with professional status and accreditation, how can the non-professional, unaccredited farmer be accurately contrasted? Yet to look at the matter through Ōkura’s eyes, there is validity in it. Both farmers and doctors are concerned with life. They worry (or are paid to worry) about their own lives, the lives of individuals, families and communities. 470 Yet the doctor is concerned with only human life. The farmer is concerned with human life and the plants and animals connected to the reproduction of that human life. Farmers support human life on a wider and much more fundamental scale that doctors. Doctors treat the sick. Farmers create the basis for life and health. Good farming, for Ōkura, is the best medicine for society because it produces food

470 Tokunaga, Kinsei nōsho, NNZ 69: 20-21.

135 without hurting the soil, preserves human, plant and animal life, and yields the raw ingredients that will become the literal medicines for the treatment of the sick.

It is not coincidental that security and prosperity are linked through the creation of a farmer- doctor typology. Food grows the human community, maintains it and heals it, especially during famine. Farming also cures sickness in a variety of forms. The cultivation of literal medicines cures literal illness. Metaphoric sickness, i.e. climatic events, harvest failures and hopper outbreaks, were

“like epidemics;”471 and they were to be treated as one would cure a sick son.472 The oils, powders and steeps aid upon such fields were medicines (yakuhō, yakushu and tekiyaku, alternatively),473 just as fertilizer was applied according to specific prescriptions.

Farmers were therefore the means to cure the sicknesses of the fields, preventing the worst disease of all, i.e. famine, from taking hold on the greater body, Japanese society. Agriculture was a kind of preventative medicine. And improved agriculture alleviated the ills of scarcity through planned management of grains; the internalization of the logic that “famine was always coming” was a means to maximize on all lands, to grow only what produced usable items, and to cull wild plants of food and medicinal values. Farmers were therefore society’s first doctors. They treated the essentials of human development and of hunger and if they excelled at their craft they could keep everyone alive through trying times. To do this, farmers were to carry human life by its two handles: security and prosperity.

Ōkura’s Agronomy Where farmers are often dismissed as merely scratching away at the dirt, Ōkura elevated them to doctors. This was not some mere ideological positioning. Ōkura lived in a time when elites said and wrote of farmers as the most important social group yet treated them like sesame seeds, to

471 NNZ 15, Jokōroku, 21. 472 Ibid., 25. 473 NNZ 15, Jokōroku kōhen, 63.

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be squeezed hard, then even harder, to extract every drop of oil.474 In contrast, Ōkura worried about

the farmers upon whose backs everyone else stood. If the conditions of farmers could be improved

then all of society would benefit. The greatest menace, famine, could be pushed back and the means

of doing that were simple. Improve the livelihood of farmers and create conscionable systems for

their aid. It just so happened that when farmers prospered everyone else would too. Because if

farmers were doing well, the markets were full, lords had their incomes, and there was always

something to eat. It didn’t make society perfect. But this was the precondition for society to

continue to develop towards greater perfection.

When we look at Japanese agriculture from Ōkura’s point of view it is hard to miss the

concurrency of multiple systems of agriculture. From the developed, cash-cropping regions to the

underdeveloped, export-oriented raw goods producers and mountain village subsistence cultivators,

there was yet room for improvement in all of them. In other words, pre-industrial Japanese

agriculture had not yet reached its technological peak. As stated earlier, Ōkura understood this and

believed it would take centuries for agricultural improvement to be fully realized. These are the

principles he thought would accomplish it:

1) Use land effectively and profitably a) use seedbeds and transplantation to maximize field usage, b) plant intervals between crops to make the most of field surface, c) select plants suited to marginal lands, including mountain plots, d) do not cultivate ornamentals (plants which have no yield, or cannot be processed into a saleable product) even near the home, e) use field surface for planting, not for rice drying, so as to take a catch crop 2) Use labor efficiently and as needed a) adopt labor- and time-saving tools when possible to minimize drudgery and costs of production, as well as to unlock laborers (the elderly and young) who would otherwise be unable to participate effectively, b) invest labor to acquire, and protect, higher yields, c) utilize labor to safeguard crops from insect damage/loss,

474 An oft-cited quote meant to convey the elite view of Japanese farmers is “peasants are like sesame seeds; the more you squeeze both, the more production you get.” (Quoted in Gary P Leupp, Servants, Shophands, and Laborers in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 7.

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3) Use off-farm inputs to improve and protect yields a) use purchased fertilizers (appropriately matched with particular cash crops) to acquire higher yields, b) use purchased oils (if they cannot be homemade) to treat insect-affected fields to ensure harvests, 4) Fertilize appropriately a) use the right type of fertilizer, b) at the right time, c) in the right amount, d) with the right method of application, 5) Diversify and increase production a) do not rely solely on rice, as the only cultivated grain, nor on cereals as the only cultivated crops, b) make use of catch crops to increase production, c) cultivate alternatives crops on all paddy, dry-fields, and commons, as well as in the spaces between them, to enable increased acquisition of cash, d) where possible, double crop, 6) Make use of mountain lands/commons a) harvest wild plants for on-farm consumption as well as for sale, b) utilize mountain fields/commons to cultivate saleable products, c) plant trees on lands unsuited for arable crops, 7) Self-production over purchase, when feasible, coupled with market production for supplementary income a) never buy what you can make yourself, b) develop specialty products for sale, c) utilize cash crops to increase acquisition of currency, 8) Monitor crops a) always observe to calibrate practice to plant growth and season.

As practical guidelines they were delivered in combination with three mutually reinforcing targets of improvement. First, teach farmers to rely on themselves and, as an integral component of that self-

reliance, make use of markets to obtain cash necessary to their survival; second, develop communal

support systems that benefit farmers and markets. Third, improve local and regional economies with

emphasis on bottom-up growth policies. Everyone, especially elites, would benefit, Ōkura argued, by

the expanded wealth and production of farmers who, in funneling those products to markets,

allowed for imported goods to be replaced with domestic production.

Ōkura didn’t aim to write economic theory, or a critique of the socio-political system. Any

implied questioning of that order is the result of his objective to save food producers from poverty

and starvation. What Ōkura wrote were how-to books. His accounts are the nineteenth-century

equivalent of the present-day instruction manual. They gave readers the methods and techniques

they needed to do for themselves what other experienced farmers accomplished elsewhere.

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Those directions had two connected aims: prosperity and security. In their demonstration,

Ōkura re-conceptualized farmers as doctors and agriculture as medicine, speaking to an alternative method of presentation and analysis for our secondary analysis. When we look at farmers as the first professionals, it is not difficult to assign them a more meaningful slot in our societies. Moreover, farmers as doctors and agriculture as medicine makes them into the most important human- ecological interface in human societies. Decisions on what to use to maintain field fertility, as well as what not to use, determine whether the agro-environment, along with human health, degrades, sustains or improves.

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Chapter 4. Comparative Agronomy

The previous chapters concluded with agronomic principles derived from the chief texts of

each writer; they articulated the main ideas, recommendations and preferences of their authors. In

this chapter, these principles are analyzed to reveal overlapping and diverging approaches to shared

problems on farms, in environments and with marketplaces. Although comparison and assessment

may reveal patterns of historical change, the aim of this chapter continues to be practical application.

We remain concerned with how these authors attempted to solve particular agricultural, environmental and market-based limitations, as well as the applicability of these ideas to the present-

day.

This chapter is constructed via three distinct analytical frames: farm-level practice, ecological

interaction and market-orientation, some of which form contradictory impulses. It is my intent to

reveal, not to rectify, these contradictions so that the reader is left in the same place as historical and

contemporary farmers – with various claims for what was to be done and how. It is the feasibility of

multiple techniques and approaches, without the ability to synthesize their needs and outcomes

completely, that explains why farmers are sometimes drawn to practices that are not in the long-term

interests of their farm or the environment. This will help the reader to experience the challenges

inherent to farming, hopefully in a manner that will engender a deeper appreciation for what is

involved. As with earlier chapters, I wish the reader to think like a farmer, to face the questions of

farm management as if their decisions determined the success or failure of the crop and farm, rather

than as a distant, intellectual exercise. Essentially, we assume a position from which we observe,

simultaneously, the requirements of each field within the context of the farm as a whole, empowered

and confined by the environment, supplemented and attenuated by market interactions.

Given the scope of topics already examined, this chapter is limited to the subjects of

fertilizers and crop rotations. These are large, encompassing categories within which multiple sub-

140 themes are explored. Under fertilizers, focus is largely on humanure, a means to assess on-farm vs. off-farm nutrient cycling and loss; within crop rotation fallow, green manures and cash crops are stressed. This approach enables the ecologic interface for each agronomic model to take a central role in evaluation, such that we measure the efficiency of historical models by their potential impacts on soil fertility and disease management as much as economic output. In short, it is in this chapter that I illustrate a model of comparative, historical analysis that is not reductive to exchange value.

Comparative Practices

Duhamel, Young and Ōkura each conceived of themselves as writing for farmers. Each possessed the certainty that words on paper, representing improved farm practices, would translate into improved agriculture. Although improvement was often presented through the language of the market, and measured through profit, no model correlated cash acquisition with anything akin to what we call development. Profit was the metric of good farming because cash stored value in a way that farm commodities could not. Where farm products spoil, are consumed by insects, rodents and thieves, or disappear into our own gullets, cash retains at least some value. Profit, then, was not about economic success for its own sake. It was about the ability of the farm household to persevere through accessing what the farm lacked, whether that was food, fertilizer, seed and machinery or non-farm products. As has been argued already, this assertion derived from a concern for farmer wellbeing that punctuated all three case studies. For as all three authors argued in some variant, farmer wellbeing was the source from which community, regional and country-wide resilience flowed.

While the case studies emphasized the acquisition of cash, their pathways to improvement were distinct. Using the preferred practices and values articulated by all three authors, the following chart illustrates commonalities and divergence. Content is presented in the same order as the chapters, though overlapping topics have been removed. If the concept is present in a writer’s

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agronomy, it is marked by an X. If the concept is absent, the tile remains blank. For the sake of

space and clarity, observations of potential benefit to future research that are not connected to this

table but can be extracted from these writers and their works are provided in the following

footnote.475

Table 6.1: Duhamel, Young and Ōkura Compared

Preferred Practices Duhamel Young476 Ōkura Line/row cultivation X X X Elimination of annual fallow X X X Economization of capital inputs X X X Improved tools/implements X X X Improved grain storage X X Tree cultivation X X Varietal selection X X X Cash crops X X X Seed-drill and horse-hoe X X Wide range of fertilizers X X X Crop rotations and their modification X X Conversion of arable to pasture X Off-farm manures X X X Increased flocking rates X Seedbeds and transplantation, for arable X Inter- and multi-planting X X Avoidance of ornamentals X X Insecticide use X Fertilizer application by plant type, field, season X Diversification according to regional specialization X Double cropping X Use of mountains and commons X X Collection/use of wild plants X Self-production over market reliance where X possible, especially for inputs Monitor crop growth X X X

475 Topics that are not included but appear within these texts include: hothouses, hot-beds/glass cases, nurseries, land reclamation, entomology, plant and animal pathology, veterinary medicine, plant and animal breeding, the uses of fire, concepts of time (or seasonality), communal labor and mountain/alpine farming. In addition, acclimatization and plant/animal transfers, which have largely been studied in the context of scientific disciplinary formation and imperialism, are viable lines of inquiry, with each case study documenting significant plant/animal introductions during the period. 476 Because Young’s chapter used his earlier and latter works to identify how his thinking on what constituted “best” practice changed over time, I have drawn upon his latter views and not the summary as it was first given mid-way through Chapter 2.

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As the table illustrates, there is significant overlap among Duhamel’s, Young’s and Ōkura’s preferred practices; moreover, even when the practices themselves differ, there is a commonality in outlook and objective. In the acceptance of row cultivation and the elimination of fallow, we can identify intensification. In these same techniques, as well as through the economization of capital inputs and the improvement of tools, there was rationalization. Through experimentation with rotations, the proportionality of arable and pasture, and the quest to discovery the highest livestock rates per parcel, there was optimization. In the avoidance of non-food bearing crops, the collection of wild plants, and the utilization of commons, there was a re-orientation of the natural world towards human consumption – but not at the cost of an entire ecological community. There was not a single reference to the stripping of mountains, plains or commons so as to replace less useful species with only those suited to human needs (this thought process was constrained to the arable).

The only lifeforms these authors sought to eradicate were weeds and insect pests. Nature, therefore, remained a repository, even if it was a repository within which different balances were constructed.

Nonetheless, within these practices were simultaneous, oppositional tendencies. There was both an impulse towards specialization, particularly in grains, as there was an impetus for crop diversification. The latter, combined with broadening side-businesses through cash crops and value- added processing, opposed the simplification to monoculture. In this historical farmers (as their present day counterparts) perpetually faced a tension, in every planting season. In deciding what to plant, how to plant it and whether to value-add or sell a raw good, farmers were consistently determining their annual workload, their potentials for economic gain as well as their survivability in an off year. Calibration of the farm’s assets to the climate, market conditions and the personal preferences of the farmer, in combination with available practices, tools, labor, fertilizer, and seed, determined what could or could not be done, despite whatever intentions there may have been. We

143 saw this with Duhamel, Young and Ōkura who each, respectively, had to grapple with particular limitations in dung, labor and time.

Although to different scales and intensities, all three case studies share in intensification, rationalization, optimization, specialization, diversification and exploitation, grounded in experimental and empirical ways of knowing. This suggests that scientific, agricultural thinking had emerged at least within the minds of these three writers; and given their intertextual nature, i.e. their consistent and repeated use of other published materials as well as the documented observations and contributions of their correspondents, it seems fair to aggregate. Best practice writers such as

Duhamel, Young and Ōkura attempted to speak for their societies’ agronomies at large. What they document represents the best ideas and hopes of their respective agricultures, even if they had not been accomplished. And it is that perspective that deserves more attention.

Skeptics who debate the impact of agricultural manuals argue that farmers were not so directly and immediately impacted by the ideas contained within these books. Well, then, that would mean that whatever increases in agricultural production occurred within this period happened without the acceptance of best practices. That supposes that, had best practices been utilized, production would have increased further. According to this logic, it is safe to say that there was a latent capacity within historical agricultural practices for improvement according to best practices within historical farming regimes. That is, historical farming practices had not yet reached their perfection according to their own values and goals. In such a light, farm books might not reflect historical actualities but they do present what was believed to be feasible for their time.

Understanding the potentials of those best practices therefore helps us to assess the trajectory of historical agricultures had they not been interrupted by industrialization, nationalization and the institutionalization of science. Furthermore, it means there was yet room yet for development,

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improvement and application, justifying the reassessment of these ideas in secondary literature and

the exploration of historical agricultural practices for present-day use.

This analytical position is further vindicated by the attempt to explain why or how these

three case studies came to share in these particular values, for their commonalties cannot be

explained via interaction and exchange. Only the first two case studies were geographically

proximate. Young’s knowledge of French enabled him to engage with Duhamel’s work. His travels

within France put him on Duhamel’s test plots. However, there is no documented exchange

between French, English and Japanese sources for this period. Within the English and French texts,

Japan received barely a mention. Furthermore, I have encountered not one reference to Duhamel or

Young within the Western works available to Ōkura. Such texts, collectively known as rangaku or

Dutch Learning, introduced leading scientific theories and knowledge from Europe. But they did

not emphasize farm book literature.477

Instead, their commonalities can be explained through a shared stress within their agrarian

societies, one that transcended political, structural and cultural institutions.478 The previous chapters

have demonstrated a correlation between farmer wellbeing, particularly small-holders, and improved

agriculture in the minds of these authors. Duhamel’s anxiety for a farmer of three arpents, Young’s

focus on cottagers taking care of themselves, and Ōkura’s career-long fixation with making farmers

more resilient all speak to the same underlying problem: how to make farming the best it could be

because there were yet still times when scarcity threatened. These authors targeted small farmers not

because of some inherent insufficiency in the scale of small-holding. It was because small-farmers, in

477 For rangaku as a typology, as well as its general contents, see: Annick Horiuchi, “When Science Develops outside State Patronage: Dutch Studies in Japan at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century,” Early Science and Medicine 8:2 (2003), 148-172. 478 These are the bases by which other scholars of this subject have attempted to explain why Britain and not France, or why Britain and Japan, but not China. While I find the arguments interesting and often well documented, I do not find them to reflect the nature of farming. In essence, such explanations are useful in explaining agricultural economy but not agricultural production. I have yet to see a source, from a farmer’s perspective, that demonstrates how national politics, the institutions of landownership, or particular cultural values for money, economy, or nature justify what they were doing on their lands and why.

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having small-holdings, did not possess the resources to see themselves through periods of lack. In essence, they had limited resources which, once exhausted, reverberated within their communities, regions and states. This is why Duhamel emphasized maximizing their harvests, Young stressed mixing self-provision with labor, and Ōkura called for diversified cultivation coupled with the exploitation of wild plants and rounded out through value-added processing. If the small-farmer

prospered, economy and society were stable and could thrive.

For these reasons we can identify an emphasis on intensification in all three case studies. The

acceptance of row cultivation and the elimination of fallow speak to the necessity of each farming

model producing more food on less land. It is not significant, for our purposes here, whether

intensification occurred through hand, animal or machine labor. The commonality is the attempt to

draw more food from the same quantity of field surface. Then, once coupled with the

economization of capital inputs, it reveals yet another shared attribute. The goal of having more

food on a constant supply of land did not justify an exponential increase in the application of

manures or seed. Each writer aimed to find the method by which a certain amount of inputs

coupled with improved techniques gave the most food with the least costs. This was about

stretching limited resources to their greatest maximum. No writer included here conceived of a

world in which animal manure was so copious that it could be thrown away as trash, as is done

today. Whether it was Duhamel looking for ways to conserve manure, Young seeking the means to

increase supply, or Ōkura assessing viable fertilizers and testing their rates of application, these

writers knew that if they were going to succeed in the maximization of yields, more work had to be

invested in each unit of land, and every particle of plant-food had to be managed towards that goal.

Where they differed was in how they went about achieving that outcome. Duhamel’s initial

recommendation was not to rely on dung, at all. But in time, as yields fell, he realized that dung was

inherent to food production. His final conclusion on this subject was that dung was to be managed

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so as to provide the necessary increment for the crop that was being grown. Because of his emphasis

on grain, he did not seek to re-balance the proportion of arable to pasture, so as to find a new maximum. Young, however, did. Young saw that a future with more wheat came by traversing increasing mounds of animal dung. His proscriptions utilized fodder crops, and grasses on marginal lands, to cycle through animal stomachs for the improvement of the arable. Manure was the keystone to more grain and its byproducts of meat, milk, wool and leather were added benefits.

Without pasture and livestock, though, Ōkura relied on the human animal. Humans could gather, process and apply the manures gifted by the forests, oceans and their own digestive systems thereby keeping fields in good heart.

Intensification cannot occur without rationalization. No model of agricultural intensification, whether historical or theoretical, avoids denser plantings that in turn rely on heavier applications of inputs and labor. Yet rationalization is not predicated on a specific piece of technology, like the seed drill, to force regularized seed placement or fertilizer application. That might have been true for

European agricultures. It might have been true for farmers still operating within the context of or out of a preference for broadcast. But in Japan, where broadcast had not been practiced for some time, at least with the primary crop, rationalization had nothing to do with the invention of particular machinery. Instead, it would be more appropriate for the case studies included here to typecast rationalization as emerging out of the discovery that soil has a carrying capacity. The irregular distribution of plants across the field surface does not maximize the yield at harvest. But when the plants are evenly distributed, yields rise. The attempt to figure out what the optimal number of plants per parcel differed among the case studies but the experimental model was nearly identical: play with the distance between rows, play with the distance between plants, and pay attention to differences in yield by plant type, by field/soil fertility, by fertilizer application rates and by season/climate.

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The way that these writers rationalized production differed greatly. Duhamel embraced the horse-hoe, as did Young, such that field surface was sacrificed to allow for the mechanism to pass.

This may have saved on human labor but it reduced the highest potential yield, by allocating land to the needs of the tool and the horse rather than to plants and their roots. Human feet, lighter and smaller than heavy machinery and the draft animals that pull them, can move with less damage, and with narrower spacing requirements. This means that systems that rely on human labor can achieve denser plantings in comparison to both animal and machine-driven implements. The difference is that humans require recompense whereas animals and machinery are fed and maintained. This matters when labor is more expensive than fodder or fuel. In two case studies, denser plantings were achieved by abandoning wider intervals. Young’s pasture farming and Ōkura’s row spacing improved yield by reducing non-productive spaces.

Rationalization engendered optimization through encouraging these writers to find the highest yielding varieties, plant-animal combinations and crop rotations. Thus it was not only about getting the most field coverage, it was about using the type of each lifeform most suited to the demands of the farmer, the location, and the system of husbandry. We’ve seen how Duhamel sought the highest quality wheat varieties from allegedly superior seed stocks; how Young experimented with different types of plants and varying grass mixtures; how Ōkura recommended selecting the fastest ripening variety, acclimatizing it to local conditions, and continuing to select for early- ripening traits. Duhamel and Ōkura both stressed the use of multiple varieties, with varying maturation ranges, so that early, middle and late-ripening plants, whether grains, fruits or grasses, could provide for constant supply, and income. All three writers practiced seed selection, by testing seed viability and discarding the weaker ones before planting. In general, optimization was about discovering the potentialities within and among species and coupling their capacities with the conditions for their success. It was about figuring out which kinds of grain, which breeds of sheep,

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responded best to rationalized field surfaces, and then calibrating the entire agricultural system so as

to produce the most of everything on the least amount of fertilizer and effort.

Optimization, though, was also about maximizing time. Time is especially important in agriculture because knowledge of how to rationally utilize it is determinative of farmer success. In the case studies we saw four different iterations of time management. Duhamel’s ideas for selecting tree or fruit-bearing plant variety by the season of its maturity required that the farmer replace monoculture with early, middle and late-ripening varieties so as to extend the availability of that fruit and reduce labor requirements during harvest. Thus rather than a farmer having twenty or so apples trees of the same type that all bore in a two week period, necessitating long hours and more onerous transport/shipping/storage requirements, by Duhamel’s logic the farmer would have four or five apple trees of four or five different types, each maturing in a different two week window. In place of a two week apple harvest of many trees, the farmer now had a two or so month harvest of only a few trees at a time. If the farmer replicated this across fruit types, such that something was always maturing from spring through fall, the farmer attained stable work, reliable forms of sweetness for the dining table, and steady income.

Seasonality was also apparent in Young’s pasture farming. Young’s desire to attain year- round grass for his livestock such that he never had to truck fodder crops from field to animal housing and excrement back to the fields, let alone rely on grains for feed, was entirely about finding the right grasses, or combination of grasses, so as to always have at least relatively fresh food. We may recall that the concepts of rouen and fog were entirely about minimizing the labor requirements of making and transporting hay, using the animals as harvesters and manure spreaders. Once Young found grasses that could maintain their verdancy in winter, he had the means to keep livestock year round on only grass.

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In contrast, Young’s Farmer’s Kalendar was utterly dedicated to the principle that there was

something always to be done, and that it needed to be done at the right moment or the farm’s labors,

and therefore the farm’s viability, were at risk. Such was particularly the case with the sowing and

harvesting of grain. To work around the annually expected, inclement weather of spring and fall,

farmers had to get their winter and spring grains planted during tight, two-to-three-day windows,

when the soil wasn’t too wet and before the rains came. The same problem existed for harvest,

when the grain was to be cut and hauled in before precipitation ruined the quality of the seed and

straw. Moisture has an adverse effect on protein development within the seed, affects grain quality

and ruins the nutritional value, color, texture and flavor of straw. 479 The Kalendar is therefore a testament to the perpetual challenge arable farmers face, as well as the risks of relying on a crop that occupies the fields for five to ten months only to be spoiled by rain during harvest.

Humans can manipulate time through seedbeds and transplantation. As Duhamel and Ōkura described for trees through the use of nurseries and Ōkura explained for arable crops, farmers could get more from their fields by exploiting the growing patterns of plants. Concentrating seedlings in a nutrient-rich, heavily-weeded, watered and guarded location allowed farmers to ensure that the healthiest most likely to mature plants were translocated to the fields. In so doing, they avoided gaps that arise during direct-seeding from failures to germinate, poor soil moisture content, insect, bird and rodent predation, as well as competition with weeds. The most valuable gain, however, is in time.

By germinating in the seedbed and growing until large enough to endure transplantation, farmers extend their growing season. While a standing crop came to maturity in the field, the next crop was already weeks if not months advanced in the seedbed. After harvest, the field was not left to temporary nakedness or even a seasonal fallow, as was done in both Duhamel and Young’s arable management. The field was immediately planted, fertilized and watered. This was how some

479 Ann Larkin Hansen, Making Hay: How to Cut, Dry, Rake, Gather, and Store a Nourishing Crop, (North Adams, MA: Storey Publishing, 2014), 47, 75.

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Japanese farmers managed to double crop rice and then sow wheat on the same field in the same year, where the climate allowed. It is this element of historical practice that explains how and why

Japan was able to sustain such a large population on such a small quantity of land. As was mentioned in the introduction, Japan had the population of France on less than the arable land of

England. Minimizing the time between crops through the use of seedbeds and transplantation allowed Japanese farmers to get more from the same, limited amount of land.

Intensification, rationalization and optimization therefore conjoin in a series of practices, each expressing different outlooks on the capacities of agriculture. As such, they do not necessarily channel themselves towards the same outcome. Duhamel’s fruit management emphasized diversification whereas his arable practices, just as Young’s, led to specialization and monocultures.

Even Young’s pasture farming, which demanded a variety of grasses for livestock feed, limited the products of the farm to meat, milk and wool. The widest range of farm products in the case studies was Ōkura’s, with stress on not only the self-production of tea, soy sauce and miso, oil, pesticides and textiles but on the cultivation and collection of both domesticated and wild plants. Yet even

Ōkura identified that self-production was not superior to effective, profitable specialization. When a farmer hit upon a commodity that did well in the marketplace, the farmer was encouraged to ramp up production. It is crucial to remember that Ōkura’s goal was not self-reliance but rather farmer survivability. Self-reliance did not trump optimized resilience through access to cash.

What these case studies reveal is that the tensions between specialization and diversification had to be managed perpetually. Whether the primary output was grain or animal products, Duhamel,

Young and Ōkura each depicted societies in which farmers had much to gain through cultivating alternatives. Cash crops earned their title because they were an opportunity to make coin through the cultivation and/or processing of high-value goods, such as dyestuffs. But they could become a form of speculation, particularly when plants took two or more years to mature. Knowing what to

151 produce, how to grow and process it, and whether it could be smoothly integrated into the existing farm management were difficult tasks. Deciding whether to replace a subsistence crop with a cash- crop was therefore a decision to be reached in terms of on-farm requirements and the potentials for profit. A farmer who only produced dyes could not rely on the farm’s products when there was no grain in the marketplace, even if pockets were brimming with coin. Whether an alternative could be pursued was dependent on the health of local, regional and national marketplaces to provide foodstuffs for those who specialized in non-edible goods. If the marketplace could not provide, specialization in non-foodstuffs was suicidal.

The tensions between specialization and diversification illustrate an important truth regarding historical agricultural production that I believe gets aggregated out of secondary literature through emphases on social, cultural and national-scale economic themes. When we situate ourselves at the level of the farm, we can see that self-production, or subsistence production as it is sometimes called, is not inherently irrational, inefficient or “backward” in its practical values. As is hopefully clear, it can be intensified, rationalized and optimized based on empirical observation.

Thus, for farmers with the knowledge and skill, self-production is both sane and profitable. It is a form of cost-savings, in which farmers provide themselves with raw goods at lower-than-market prices. If processed on the farm, farmers enact a form of vertical integration, in which they own and control all steps of processing, such that they obtain an unbroken chain of command over every process that transforms seed to finished, marketable good. There is little room for middlemen in such a relationship and thus the farmer gains the most profit. Farmers can also practice their own import-substitution. By replacing off-farm purchases with on-farm production, they can enjoy formerly expensive products at lower costs. Moreover, when they can produce their own farming inputs, i.e. fertilizers and insecticides, they can reduce their costs. This, too, is a rational approach to economy. At the scale of the individual farm, in place of reliance on the marketplace, if farmers can

152 produce goods for their own consumption the only thing stopping them is understanding how to do so effectively.

Farm-level production is not only about money, however; it is also about personal and cultural values. Farm commodities purchased through the marketplace, particularly processed goods like butter, cheese, bread, soy cause or miso, are made at the discretion of the farmer, artisan or processor. As soon as they are generated off-farm control over their flavor, consistency and contents is abrogated. While this can allow for the standardization of products and the emergence of shared regional and national identities it is simultaneously a loss of locality and regional distinction as processing centers cater to, if not manufacture, popular tastes. Moreover, as farmers shift away from making their own goods on-farm, they increasingly answer to the preferences of the processors and their markets. This can come at the cost of traditionally-cultivated varieties, which become no longer fitting with the prerequisites of long-distance transport, popular preferences or the desire for longer- lasting shelf-life, for instance. When these varieties disappear, they, unlike historical agricultural practices, cannot be reclaimed. Such loss is a loss of culture and of history, for that plant and its community had a mutually constructive relationship that cannot be regained.

In time, the loss of control over flavor, varietal selection and processing turns the farmer into a raw goods producer and off-farm, finished goods consumer. In proportion to the level of processing and distance of transport, the farmer loses out on the benefits of market orientation through the higher prices of finished goods. Essentially, when the farmer provides raw goods and consumes off-farm manufactured commodities, the farmer has entered into a losing market relationship, a nearly colonial, extractive relationship in which the farmer sells raw goods cheap and buys finished goods dear.

Whether the farmer practices specialized or diversified farming, if the farm is market- oriented and the farmer does not engage in value-added processing, farming becomes economically

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precarious. Typically, those who simplify agriculture to merely profits and yields assume that the

only way for farmers to succeed in such a situation is to get more extractive, obtaining larger

holdings so as to squeeze out more units of those raw goods on the scantest quantity of inputs

possible, particularly human labor. That point of view is constructed by looking at only the

experience of particular farmers, and scales of landownership, and is not justified by the case studies

presented here.

That kind of farming is not only economically precarious, however. The extent to which

farmers self-produce or export, in combination with the level of specialization and/or diversification on-farm and the practices used in that production, determine to what extent a farm becomes ecologically hazardous. All farming is, by its nature, extractive. Humans create systems of life centered on themselves, using plants and animals to generate the resources for sustaining human communities. However, while farming is extractive it need not be inherently ecologically destructive.

What determines the extent of the destruction is how farm products are created and the degree to which farmers export them. The more taken from the soil the more that must be given back. If the soil is not treated well, if it is not given its due, the greater the level of damage done. Such damage manifests in a variety of ways, from environmental fallout like erosion, dust storms and silted up, rising rivers to consumer impacts, like nutrient-deficient produce.

When farmers crop without an application of organic materials to the soil, they are mining the long-term buildup of soil structure, as well as nutrients, that they inherited.480 When the products

of that agriculture are centralized around urban markets, and the animal and humanures generated through their consumption are not returned to farms, a soil deficit is created. In the decades after these case studies ended, the application of chemical fertilizers was considered a solution to that

deficit. The usage of chemical fertilizers, heavy in the elements of plant growth but not at all fertile

480 Fred Magdoff and Ray R. Weil, Soil Organic Matter in Sustainable Agriculture, (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2004), 1-44.

154 with the needs of the soil as a community of life, can keep thinning soils productive but they engender new problems – problems in plant, animal and human health. Increasingly, these chemicals allow plants to reach maturity but they are nutrient-deficient foods. So while they keep an agricultural economy up and running they do not create the conditions for long-term agronomic success that Duhamel, Young and Ōkura each hoped to fashion for their respective societies.

In other words, markets feed off farmers who feed off nature. As long as the farmer does not overly pull upon the environment, the flow of farm products to markets may continue, though the farmer’s wellbeing may be in doubt, especially if the farmer accepts a raw-goods-producer- finished-goods-consumer role. But when the farmer draws too hard upon nature, the entire system is at risk of collapse. What governs the extent of that risk are two factors that shall be discussed below: fertilizers and crop rotations. These factors, which exhibit the intensified, rationalized, and optimized characteristics just discussed, determine soil and crop fertility, manage disease and insect damage, and control the community of life on which agriculture depends.

On Fertilizers and Crop Rotations

Manure, dung, fertilizer and many other expressions are polite speech for excrement.

Excrement in all its many shapes and sizes is excellent plant food as it contains the nutrients for plant growth. For those familiar with modern bagged products, this is not merely a proportion of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, or N-P-K ratios. Organic fertilizers (so called because they derive from living bodies) convey micronutrients that are essential to healthy, balanced plant development. So while a plant fed with only nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium may reach maturity, its likeliness to contract disease, insect infestation, or produce less wholesome, tasty fruiting bodies is increased in proportion to the lack of organic materials in the soil. A plant raised in

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soils rich with organic matter, on the other hand, has increased resistance to disease and parasites,

and produces more nutrient-dense, tasteful fruiting bodies.481

Excrement feeds the soil, not just plants; it therefore sustains a community of life that contributes to plant growth and ecosystem stability. It does this by providing materials that must be broken down. The processes by which microbes, fungi and other decomposers go about rendering large quantities of organic matter into plant-usable compounds also condition the soil, helping it to retain moisture, as well as providing spaces for air to circulate and plant roots to penetrate. This

keeps plant nutrients in the root zone, by retaining them within living bodies or processing them

into usable compounds that are then affixed to soil particles, like clay. The speed of decomposition

determines the rapidity of nutrient release; and organic materials are suited to steady release throughout the growing cycle.482

The case studies of this dissertation sometimes experimented with items that would be, only a few decades later, instrumental to the development of chemical fertilizers. Yet, none of them relied

on these materials primarily. Duhamel and Young most commonly discussed animal dung and so-

called fossilized manures, like marl, gypsum and lime. Ōkura typically provided fertilizer application

rates for humanure, oil cake and fish fertilizers. That is, in all three case studies, the fertilizer regime

was organic. Moreover, it had not yet begun to shift towards distant, mined organic manures either,

materials like guano that became particularly important from the 1840s onwards.483 Fertilizer use

therefore remained centered on farmer self-provision. As was discussed, off-farm manures were

available and recommended, in all three case studies, when the farmer could afford them. Whether

those manures were merely a return of on-farm nutrients in the forms of animal blood, bones,

481 Robert L. Tate III, Soil Organic Matter: Biological and Ecological Effects, Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publishing Company, 1992). 482 R. E. White, Principles and Practice of Soil Science: The Soil as a Natural Resource, (Oxford: Blackwell Science, 1997), 193-199. 483 Gregory T. Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013), 27.

156 manure and humanure, commercial byproducts like oil cake or an expressly created fertilizer like dried fish, there was not one example in any of the documents for this dissertation that relied on synthetic compounds as primary fertilizer input.

As a result, all of the practices detailed in the previous chapters used materials that fed the soil, even if the farmer was only concerned with the growth of the plants on that soil. This is vital. I do not want to misrepresent historical farmers as caring about or understanding ecological stability when they did and could not. That is why I documented that farmers bemoaned heavy applications of animal manure that occupied so much time and effort and cost so much in terms of labor. Of course, as the world around us demonstrates, if farmers can merely use a few hundred pounds of a substance instead of tons, most do it. But as a result of an organic fertilizer regime, that was not feasible within these case studies. So as long as the organic materials that were taken away with the harvest were replaced, soils retained the organic matter requisite to maintaining at least some productivity.

Within Duhamel’s and Young’s writings, the availability of manures to enact that husbandry was very much in question. A limitation on dung made it difficult for farmers to produce a main crop, such as a cereal, on all lands every year because they did not have access to the fertilizers they required. This was the prime restraint of the three-course husbandry. Reliance on fallow, while allowing some acquisition of fertility, did not provide farmers with the dung needed to ramp up production on all of the arable. The same problem was identified in Chapter 1 for Duhamel’s New

Husbandry. In contrast, four-course cultivation broke this restraint. By drawing on the interrelation of legumes and microbes to bring nitrogen out of the air and put it into the soil, farmers acquired a free fertilization. Based on farm management this was more than just free fertilizer, too. The farmer gained a fodder crop that increased dung supplies, whether animals fed directly on clover or were

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fed in farmyards. But that outcome was dependent on how well farmers used legumes in their crop rotations, the proportion of fodder and pasture to grain and the frequency of wheat cultivation.

The answer provided by the four-course husbandry compensated for manure limitations but

it did not solve for the nutrient loss created by markets. Because so much nitrogen is used by plants

to produce protein-heavy seeds, humanure comes to contain great quantities of soil resources. If that

material is not brought back to farms, something has to be done to compensate. Legumes were a

substitution for at least part of this nitrogen but they do not produce the other macro- and micro-

nutrients that plants demand for balanced, healthy growth. The loss of so much organic material is a

form of extraction that undermines farmers and farming over time. The ideal would have been, at

least according to Young’s standards, to utilize humanure in combination with nitrogen-fixing crops.

Humanure and the Assessment of Sustainability All three case studies recorded humanure use. From Duhamel’s and Young’s accounts,

consumption was limited to particular regions within France and Britain; at the same time,

humanure appears to have been one of the top three fertilizers in Japan. This is corroborated not

only by Ōkura’s assertions, as a writer on best practices, but by scholars of the commodification of

humanure.484 Ecologically speaking, this is likely the most important difference between these case

studies. The fusion of humanure and wet-rice agriculture in Japan accounts for a higher population

density on less arable acreage than either France or Britain, without the use of imported feedstuffs

from either colonial holdings or an international grain market. This means that Japanese agriculture

during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries may reflect one of the most efficient agricultural

systems in human history before the advent of industrialized agriculture. Identifying the extent to

484 Watanabe Zenjirō, Toshi to nōson no aida: toshi kinkō nōgyō shiron, (Tokyo: Ronsōsha, 1983); Anne Walthall, “Sodai and the Sale of Edo Nightsoil,” Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Autumn, 1988), 279-303, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2385051 (accessed December 3, 2009).

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which an agricultural system made use of humanure or other tactics to compensate for not using it,

such as nitrogen-fixation and fallow, facilitates the assessment of its sustainability.

Although Duhamel and Young both approved of humanure as a fertilizer, experimented

with it and recommended its use, their readers were clearly not open to the suggestion.485 The chief

manures for their societies were animal dungs. Disputations for the superiority of cow, horse, sheep,

rabbit or pigeon manure by field and crop type alongside experiments with so-called fossilized

manures, like marl, gypsum and lime, dominated discussions of fertilizers. Thus despite the

experimental fervor to improve agriculture with nearly any substance, poudrette and nightsoil don’t

seem to have made it big in either Duhamel’s or Young’s systems of husbandry.

The absence of humanure recycling in Duhamel’s and Young’s agronomies necessitated

alternative forms of balance. Because the fields needed something that animal manure on its own

could not provide, nitrogen-fixing legumes came to the fore, although to varying extents. Duhamel

did not accept legumes with the veracity of Young, nor did he take up multi-year grass cultivations

that kept portions of the arable out of grain production for up to a decade at a time. Because

Duhamel’s focus was on grain production, these legumes played auxiliary roles. In addition, the

replacement of fallow with annual cultivation stripped his cropping system of a rejuvenating practice.

As a result, the reader comes to suspect nutrient conservation under Duhamel’s agronomy was low,

perhaps explaining why French farmers struggled with inconsistent crop yields in the historical

literature.

In contrast, Young’s encouragement for the wide-scale adoption of legumes reflected the

growing awareness that a crop of cereal after clover produced more and heavier grain. Because

Young’s agronomic model coupled arable cultivation and animal husbandry, a year or more of clover

485 Duhamel described, for only some provinces, the drying of humanure into a powder that was purchased by farmers and used in small increments (Elements of Agriculture (1764), 173-174); Young utilized the material in his fertilizer trials, praising it regularly, and recommended its use for pasture (Annals of Agriculture V. 39 (1803), 293).

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was not necessarily a loss. If done in an acceptable proportion, the clover could feed the livestock

and the soil at the same time, while the animal dung fed the arable that in turn produced marketable

farm goods. By integrating legumes into farm management, farmers had the ability to access

fertilizers that cost them nothing, in terms of currency or lost field surface (as fallow was then

conceived). Although there is no way to assess its sustainability in historical practice, replication in

the present day would.

Thus when it comes to meaningful humanure use in the case studies, the only example is

Ōkura’s. Other scholars have already examined the market for humanure, often making light of the

ways farmers evaluated the color, smell, texture and sometimes flavor of fertilizers in the Japanese

marketplace.486 I’m not concerned with this sensationalism. Based on Ōkura’s farm books, present-

day sources for humanure processing and personal experience with the end-product after

thermophilic composting, I know that humanure can be rendered into a stable, odorless, safe and

effective fertilizer.

According to Ōkura, humanure was a relatively hot manure, meaning that its nutrient

concentration was heavy and an immediate application of un-composted materials had the capacity

to damage plant growth. However aged humanure attained a quality and texture suited to fattening

root crops. Humanure collected from the wards of cities where elites lived gave the highest quality

solids, which were fitting for the cultivation of tea. In contrast, it was the urine collected from the

wards of the working class that was most prized.487 Although this was never expressed in terms of

nutrient loads, this conveys an understanding for which humanure sources had the concentrations of

plant foods fitted to the cultivation at hand.

486 Howell, David L. “Fecal Matters: Prolegomenon to a History of Shit in Japan,” in Ian J. Miller, Julia Adney Thomas, and Brett L. Walker (eds), Japan at Nature’s Edge: The Environmental Context of a Global Power, (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2013) 137–151. 487 NNZ 69: 49-51, 54;

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In application, humanure was no different from the other main fertilizers of Japan, oil cake

and dried fish. Reduced to a powder, they were mixed and steeped in water to make a slurry that was

then applied to the soil near plant roots. Ōkura was careful to detail that properly aged humanure

did not result in hardening of the soil surface, which can result in plant death.488 This observation

suggests that either within recent memory or in active practice farmers had applied immature

humanure to their fields which, like any animal dung, has the propensity to bind and toughen before

it decomposed, constraining air and water infiltration.

The preferred application method speaks to an added benefit: watering. By giving fertilizer as

a steep to the roots, farmers were not only adding plant foods to their fields but providing the

means for plants to take them up. Since Ōkura recommended that farmers conserve water from the

household to cut into the manures,489 he advocated a conservationist approach to both water and

fertilizer. What was desirable to ensure that the fertilizers remained near the plants and didn’t drift into the furrows, where they were lost, were the indentations made within the ridges to receive and carry fertilized waters. As was discussed in the previous chapter, the advent of tools to simplify the construction and watering of these ridges made application easier and more consistent.

To contrast the humanure and fertilizer regimens of the case studies reveals two important dynamics. First, Duhamel’s and Young’s approach to fertilizer management ensured that a field was fertilized, as a unit. Whether the dung was applied to the arable by laborers or by animals directly, the fields received their feeding as a whole. Even when legumes were utilized as fodder, the input of nitrogen from the air to the soil would have occurred wherever there were root nodules. This means that even if Duhamel and Young desired to attain higher yields through larger applications of fertilizers, they did so by feeding the soil. This required a higher volume of material and helps to explain why both Duhamel and Young struggled with fertilizer availability. In contrast, Japanese

488 Ibid. 489 Ibid., 56-59, 63-65.

161 fertilizer application was not once a season but was a series of applications over the growing cycle, specifically to the roots. Given Ōkura’s emphasis on avoiding fertilizer loss to the furrows, this economization of materials implies some scarcity. However, the details of practice reveal at least

Ōkura’s solution. Rather than treat the entire field, feed only the plants. One of the prime differences between the case studies therefore regards the economization and application of scarce resources; and a manurial lens assists our realization of humanure’s value in ecological and agricultural contexts.

Second, humanure use or non-use helps to explain why convertible or mixed husbandry, in which arable and pasture are combined and one is changed into the other in accordance with its fertility, was or was not necessary for agricultural improvement. Because in Japan humanure was fortified through the consumption of fish and then reintegrated into the farming system, fields of clover or other nitrogen-fixers, let alone for years at a time, were unnecessary. Such crops would not have been of double benefit as they were in France or Britain either, given the low number of livestock within Japan. Consequently, Japan did not have to sacrifice arable field surface to fodder cultivation. This enabled a greater production of human foodstuffs per field, per year, than

European counterparts. An examination of crop rotations furthers this claim.

On Crop Rotations

A crop rotation, unlike a photograph or bookkeeping entry, is not just a reflection of a farm or field at a given time. A crop rotation articulates how farmers conceives of their land and work on the scale of years, decades and possibly lifetimes. That is, it communicates the past, present and a desired future. Crop rotations are thereby reflections of the outlook of their composers, of the seasonality and severity of their labor, as well as their intentions. Intentions matter in this context as to know what a farmer believes is achievable is to know that farmer’s understanding of husbandry.

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Moreover, although historical crop rotations can provide only an indication of potential

yields, they do allow readers to theorize how productive an agricultural system was. Taken in tandem

with demographic data, crop rotations can reveal how and why particular agricultural systems were

or were not effective in handling the immediate needs of their communities. In addition, if they are

examined for the presence or absence of fallow, intercropping, green manures and cash crops, they

become metrics of nutrient extraction, a means to assess a general value of sustainability.

The extent to which the farmer allows the natural world a place within a crop rotation also

speaks to a farmer’s ecological awareness. After all, it is possible to create human-centered agro- environments that leave room for plants and animals that contribute to the farming ecosystem, helping to maintain the land, without directly generating products for sale. Nature can also be used to do some of the most burdensome tasks in agriculture. For instance, in place of plowing, which requires some assemblage of labor, equipment, livestock and time, farmers can cultivate large earthworm populations. 490 These intestines of the earth provide free plowing while the farmer benefits from some of the richest manure in existence. In addition, earthworms can check certain

disease-causing microorganisms and microfauna, like nematodes, as they die within earthworm bellies.491 If the farmer prefers a worker that is traditionally eaten, the rutting instinct of pigs and the

scratching of poultry can replace the plow. The soil receives its preparations while the animals eek

out foodstuffs that would have otherwise decayed back into the soil.492 In short, farmers can utilize

the community of life upon their farms to ease their own labors without reducing their economic

benefits.

490 Nakamura Yoshio, Mimizu no hatraki, (Tokyo: Soshinsha, 2011), 83-85. 491 Nakamura Yoshio, Mimizu to tsuchi to yūki nōgyō, (Tokyo: Soshinsha, 2004 [1998]), 65-68; Amy Stewart, The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Acheivements of Earthworms, (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2004), 60-62; Nakamura Yoshio, Tsuchi no ikimono to nōgyō, (Tokyo: Soshinsha, 2005), 37. 492 Bill Mollison, Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual, (Tyalgum, Australia: Tagari Publications, 1988), 299-300.

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Crop rotations can therefore reflect ecological, economic and social outlooks and conditions.

They reveal almost everything there is to know about a farm’s management as well as its capacities

for long-term existence, at least ecologically speaking. In terms of the previous chapters and their analyses, crop rotations identify 1) how many plantings were accomplished each season or year, 2) whether the farmer made use of different plant species to reduce insect and disease incidence, 3) whether the same or different plant nutrients and soil profiles were being utilized, 4) whether preparatory fertilizations and plowings were necessary, 5) the stocking rate of livestock and 6) the extent of market orientation. From these attributes, an informed reader also surmises the kinds of

fertilizers that were likely in use, as well as the degree of mechanization. That is, having access to the

crop rotation of a farm allows the reader to grasp the principle methods of the farmer and to assess

whether its management, including the biological community on that farm, has been intensified,

rationalized and optimized. As a result, we have the ability to think through some of the

relationships that were or were not included in the agronomies of Duhamel, Young and Ōkura,

using them to consider some of the issues that all farmers face, regardless of place or time. This way

of thinking about agricultural practice enables the remainder of this chapter and prepares the ground

for the one that follows.

The entries in Table 6.2 present crop rotations, or in the case of Ōkura crop sets grown

within the same year. They are to be viewed not as universal recommendations but only the

preferences of their authors. In all three cases, these rotations or crop sets were documented

consistently, and form the base from which modulations according to local weather, labor and

market conditions occurred. Each rotation is to be seen as a reflection of what would be growing on

a particular parcel, not the entire farm. To attain the diversity of crops discussed in previous

chapters would require multiple fields, at different places in the same rotation or on different

rotations, to be handled simultaneously. When a moment is taken to consider the complexity of

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managing such an arrangement, we have the chance to marvel at the intellectual work implicit in

agriculture.

Table 6.2 Comparative Crop Rotations493 Rotation Duhamel494 Young495 Ōkura496 (arable) (arable) (on paddy) Year 1 Wheat Potatoes Rice, Rice, Wheat Rice, Wheat Rice, Cole seed (Rape) Rice, Cotton Rice, Soybeans Year 2 Barley Carrots Year 3 Oats Cabbages Year 4 Buckwheat Barley Year 5 Peas, Maize, Clover Millet or other Year 6 Clover Year 7 Wheat Note: Highlights indicate capacity for nitrogen fixation.

Table 6.2 conveys three different models of agricultural management. In Duhamel’s, in

contrast to his intentions for improvement as described in Chapter 1, the possibilities of annual

wheat cultivation on all lands in every year have not been realized. Instead, Duhamel’s crop rotation

reflects a movement away from the three-course husbandry but not the adoption of what would

become the four-course. The presence of only one nitrogen-fixing cultivar, and only as an option

within a class of possibilities for that year in the rotation, suggests its imperfection according to the

standards of his day. Other items missing include fodder crops for the improvement of livestock,

such as potatoes, carrots, cabbages and artificial grasses. That is, Duhamel’s rotation remains cereal-

493 The greatest challenge in utilizing crop rotations for our analysis is that we do not have data of equal length for all case studies. Moreover, because of the distinctions between arable, pasture, paddy, dryland, orchards and kitchen gardens, identification of rotations and/or use patterns for each land type might be considered the best mode for comparable analysis. However, due to the lack of all land types within each case study, such analysis is not feasible. Thus European arable and East Asian paddy are deemed comparable due to their centrality within their respective agronomies as well as their receipt of the greatest share of consideration, preparation and anxiety. 494 Duhamel du Monceau, La physique des arbres; où il est traité de l'anatomie des plantes et de l'où il est traité de l'anatomie des plantes et de l'économie végétale, Volume II, (Paris: H. L. Guerin and L. F. Delatour, 1758), 215. 495 Arthur Young, The Farmer`s Kalendar; or, Monthly Directory, (London: Robinson and Roberts, 1771), 7-8. 496 All of these combinations were discussed and cited in Chapter 3. They are assembled from a variety of sources, not to be re-cited here.

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focused, likely fixated on the immediate necessities of human consumers, without crops that would

facilitate raising more dung for the improvement of cereal yields.

In this light, Young’s rotation can be seen as an enhancement of Duhamel’s, according to

their shared values of improvement. Wheat remained the dominant crop, located after two years of

clover so that it could draw on high concentrations of fixed nitrogen. Yet according to the logic of

Duhamel, the cultivation of wheat only one year in seven shows a substantial reduction in human

foodstuffs. This cannot be denied. The potatoes, carrots, cabbages and barley of years 1-4 are all

potential human foods but, given the analysis provided in Chapter 2, were most likely destined for fattening livestock. The production of lamb, beef and pork, in addition to wool and dairy products, are therefore to be considered in the evaluation of this rotation. Where Duhamel’s did not provide fodder for livestock, nor did his discussion of it give evidence for the use of oats, barley or buckwheat in the production of animal feeds, Young’s prescriptions did. Young consequently provided manure for his arable whereas Duhamel’s did not. Again, in the absence of humanure use, the lack of a nitrogen-fixer in Duhamel’s rotation suggests a farm management that risked long-term

soil fertility.

Accordingly, Duhamel’s arable rotation does not provide for itself in terms of the on-farm

generation of manure or through the natural fixation of nitrogen. This means that it required supplement through the use of commons, pastures or off-farm manures to compensate. Duhamel’s

rotation thereby reflects a strict separation of arable and pasture; and without details for the

management of the pasture, we are unable to assess to what extent it did or did not spend down soil

fertility. Nonetheless, the examination of his rotation does suggest why French farmers may have

struggled with the conversion of the three-course to the New Husbandry. Due to a lack of fertilizers,

farmers could not maximize on the ideas Duhamel and his correspondents put forward until they

found a way to address their soil-based nutrient scarcity.

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Young’s rotation illustrates an alternative. By calibrating the arable away from the primacy of

human comestibles to a focus on livestock, Young enacted a system by which crops moved through

animal bellies, producing human foodstuffs, as well as the excrement to get the arable into the best

condition for healthy, vigorous grain harvests. However, more time was required to attain that cereal crop. So farmers had to balance their animal husbandry with their grain production to ensure the fertility of both. This could free farmers from the resource limitations detected in Duhamel’s

rotation.

Both Duhamel’s and Young’s rotations exhibit one crop per parcel per year. What this

means is that the remainder of that year the land was fallowed in some capacity. Without consistent

attention within the sources to how these seasonal fallows were treated, we cannot be certain what they mean. This is problematic because how a fallow was managed impacted its present and future yields. A fallow that went unplowed, and was given over to yet un-germinated seed and native grasses, produced roughage upon which livestock could be fed. In the absence of plowings, the land would begin to refashion its soil structure, earthworms would re-populate in proportion to available

organic matter, and the land would accumulate soil nutrients through wild nitrogen fixers, rain

and/or flooding, lightning and animal excrement.497 The growth and decay of vegetation on the

surface would control to what extent these processes made meaningful impacts on soil fertility.

In contrast, a fallow that was, according to the New Husbandry or The Farmer’s Kalendar,

plowed regularly to destroy weeds and keep a fine tilth, would inhibit natural regenerative forces.

The plow would frequently break soil structure, allowing nutrients, particularly nitrogen, to leave

into the air and the water table below. The mechanical force of the plows, hoes and harrows,

depending on the nature of the soil, would reduce clods to dusts that more easily eroded. That

mechanical force might also kill soil life, particularly earthworms. While there would be fewer weeds

497 D. S. G. Pollock, “Nitrates, water and salt: maintaining the fertility of agriculture,” in Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 32: 4 (2007), 351.

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to battle among the following crop, and the soil would feel finer to human hands, such operations

do not benefit the land or the yield potential of the crop as much as they enact a vision of what

good farmland should look like to particular observers, especially non-farmers.498 As with nearly all

things, appearances can be deceiving and that is certainly the case when it comes to distinguishing

the ideal farm from what constitutes ecologically-sound farming.

Some might raise eyebrows at such sentiments but they are justified within the case studies themselves. Young’s movement away from arable to pasture farming reflected his acceptance of the superiority of permanent agriculture to annual cultivation. Not only was the cultivation of grasses

less labor intensive than cereals but the harvesting of the crop by animals and the depositing of

manure in place was a drastic reduction of farm labor, year round. Moreover, what Young

discovered was that his grass lands increased in fertility annually, as did his ability to carry more livestock per land unit until he attained a grazing maximum. Those findings are verified by farmers of the last hundred years who, without mentioning Young even once, have reached the same conclusions. As the next chapter discusses, these farmers say that plowing is about feelings of

control not about good husbandry. It destroys soil fertility and in so doing reduces the nutrient value

of the plants that come from those soils, affecting animal and human health.499

Impacts on soil structure and fertility aside, fallows serve as insect and disease breaks, even

within diverse crop rotations. In contrast with farming the same thing on the same land year after

year, which encourages predation by allowing insect and disease-causing microbes and fungi to

synchronize their lifecycles with the crop, fallow decouples the lifecycles of pests from the hosts that

would sustain them. This leads to their depopulation. If the following crop is not something upon

which they can feed, it will reduce pest population still more. Fallow coupled with a crop rotation

498 Edward Faulkner, Plowman’s Folly, (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1943). 499 Faulkner, Plowman’s Folly; Newman Turner, Fertility Farming, (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1951); Gene Logsdon, All Flesh is Grass: The Pleasures and Promises of Pasture Farming, (Athens: Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 2004).

168 that utilizes different kinds of plants that do not share in the same insect and disease exposures is a way to manage outbreaks without chemical interventions.500

When Duhamel’s and Young’s rotations are viewed in contrast with Ōkura’s it is hard to claim that European agronomy had done away with fallow in its totality. As none of the crops mentioned in Table 6.2 require twelve months to mature, there were times throughout the year when the field surface was bare. Of course, in contrast to an entire calendar year in which nothing was intentionally cultivated, this is not fallow in the oldest sense of the term. Yet in light of Ōkura’s practices, in which the fields were rarely if ever vacant, it is certainly a type of fallow. The arguments made by Duhamel, Young and their correspondents thereby remain applicable. If there is a fundamental issue with an annual fallow, because it is not productive of a saleable good, seasonal fallow is also flawed. Although it minimizes the time lost to bare field surfaces, it presents an opportunity to grow (whether for sale or for soil improvement and retention). Seasonal fallow thereby indicates slack capacity within French and British rotations, revealing a site for potential, further improvement.

Ōkura’s crop sets are certainly not flawless in this regard, either. Those of rice and coleseed, cotton and soybeans all enabled fallow because the second crop would be harvested before winter.

In the absence of information for what might be planted afterwards, there is no way to know whether the lands were indeed vacant or cropped until spring. It seems fair, given Ōkura’s emphasis on planting every farmable space of land year-round, that cultivation is just as likely as farmers leaving the soil unoccupied while they pursued any of the side-businesses Ōkura glorified. Let us suppose, then, that Japanese agronomy also contained slack capacity and that it had not been improved to its greatest potential.

500 This is the conclusion of the first two sources cited in the previous footnote.

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Yet, in comparison to one crop per parcel per year, Ōkura’s agronomy does convey some

measure of improvement. The cultivation of up to three crops on the same field in a twelve month

span is notably different from Duhamel and Young in that it allowed for the harvest of a staple

multiple times each year. Thus if the weather were unforgiveable during the first crop’s harvest, the

farmer still had a chance to benefit by the second and/or third. Such an approach is therefore not

solely about accessing more output per land unit. It is equally about the stability of food production

spaced throughout the year as a kind of insurance policy against the vagaries of climate, disease and

scarcity. Farmers who lose one crop out of two or three can still make it during off years. Farmers

who lose their one crop may not.

However, the cultivation of rice every year within and among communities posed serious

risks. It created corridors through which the same insect pests could traverse the country attacking the same crop. Cold weather, not conducive to rice maturation, also posed a threat. Rice monoculture therefore put the Japanese people in the pathway of famine solely because so much of

Japan’s limited crop land was devoted to only one kind of plant. Again, double and triple cropping were meant to assuage this. By selecting early and late varieties, there would be diversity within rice species, including differences in timing in planting and harvesting, reducing the possibilities of the entire country’s harvest falling prey to leaf hoppers or weather. But clearly such variety did not salve the underlying man-made crisis that is monocultural agriculture. Just as the annual cultivation of wheat led to the serious study of insect control for Duhamel, Ōkura’s research into leaf hoppers and his pursuit of effective insecticides reflected fear and anxiety, as well as the added costs in capital and labor, that came with protecting fields of the same plant from crop losses.

There were other tactics that could be taken to safeguard harvests. As we saw in the previous chapter, Ōkura did not merely teach the methods of double and triple cropping, he emphasized the capacities for inter- and multi-cropping. We saw evidence for this in the ways that farmers arranged

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their paddies, building both wet and dry-land portions within the same field so as to grow cotton,

soybeans and coleseed on the ridges surrounding or amidst the rice. Such arrangements provided a

check on the spread of diseases and insect pests by breaking up areas of rice cultivation with species

of plants that were not susceptible to the same types of predation.

In this light, double, triple and multi-cropping were natural projections of farmers trying to

stabilize their monocultural agricultural regime. Ōkura’s approach was to create diversity within the species and to follow up rice cultivation with an alternative food crop (with the exception of when cotton followed rice). Contrasting such an approach with Duhamel and Young is particularly productive. For Ōkura’s diversity within the cropping year and Duhamel’s and Young’s diversity over time are all be seen as attempting to grapple with the same tendencies. The problem was that given the resource limitations of French and British farming, particularly in terms of labor, double and triple cropping were not feasible. The adoption of diversity over time through five- to seven- year long rotations was the happiest solution. Accordingly European and Japanese approaches or outlooks convey an identical solution. Because farmers could not grow the same thing on the same land year after year without major outbreaks of disease and insect damage (as well as struggles with nutrient availability), dependence on a wider community of life within and across years provided greater consistency.

Double and triple cropping, however, do explain how Japanese farmers were able to provide for such a high population on such a low quantity of farmable land. Yet crop rotation alone is not a sufficient explanation; the recycling of humanure permitted it. Had humanure not been a facet of

Japanese farming, it is unlikely Japan’s farms could have provided for its population without large off-farm fertilizer imports. As it is, studies of cash cropping regions in Japan indicate increasing

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reliance on off-farm manures.501 They reveal that Japan may have been able to provide for more

people on less land than either France or Britain but consistent production was not sustainable

without off-farm inputs manufactured from the sea.

Hence while the case studies do not present fully-fledged models of agricultural sustainability,

they do suggest particular patterns of practice close to that goal. Young’s conjoining of various

fodder and cover crops with cereal specialization and animal husbandry provided for the on-farm cycling of resources. Because crops were fed to animals whose manures were conserved and utilized, nitrogen-fixing cover crops served as fodder and fertilizer, and the straw of the cereal crop was used as food and bedding for livestock, the resources leaving the farm were constrained to the seed of the cereal crop and animal products. With the reclamation of some manure and offal from the marketplace, a farmer could maintain the fields in good heart. Likewise, rice grown using humanure

attained at least some nutrient stability. It also simplified the complexities of Young’s management

as humans displaced livestock and fodder crops. The interconnection of land, cereal and human was

thereby maintained by the feeding of the land with excrement made from eating cereals. When

fertilizer supplementation was desired, it could be had from gathering green manures from

commons or through the use of off-farm fish fertilizers, if they could be afforded.

What broke the feasibility of sustainable on-farm nutrient cycling was the integration of cash crops. Opening agricultural systems to markets triggers an immediate and sometimes significant diminution in soil fertility. Even a farmer inclined to sell only the straw of the cereal crop in addition

to its grain created an opportunity through which on-farm nutrients flowed away, if there were not

some effort made to access off-farm manures to compensate for it. Essentially, any crop residues

501 George Sansom, A History of Japan 1334-1615. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961), 120; David L. Howell, Capitalism from Within: Economy, Society, and the State in a Japanese Fishery, (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1995); William B. Hauser, Economic Institutional Cange in Tokugawa Japan: Osaka and the Kinai Cotton Trade, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010 [1974]).

172 that were not returned to the soil exhibited a loss of farm fertility. What determined the extent of the damage was the nature of the farm product taken away. The selling of something with high water content, but low in nutrient mass, like tomatoes or milk, would have been less damaging than the sale of heavy, dense products like grain, meat, and wood.

Each case study conveys a series of potential cash crops. Duhamel emphasized fruit, nuts and dyes. Young discussed dyes, flax and hemp. Ōkura’s agronomy is essentially a study of opportunities, including cotton, sugar, oils, paper and wax. We do not need to dig deeply into these products to understand how they might lead to an imbalance between on- and off-farm nutrients.

What matters for our purposes here is that we understand how market-orientation creates a conduit from farm to market through which soil nutrients travel. When farm commodities are converted to currency through sale the products of their consumption might not be. The result is that soil nutrients always flow to markets but may not return to farms. In addition, currency generated from the sale of farm products is useless on the farm as a nutrient resource, for it can be converted to nutrient value only through the marketplace. Currency, agronomically speaking, is a sterile resource that cannot be used to regenerate soil health. What this means is that the more a farmer converts soil fertility to currency the poorer the farmer becomes in on-farm soil fertility, or wealth of the soil. To compensate, farmers choose to lengthen crop rotations to make use of more nitrogen-fixation and organic materials generated through crop residues, or specialize in cash crops to maintain an in-flow of currency to purchase off-farm manures that enable future production.

These tensions between short, medium and long-term economic gain return us to where the section started, with the strain between specialization and diversification. A case has been made for how diversity within and over time answers to a majority of the risks in agriculture – fears for harvest, preventions of disease and insect damage, and concerns for the future viability of the farm, here measured in soil fertility. Intensification, rationalization and optimization enable the

173 conservation of on-farm fertility when coupled with a proper crop rotation as much as they allow impoverishment through an accelerated extraction of resources via cash cropping. If the keystones of nitrogen-fixing cover crops and humanure are not intact, the flow of resources from farm to market draws down the fertility of the farm, requiring greater and greater interventions to maintain viability. These interventions consume at least some of the economic benefits of market integration and place the farmer in a precarious circumstance: to extract from the farm only that which can be replaced from off-farm, elsewise the ecological costs outweigh the economic benefits, for the farmer is living by spending down the farm’s future abundance.

Implications

This comparison of Duhamel, Young and Ōkura demonstrates that regardless of meaningful differences in climate and geography, similarities in outlook and need led to commonalities in practice. For instance, despite a contrast in primary grain, wheat vs. rice, or in cultivation method, dry-land farming vs. irrigation, in all three agronomists’ literature row cultivation emerged as a means for maximizing field usage and yield output. Experiments with fertilizers complemented this practice, as did the search for a theory of plant nutrition. Thus despite significant differences in agricultural contexts, a core of agronomic values becomes visible. This core is an indication of what best practices existed in pre-industrial farming where land and populations ratios encouraged intensification.

Taking that core and subjecting it to farm-level analysis provided a sense of historical implications. First, within the case studies contradictory tendencies and impulses that tore at farmers can be identified. Thus the mandate to keep fields in good heart and the maxim of making more money were not essentially compatible. Cash crops came at the cost of either soil fertility or subsistence cultivation because cash crops did not always produce on-farm recyclable plant matter, animal dung or humanure that could be returned to the soil. As a result, crop rotations lengthened

174 or more fertilizer and labor became required, allowing farmers to reap the benefits of the market without jeopardizing the long-term health of their lands.

Second, this outcome was both enabled by and generated intensification, rationalization and optimization. Whether farmers were seeking to maximize profits or to obtain more organic material for their soils, they needed to approach crop production in the most efficient ways. This meant measuring, understanding and consistently enacting practices that obtained reliable results. When these themes are viewed through the lens of fertilizer usage, only Duhamel leaves us feeling unsteady about the long-term feasibility of his method. Young and Ōkura accomplished systems that at least maintained balance on the scale of human lifetimes, as they report no indications of soil exhaustion or diminishing yields. Humanure or nitrogen-fixing plants in connection with a carefully considered and implemented crop rotation were the means to this end.

Third, none of the agronomies discussed unto here were in a state of perfection. There was slack capacity in each of them; new plant associations could have further benefited the ecological communities of these systems, while reducing burdens on human actors. This means that historical best practices had not attained their fruition before they were replaced with other agronomic mentalities in the late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. This is relevant not only in the assessment of historical practices but in the consideration of present-day ones, too. Correcting our vision of historical practices unlocks the potential to reevaluate them for action, today, in ways that might complement the continuing development of ecologically-sound agricultural systems.

Articulating the historical precedent for that task, and showing some of the potential benefits of that undertaking, are the goals of the next chapter.

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I believe that the outside forces working against the farmer are far more responsible for farm problems that what farmers are doing wrong. Farmers are mostly powerless at the moment, but in the midst of our frustration, we can do somethings, however insignificant they may be at the outset. There is, after all, no reason that we should not begin to clean up our part of the act. By working on smaller issues, we might even improve the chance for the larger and much needed changes in the structure of American agriculture generally.502 – Wes Jackson, Altars of Hewn Stone (1987)

Chapter 5. Agricultural Manuals in the Present-Day

It is the object of this chapter to re-insert farmers into a discussion of farming without de- centering their points of view in preference for other forms of expertise or knowledge. To do this, we slough off much of the noise about food production (things like the attempt to preserve or privatize genetic data,503 the construction of non-soil farms, particularly in-door vertical factories,504

the disappearance of pollinators, 505 pesticides and chemicals in drinking water and the food

supply,506 and the potential failures of ag-business and large farms to provide more, quality food507) and stick to the details of food production. For that purpose, this chapter argues for continuities between the case studies and the farm books of the present day. It explores their common vision. In that endeavor, I make no attempt to rigorously categorize particular agricultural approaches as a

502 Wes Jackson, Altars of Unhewn Stone, (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1987), 97. 503 Eloise Gibson, “Around the world botanists are battling to find rare wild seed strains before they die out – helping ensure food supplies that can survive the perils of climate change,” BBC, October 17, 2016; http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161017canwildseedssaveusfromfoodapocalypse; Matt McGrath, “Quinoa genome could see ‘super-food’ prices tumble,” BBC, February 2, 2017; http://www.bbc.com/news/scienceenvironment38908321 504 Chris Baraniuk, “How vertical farming reinvents agriculture,” BBC, April 6, 2017; http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170405howverticalfarmingreinventsagriculture; 505 “Bumblebee numbers hit by ‘unsettled decade,’ BBC, December 28, 2016; http://www.bbc.com/news/uk38447937; Helen Briggs, “Action needed to ‘future-proof’ pollinators,” BBC, August 9, 2016; http://www.bbc.com/news/scienceenvironment36849554 506 Matt McGrath, “First study finds neonic pesticides in US drinking water,” BBC, April 6, 2017; http://www.bbc.com/news/scienceenvironment39504487; Chris Baraniuk, “Sometimes our food lies to us. Is it really safe to eat? Is it even what’s listed on the packet? A lab in Belfast is one of the best places in the world to find out,” BBC, August 2, 2016; http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160726toxinsuncoveredatafoodfraudlab 507 Tom Philpott, “No, Giant Farms Are Not Feeding the World. They’re Feeding Canada,” Mother Jones, October 5, 2016; http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/10/chartsourindustrialscalefarmsdontfeedworldshungry; Danny Hakim, “Doubts About the Promised Bounty of Genetically Modified Crops,” The New York Times, October 29, 2016; http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/business/gmopromisefallsshort.html?emc=edit_ta_20161030&nlid=31298867& ref=headline&_r=0

176 certain type of alternative agriculture. Nor do I aspire to survey every writer or tome that has made noteworthy contributions. Instead, past and present agricultural manuals are discussed according to the contents of the agronomic principles discussed in the last chapter. Using the analysis of Chapter

4, in the same order of presentation such that the reader moves through the inheritances of

Duhamel, Young and then Ōkura, the chapter concludes that commonalities in agricultural practices extend over centuries. These continuities, largely unacknowledged in present-day farm literature, assert historical farm books as a vital asset in the continued evaluation and articulation of agriculture in history and in practice, for the improvement of the ways that we produce and appreciate food and the people who cultivate it.

Agricultural Manuals in the Present Tense Someone who knows nothing of farming but has some curiosity is in luck. There are an ever swelling number of farm books that couple beautiful, glossy pictures of land, vegetables, animals and the people who steward them with direct, practical advice for how to experiment with and produce your own. In fact, in the last few years farmers have succeeded in putting out at least one book on nearly every major specialization within agriculture. There are now excellent works on such themes as beekeeping, managing a family cow, orcharding, grain-growing and sugaring. Whether the subject is broached in terms of individuals, family units, or communities, there is now a “do-it-yourself” literature that translates successful approaches based on the personal experience of their authors into comprehensible directions for the establishment of the reader’s own farm or enterprise.

This kind of literature is not new. In fact, it is centuries old. Its message is not particularly young, either. Time and again, regardless of a book’s topic or author, the message is quite simple and familiar: it doesn’t take expensive equipment or largescale assets to succeed. It takes willingness to experiment, knowledge and time. There are no rules, layouts, or ideas that will work in all places, for all people. So farmers benefit from flexibility. There are no plants, animals or assemblages that will

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work for all locales and markets. So farmers pay attention to climate and clientele. There are no ways,

also, to go about doing any of this in a responsible, ecologically-sensitive manner that allows a

farmer to simplify their enterprises into monocultures. Diversity among species and within species is

the pathway to stable, successful farms that produce healthful plants, animals and humans. That kind

of diversity thrives on small farms.

In Chapters 1 and 2 Duhamel and Young targeted small-holders in specific campaigns.

Duhamel believed that small farmers had the most to gain through the New Husbandry. Young was

convinced that cottagers could provide for themselves and their families on small allotments, selling

surpluses and reducing the cost of local poverty relief while continuing to work on someone else’s

farm. Though their goals were different, their methods and findings were similar. The modification

of small parcels of land to intensive row cultivation, modeled off of the kitchen-garden, was the

means to improve production and strengthen farmer welfare. Neither Duhamel nor Young

proscribed the adoption of large machinery or the accelerated replacement of existing practices with

new, untested ideas. Their focus was on the gradual evaluation of new techniques, plants and points

of view along with their measured extension until the farmer had replaced inferior yields with

superior outcomes. It had been the garden that provided many of the plants and practices that

enabled those results.

Some of Duhamel’s present-day successors have succeeded so well at translating the garden

to the farm that they are sometimes seen as not having left the garden. Jean-Martin and Maude-

Hélène Fortier in Quebec as well as Perrine and Charles Hervé-Gruyer in France have developed

agricultural models that use small holdings,508 1.5 acres (0.6 ha) and 1,000 square meters (0.1 ha)

respectively, to produce what the Hervé-Gruyers call ‘miraculous abundance.’ That may be an

508 For those familiar with the small farm movement, I would like to clarify that I have selected the Fortiers because they have written their own primer, which is here critical to my evaluation of texts. Those looking for a survey of other small farms, in which the Fortiers are included, will find alternatives in Josh Volk, Compact Farms: 15 Proven Plans for Market Farms on 5 Acres or Less, (North Adams, MA: Storey Publishing, 2017).

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understatement. In their fourth year of operation, the Fortiers achieved an income of 100,000

dollars, reaching “a level of production and financial success that most people in the agriculture

industry believed to be impossible.” 509 In contrast the Hervé-Gruyers generated 54,800 euros

($59,497) on one-sixth the Fortiers’ acreage.510 Neither makes use of large-scale machinery, chemical

applications, nor relies on subsidies. Compare either with the average income per acre (.4 ha) of crop

land in Illinois or Washington, farmed using largescale equipment and off-farm industrial inputs, at

$244 and $463, respectively.511 From data such as this, focus on small farmers is justified.

The methods developed by the Fortiers and Hervé-Gruyers bear many similarities as a result

of commonalities in research. Both informed their approaches with key texts from master farmers

such as John Jeavons512 and Eliot Coleman.513 Those familiar with alternative agricultures perhaps

known to the reader under titles such as sustainable, holistic, ecological, organic, bio-dynamic,

permaculture, low-input and/or natural,514 will identify their main contributions below. In addition,

both couples cite one historical manual, the Manual Pratique de la Culture Maraîchère de Paris (1845).515

509 Jean-Martin Fortier, The Market Gardener, (British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 2014), 3. 510 Perrine and Charles Hervé-Gruyer, Miraculous Abundance: One Quarter Acre, Two French Farmers, and Enough Food to Feed the World, (White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2016), 226. 511 These figures use aggregated data for 2014 and 2007 respectively to forecast what a typical acre of monoculture agriculture produced in one year in each state. The former is given directly by the source. The latter is based on my calculation, taking the “average” farmer holding of 381 acres and dividing it into the market value of agricultural products and government payments received. The Illinois projection does not include government payments. Gary Schnitkey, “Projected 2015 Net Income on a 1,500 Acre Grain Farm,” farmdoc daily (5): 127, accessed December 10, 2015 http://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2015/07/projected-2015-net-income-on-a-grain-farm.html; USDA, “The Pride of Washington State,” October 2012, accessed December 10, 2015 https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Washington/Publications/wabro.pdf 512 John Jeavons, How to Grow More Vegetables (and fruits, nuts, berries, grains and other crops) than you ever thought possible on less land than you can imagine, (New York: Ten Speed Press, 1974). 513 Eliot Coleman, The New Organic Grower, (White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing 1989); Four-Season Harvest, (White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2002); The Winter Harvest Handbook, (White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2009). 514 As the cited article claims, the nature of these terms is not always clear. It is not my intention, whatsoever, to attempt to discuss and categorize any of the farmers discussed in this chapter, or the schools of farming with which they associate themselves or can be associated. John Vandermeer, “The Ecological Basis of Alternative Agriculture,” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 26 (1996), 201-224. 515 Those who are familiar with both Duhamel and latter French manuals might find it curious that I link the former with these agronomic models. Books such as the Manual Pratique de la Culture Maraîchère de Paris, are certainly more topically connected. However, to stop with works such as the Manual Pratique overlooks longer-term commonalities. It denies the opportunity to evaluate how either the source of the New Husbandry, the garden, or the New Husbandry

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The text is a primer on market gardening that concentrated on how to maximize production in a

small space, using innovative techniques for year-round cultivation. It was written to educate market

gardeners in the nuances of intensified production that fit with then expanding railroad networks.516

The Fortiers and Hervé-Gruyers have both successfully adapted this mentality.

The Fortiers’ method is an intensification of production through gardening techniques. They grow in permanent raised beds using row cultivation. These rows are evenly spaced and staggered, so that plants are equidistant from each other in six directions. They are also tightly packed, so that the leaves touch when the plants achieve 75% maturity. This is not only about increasing production but about managing the microclimate, influencing how much water is retained within the beds and air. It also impacts labor requirements, as when the leaves shade out the soil beneath they deny weeds purchase. The raised beds are fertilized using compost and chicken manure, according to the specific crop and its location within a rotation. Cover crops and green manures have a vital place within that rotation and play a role in managing on-farm nutrients, as well as in building up the soil.

The Fortiers also make use of intercropping, when multiple species of plants are grown together in the same plot. This impacts disease and insect outbreaks, limiting damage to the produce.517

Most of these techniques are utilized by the Hervé-Gruyers. However, there is one notable

difference in their execution. The Fortiers make use of small, gasoline-powered machinery while the

Hervé-Gruyers, on their 1,000 m² plot, do everything by hand. To them this is not about going back

to a past agriculture but moving forward, towards an agriculture modeled on nature in which

“science and conscience, intuition and rigor….can become an art – a body of scientific and technical

itself continued to develop into a profitable, small-farmer method. While it is not my intention to demonstrate or problematize the process of that transformation, I think that showing their commonalities provides the necessary basis for such work to continue. It also enables us to see how ideas that were intended for the open-fields, through the translation of the garden to the farm, could be all the more effective in intensively managed small-spaces, which is a point of extreme relevance for the present-day. Ultimately, it is not my concern whether or not contemporary French- language farmers cultivate according to the methods of Duhamel in an unbroken line of direct transmission as much as that they continue in the shared concerns and legacies of improvement. 516 J. G. Moreau and J. J. Daverne, Manual Pratique de la Culture Maraîchère de Paris, (Paris: Bouchard-Huzard, 1845), x. 517 Fortier, The Market Gardener, xv, 2-16, 61-75.

180 knowledge fertilized by intuition and human creativity.”518 When one looks upon the pictures of their land, art is the appropriate word. Their farm is a tapestry of interacting ecosystems with ponds, orchards, forest gardens, pastures and crops. It is also a statement of resistance and an articulation of an alternative modernity. For the Hervé-Gruyers, farming like this is as much about its ecological connection as the attainment of freedom for farmers and consumers, who are able to escape the modern diet.519 It is also a testament to how agriculture, forestry and pastoralism can combine to create an increasingly self-fertile unit.

While the emphases have shifted from the nature of improvement to environmental and socio-political concerns, the Fortiers’ and Hervé-Gruyers’ accomplishments are a realization of long- term hopes in French agronomy, particularly Duhamel’s. Both models demonstrate the feasibility of small-farm success, on even less land than Duhamel imagined. Moreover, they utilize components of the New Husbandry in new ways. By reducing the scale of the holding and improving the concept of row cultivation, they have managed to put more plants in less space. By incorporating tried and true gardening techniques, such as intercropping, they have also reduced their capital inputs. By intermixing ecologies, like ponds, pastures and fields, they are further able to manage a nutrient cycle that improves fertility over time. The result is both economic and ecological success. While this was not the definition of improvement for Duhamel, it contains his hopes within what has become the pinnacle of improvement for small-farmers today.

Farmers such as the Fortiers and Hervé-Gruyers are also a rebuke of the agricultural economics that argue large farms, large-scale machinery, industry-derived fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides, herbicides and gene-altered seeds, whether hybrid or genetically-modified, are the definition of improvement. They also are a condemnation of the equivocation of all of agriculture’s meaning and value, economically and culturally, into the production of only a handful of farm

518 Hervé-Gruyer, Miraculous Abundance, 12-13. 519 Ibid., 13, 20, 30-37.

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commodities. Furthermore, the Hervé-Gruyers’ socio-political commentary addresses some of

Young’s concerns, issues such as employment, the costs of community welfare, and moral wellbeing.

They write,

by creating a large number of agricultural jobs, we could probably return to a form of equilibrium. The cost of creating a microfarm (from 50,000 to 100,000 euros/$56,500-113,000) is equivalent to the average cost of two to three years of government support for an unemployed person. Yet a microfarm is a working tool that remains useful for many generations. It would make sense to invest heavily in the creation of many microfarms, which would enable those who suffer from unemployment, and who would be drawn to a life close to the earth, to find a beautiful career and a new focus for their lives.520

In issuing such a proposal, they have reversed Young’s and his contemporaries’ concerns for the

cost of social welfare to focus on the comfort and value of workers. This is not a point of view that

maligns the unemployed. Rather, it empowers them. They assign to such a program the qualities of

an ‘investment’ as opposed to a charity payment. That investment provides for a worker’s security as

well as the continued improvement of that land. This builds morale for the worker, reduces costs for

the state, and ameliorates the community of that farm, if only through the increased availability of

healthful, quality produce. As we saw in Chapter 2, such a result was possible in eighteenth-century

England. It remains a possibility today.

That point is further illustrated by accounts of farm reclamation. Between the World Wars, in Cotswold, England, George Henderson and his brother converted barren land into a productive farm using techniques that perfectly encapsulate Young’s husbandry in the Farmer’s Kalendar. The

Hendersons mixed arable farming with animal husbandry. Whatever could be grown was fed to livestock, which were an article of sale in themselves. Then, what came out their back-ends went to

the soil, gradually building up its organic matter and fertility. They planted oats, vetches and other

cover crops to take care of on-farm feeding supplies. Once the soil was deep and rich enough, they

520 Ibid., 200.

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grew root crops to serve as fodder, which intensified manure production. When they grew grain,

they retained the straw for bedding, which similarly increased manure availability.521

To the Hendersons this established “how a happy, secure, and useful life may be spent on

what were a few barren acres, without the toil and drudgery which are usually associated with

smallholding, and that a financial return may be obtained comparable with that in any other

business.” 522 It also demonstrated that great capital, government subsidy or protections, special knowledge or skill were not essential. All that was required was energy, patience and an understanding of the basic principles, or in their final summation, “Work, Muck and Thought.”523

Such a conclusion echoes within the sentiments of the Fortiers and Hervé-Gruyers for they share in

an underlying deduction. If farmers are struggling with small profits the solution is to intensify

production.524

The Hendersons’ did this through multiple enterprises on the same farm, each playing to the

strengths of mixed husbandry. This enabled a localized flow of nutrients to increase the overall

farm’s fertility while generating more produce per parcel than simplified, large-scale farm enterprises.

This was verified when the Hendersons compared their income on 85 acres with those of large

estates. They found their own outputs of £50/acre in 1939 and £90/acre in 1942 exceeded those of

7,000, 11,000 and 30,000 acre farms that had outputs of £17-33/acre on higher quality land.525

Through works such as these we can see how smallholdings, farm reclamation and the

question of how best to allow small-farmers to provide for themselves have an attendant issue

contained with them: how to allow farmland to provide for itself. Once more Young addressed this.

His transition from arable-heavy farming to pasture farming rested on the productivity of grasses

521 G. Henderson, The Farming Ladder, (London: Faber and Faber Ltd, 1952 [1944]), 35-36, 95-105, 155. 522 Ibid., 5. 523 Ibid., 173. 524 Ibid., 18. 525 Ibid., 166-167.

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and their interplay with livestock. Young’s experiments showed that grass could answer for

everything animals required while building up soil fertility. Then if that fertility was desired, lands

could plowed up and cultivated. Today, farm-book writers reaffirm these findings, though without

knowing they continue in what is essentially centuries-long experiment.

In All Flesh is Grass, Gene Logsdon wrote that grass (also called pasture or ley) farming is the

solution to modern consumer fears regarding meat quality, especially the issue of disease

transmission, and farmer profitability. He argued that if the current feeding programs that use 90%

grain and 10% pasture were reversed and farmers made use of 80% pasture and 20% grain, modern

livestock husbandry would return to profitability and be once more ecologically attuned. 526 To

accomplish this, hundreds of thousands of acres plowed annually and chemically-managed so as to

produce the maize and soy for animal feeds would return to grass. If the management of those

pastures were at its most advanced, farmers could attain high stocking rates concurrent with a

diminution in livestock diseases, particularly those transmissible to humans. The fallout would be

better quality human food, better prices for farmers, decreased government costs (through the

disappearance of subsidies), reductions in erosion, diminished fertilizer and chemical run-off and

increases in biodiversity.527

Logsdon’s argument is based off of several interlocking factors. First, he considered that the

location of most of American maize and soybean production was, prior to American settlement,

grassland. Second, he cited the findings of researchers who have compared the bulk yield of grasses

with more calorically-dense crops such as maize and soy. They have found few plants, if any,

produce more per land unit than grass.528 Third, from his personal experience in managing grass

farming, he knew it worked. His reading into other ley farmers (a few to be discussed shortly)

526 Gene Logsdon, All Flesh is Grass: The Pleasures and Promises of Pasture Farming, (Athens: Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 2004), 2. 527 Ibid, ix, 4, 23, 30-32, 42, 138. 528 Ibid., 15-16.

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echoed those results. This gave him the confidence to assert that the reason for the current status

quo in American agriculture was not the result of the superiority of maize, soy or any other tillage-

based crop but because of government involvement in the market, particularly subsidies.529

Aside from his commentary on contemporary American agriculture, Logsdon’s findings

echo Young’s claims about the increased ease of grass farming. By not having to cart fodder from

the field to the feedlot and manure back to the field, the farmer saved on labor and time. The farmer

also did away with plowing, harrowing, sowing and harvesting – all of which entailed saving time,

labor and money. By managing the mixture and growth of grasses, controlling when livestock

accessed them, and otherwise observing animal development, grass farmers became conductors of a

community of life who did not have to live by the sweat of their brows.530 Moreover, as we saw with

the Hendersons, grasses can be used to rehabilitate run down farms, eroded landscapes and barren

fields. That is, pasture can be used to reconstitute healthful soils and productive agricultures.

This fact is borne out not only by the findings of farmers such as Logsdon but by Newman

Turner, a mid-twentieth-century farmer in Somerset, England. Turner took over a deteriorating farm in 1943. The farm was failing because the soils were hard and thin, and half of the cattle were barren.

Through observation, Turner noted that not all of the cattle had succumbed to contagious abortion

or tuberculosis. This led him to conclude that the cause was not infection. Instead, both diseases

were deemed symptoms of nutritional imbalances in their feed regimen. So using nature as his guide,

Turner followed what will increasingly look familiar in this chapter. He grew grasses and used

manures to improve soil quality after ceasing to burn field stubble or apply chemical fertilizers. Once

the soils regained texture and thickness, he stopped plowing too. All cow feed was grown on the

farm, using only on-farm manures. “This kind of farming restored life to a dying farm. Everything

529 Ibid., 18-19. 530 Ibid., 42.

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on the farm, from the soil teeming with life and fertility, to the cows all pregnant or in full milk, and

to the farmer and his family full of energy and good health, acclaim the rightness of this policy.”531

Turner advocated for grass or bulk feeding because it was the only system that provided for

the “complete nutrition and health of the animal.” 532 In contrast, cows fed on starch and protein

equivalents did not get the necessary micronutrients for their health because their feedstuffs were

grown using chemical fertilizers that did not contain them. In essence, synthetic fertilizer-based

agriculture, in focusing on nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium targeted the primary needs of

quick plant growth but not the health of the consumers of those plants. In contrast, ley farming was

a means to give everything cows require, in a way that cows were meant to use it, in “the most

foolproof system of feeding that can be devised.”533

That system utilized kale, hay, oats and vetches in rotation, using strips within the same field.

By hurdling off these strips, the cows made their way from paddock to paddock eating only fresh

forage. The farmer, by managing the progression of the herd, could maintain a consistent supply of

pasture. Turner devised different seed mixtures based on the landscape, stocking rates, and seasons.

In this technique and seed mixes are legacies of Arthur Young. Young’s experiments with artificial

grasses and stocking rates had been about deducing how best to orchestrate livestock feeding on

pasture, with a minimum of hay or grain, throughout the year. Turner’s method provided one

rejoinder to that experiment.

Most joyously for Young, Turner’s seed mixes contain chicory, the plant Young was so

proud of introducing to England. In Turner’s manual, it is described as likely the most preferential

of the artificial forage crops, as it has the highest bulk yield.534 Across the Atlantic, chicory finds use

531 Newman Turner, Fertility Farming, (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1951), 19. 532 Newman Turner, Fertility Pastures and Cover Crops, (Pauma Valley, CA: Bargyla and Gylver Rateaver, 1974 [1955]), 29. Emphasis in original. 533 Ibid., 31. 534 Ibid., 121-122, 138-139, 175-189; Turner, Fertility Farming, 54, 67-68

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today as well, cited by Logsdon and yet another American agricultural manual.535 If indeed Young is responsible for chicory in pasture farming, his impact, even if unacknowledged, continues to be felt on pastures such as these.

Newman’s system was about restoring and maintaining health through modeling the farm off of nature and rationally structuring livestock access to pasture. When we view Newman’s farming alongside the Hendersons’ we can see that there is a correlation between soil health and livestock health centering on the role of grass. On infertile soils, grass is a pathway to fertility. Once soil fertility has been established, grass is the means to maintaining both it and livestock wellbeing.

One further byline in this formulation, human health, was addressed by André Voisin, biochemist and farmer.536 He hypothesized a correlation between soil health, grass health, livestock health and

human cancer, arguing that degraded lands lead to nutrient deficient grasses that caused imbalances

in livestock health then transmitted to human beings and manifested in our own fatal disequilibrium.

Like Newman’s viewpoint on the correlation between disease and bacteria, Voisin argued that

cancer’s basis was in the underlying context for its emergence, imbalance in our nutrition. He

therefore contended that the fundamental fertility of an organism is the direct expression of the

fertility of the soil from which its foods originate.537

A similar logic undergirds Francis Chaboussou’s research, deemed one of the most

important theories in modern agronomy by the father of the environmental movement and former

Minister for the Environment in Brazil, José Lutzenberger. It is the theory of trophobiosis, or the notion that plants are made immune to parasites and disease to the extent that they lack the

535 Logsdon, All Flesh is Grass, 46; Sarah Flack, The Art and Science of Grazing: How Grass Farmers Can Create Sustainable Systems for Healthy Animals and Farm Ecosystems, (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2016), 37, 73, 97, 152. 536 For what it is worth, the following views were not castigated or dismissed by two medical doctors who wrote the forewords to this manual. 537 André Voisin, Soil, Grass and Cancer, (New York: Philosophical Library INC, 1959), 68.

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nutritional elements needed by either. 538 In studying how and why the foodstuffs of pests and

disease-carrying agents developed within plants, Chaboussou noted that there was a direct

correlation between the use of chemical fertilizers and pest or disease emergence. Essentially,

chemical fertilizers are stimulants that cause plants to grow quicker than organic counterparts. The

results of this over-quick growth are weaker plants that beckon predation. Thus when farmers apply

chemical agents to kill insects and disease they are not solving the underlying problem, which is

plant health, because they are treating only a symptom. In fact doing so makes the situation worse

by encouraging resistance within those insects and diseases while introducing poisons into our food

supply. The solution is to return to those practices that provide balanced fertilization and stimulate

plant health, which provides plants with an effective resistance against parasites.539

Much as Turner and Voisin argued, Chaboussou’s findings articulate so-called organic

agriculture as a solution to problems in soil and plant health.540 Collectively, they argue that only

looking at the chemical analysis of soil, or food, provide a partial picture, and a flawed logic. Such a

viewpoint allows us to think that by adding so much of one element or another back into the soil, or

into our bodies through supplements, we will attain a productive state. But such a productive state is

not the same thing as health. Health, they argue, is measured in the ability of the soil from which

plant, animal and human food flow, to nurture health in all of its consumers. If our plants are sick

and need chemical applications to drive off insects and disease, if our animals are sick and need regular doses of medicine, and if we are in need of supplements because our food does not provide what our bodies require, the solution is not more of the same. The solution is to accept, as Ōkura

argued within his manuals, that farmers are a kind of doctor, treating society as a whole by ensuring

soils produce health.

538 Francis Chaboussou, Healthy Crops: A New Agricultural Revolution, (London: The Gaia Foundation, 2013 [1986]), 7. 539 Ibid., 5-8, 156, 205, 208. 540 Ibid., 161.

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To accept that farmers are the first doctors within our societies reverses any logic or

perspective that would undermine the professional position and/or role of farmers. It would, once

more, beckon us to take their perspectives and findings seriously. It would be to treat farmers as we

do our doctors, with respect and deference, even if we seek a second or third opinion. Moreover,

farmer-doctors play a vital role in determining whether the path we are taking as a species is a

maintainable one. By operating in an ecological context, they are in a position to observe and verify

whether fundamental changes in our landscapes, soils, plants and animals puts us at risk of

undermining our health and therefore our ability to reproduce ourselves. They should be

empowered to trust their observations and follow their ideas rather than to accept the wisdom of

off-farm authorities who would tell them only how to produce so much of one commodity, and/or

so much income. Farming is not to be reduced to a mere business. For it is not solely a business. It is the basis for our existence and health as a species.

The ability to make money while being ecologically-sound has already been demonstrated by the Fortiers, Hervé-Gruyers, Hendersons and Newman Turner. Japanese farmers have achieved a similar outcome. Moreover, they illustrate that urban denizens can successfully transition to rural living. How-I-quit-being-a-businessman-and-became-a-farmer is a veritable genre in Japanese farm literature. The author is often an unhappy mid-level professional who feels like something is missing in her or his life. After a series of struggles within the office hierarchy, or work projects that, even if successful, didn’t provide any sense of personal satisfaction, authors embark on discoveries of the kinds of knowledge that were commonplace only a hundred years ago. After a series of hiccups which all turn out to be teachable moments, the authors experience financial stability and attain the

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kind of daily living that gives them and their families the meaning, food, culture and community that

their former urban and office-based lives appear to have lacked.541

Of all the examples given in this dissertation, Japan’s present-day circumstances are

distinctive. Like many countries, Japan has a shrinking farming base as fewer and fewer people move

into agriculture. But in contrast to many other countries, the existing farming population produces

less and less annually as it retires and passes on. It is now possible to drive through a country that

once made efforts to have every farmable field surface dedicated to food production and see fields

of weeds and regenerating forests. Consequently Japan’s food self-sufficiency is quite low. Estimates

put Japanese farmers at producing 38-40% of annually consumed calories within Japan. Tokyo is in

a particularly precarious situation given that it only produces 1% of its annual needs. What is more,

the seed that is used to produce that food is 80-90% imported.542 For those who study this matter,

such circumstances convey a loss of control over the food supply, over price, quality, standards and

flavor. It also means that Japan is almost entirely dependent on both foreign-grown food and seed.

There is an added problem, however. Japan’s seed market, including both domestically-

produced and imported specimens, is said to be up to 95% hybrid, or F1. 543 This type of seed is the

product of a cross between two different strains that gives the child line some of the best and most

desired characteristics of the parents. Proponents of F1 argue that they provide higher yields,

superior flavors, consistency, come to maturity faster and have useful disease resistance.544 However,

the seed of F1 plants does not reproduce itself in its own image. Like the problem Duhamel

expressed for nut-bearing tree seeds, the seed F1 plants produce does not grow true to type. This

541 This type of literature is also available in English but seems not to be all that common in French. However, the identification that something is missing in urban, industrial lives and can be found in connection with nature is common in all three languages, and informs much farmer commentary on how we might rectify socio-cultural missteps and excesses. For an example, see Hisamatsu Tatsuō, Chiisakute tsuyoi nōgyō wo tsukuru, (Tokyo: Shōbunsha, 2014). 542 Kaneko Masaru and Takemoto Toshihiko, Mōkaru nōgyōron: enerugī kengyō nōka no susume, (Tokyo: Shūseisha, 2014), 11- 24; Abe Nozomi, Dentō yasai wo tsukutta hitobito: taneya no kindaishi, (Tokyo: Nōsangyosonbunkakyōkai, 2015), 1-2; Kōsaka Ryu and Tomiyoshi Mitsuyuki, Dentō yasai no ima, (Tokyo: Asahi biru; Shimizukobundoshobo, 2015), 121. 543 Suzuki Koichi, Yasai hinshu ha koushite erabou, (Tokyo: Soshinsha, 2016), 22. 544 Ibid., 24-28, 156, 167.

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makes seed saving inadvisable, and forces farmers and gardeners to buy new seed every year if they

desire to have the same product annually. It has been argued by one Japanese seedsman that eating

F1 seed, like those who argue against genetic-modification in the US and EU, affects human health.

The argument echoes Turner, Voisin and Chaboussou about what it means to eat something that

cannot produce healthful offspring reliably.545

At the same time, Japanese consumers are increasingly concerned with their food. Even

before the Fukushima disaster brought into question the accuracy of government claims and the

safety of government food programs,546 Japanese consumers were particularly picky about the shape and appearance of their produce. Fukuoka Masanobu, a pioneer of alternative agriculture in Japan, chastised consumers as early as the 1970s for being more concerned with how oranges look than with their flavor.547 But in the wake of more recent food safety concerns, the trend towards eating safer means paying attention to place of origin, whether or not pesticides were used in cultivation

the extent of chemical preservation and genetic-modification. Given the volume of foods that arrive

in Japan from abroad, some consumers are willing to pay premiums for Japanese-grown, organic

produce.548 In such a context, authors advocating for consumers to eat heirloom crops, i.e. non-F1

cultivars, argue for reclaiming agency over food, food culture and a certain degree of safety.549 And it

is here that Ōkura Nagatsune (re)enters Japanese farming in an almost unchanged state.

As I established in Chapter 3, Ōkura wrote that the entrepreneurial farmer had a multiplicity of potential side businesses. In his mind, the question wasn’t whether to do one or another; it was

545 Noguchi Isao, Tane ga abunai, (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbun Shuppansha, 2011), 15, 132-149,174. 546 Aya Hirata Kimura, Radiation Brain Moms and Citizen Scientists: The Gender Politics of Food Contamination after Fukushima, (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016). 547 He made a similar comment about how focus on size and appearance results in little concern for quality, or pollution. See: Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution, (Emmaus: Rodale Press, 1978), 88. 548 A comparable point can be made for consumers in France, Canada, the UK and United States. There is nothing exceptional about Japanese consumers attempting to safeguard themselves. For more on this concept see: Andrew Szasz, Shopping Our Way to Safety: How We Changed from Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselves, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009). 549 Takahashi Kazuya, Koraishu yasai o tabetekudasai, (Tokyo: Shōbunsha, 2016).

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which ones to do. The matter came down to farmers’ abilities to access commons, mountains, plains

and/or the seaside as well as their willingness to invest time and labor in learning new skills. Just a

few of those opportunities included harvesting and processing wild plants to make edibles and

medicines, growing cash crops, making one’s own condiments, as well as papermaking. Within the

secondary literature it is said that Ōkura’s goals of easing farm labors and simplifying tools remain

absolutely relevant to modern Japanese farmers. 550 The same can be said about his claims for

diversifying income streams, adding value to farm products and ensuring the versatility of farming

households so that they can survive scarcity (which in the modern world manifests as a scarcity of

income due to low commodity prices). It just so happens that in Japan’s farm books of today, that’s

exactly what the most successful models articulate – without referencing Ōkura.

With titles such as 120,000 Bucks by Farming! “Japan’s Smallest Farming Households” Reveal the

First Step towards Beginning “Quit Your Salaryman Job and Farm Agriculture”551and Farmers with 1 Million

Dollars in Annual Revenue Earn by Direct and Internet Sales! The Strongest Agricultural Management through

Directly Connecting with Your Customers,552 the art of fashioning appealing titles for farm books remains

alive and well. Moreover, just as Duhamel, Young and Ōkura had to write in ways that appealed to

their readers to try new things, which could result in a loss of capital, books such as these make

efforts to put the reader at ease, convincing them that anyone can succeed. An examination of their

contents, though, articulates just how much has remained the same since the Edo period (1600-

1868) when it comes to the secrets of how to make more money in farming.

The latest book of this type, which sold out quickly and had a waiting list for its second print,

is Nishita Eiki’s Happy Family Farming through Value-Adding and Direct Sales, 120,000 Dollars on 30 Ares:

550 Iwanuma Jiro, “Kaidai,” NNZ 14: 431-432. 551 Nishita Eiki, Nō de sennihyakumanen! “Nihon ichi chiisai nōka” ga akasu “datsu sara nōgyō” hajime no ippo, (Tokyo: Daiyamondosha, 2016). 552 Terasaka Yūichi, Chokuhan, tsūhan de kasegu! Nenshō ichiokuen nōka: okyakusama to chokusetsu tsunagaru saikyō no nōgyō keiei, (Tokyo: Doubunkanshuppan, 2015).

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the earning know-how of small farming. The work is part primer on how to start a life in agriculture and part instruction manual for how to run successful in-person and online marketing. But the basis of

his farm’s success lies in its methods of production. Using organic techniques, Nishita’s family grows

more than fifty types of vegetables annually on a third of a hectare (0.75 acres). The family produces

its own fertilizers on-farm, using microbial, anaerobic composting, which processes organic matter quickly and without losses of nutrients. Through the use of green-houses, tunnels, trellises and mulch, the family extends its growing season, produces more vegetables by making use of vertical space, and decreases labor requirements by smothering weeds. What is grown is then sold directly to consumers in set-packages, or food boxes, shipped across the country. The family uses the same produce to make an assortment of sauces, pickles and pastries. It is Nishita’s argument that not only a well-run farm grounds but a well-managed online presence, consistent costumer outreach, well- placed advertising, and attractive, intuitive interfaces are the secrets to success.553

Although markets have changed, what unite farmers like Nishita with their historical

counterparts are the intensification of agriculture to produce more food in a limited space, the

diversity of the crops to be grown and the broadening of on-farm activities to provide

supplementary income. There is, however, a difference in execution. Ōkura’s readers were often

going to mountains and plains to gather wild-grown plants. The necessary roots, branches or bark

were hauled back to the farm where they were refined and processed. For this reason,

supplementary activities were confined to off-seasons, when there was available labor for collecting and handling. In contrast, Nishita does not leave his farm, either for production or for processing.

Because Nishita is not required to produce rice annually for the payment of taxes, specialization in

vegetable production has allowed a larger income than was feasible during Ōkura’s day.

553 Nishita Eiki, Chiisai nōgyō de kasegu kotsu: kakō chokubai shiawase kazoku nōgyō de sanjūāru sennihyakumanen, (Tokyo: Nōsangyosanbukakyōkai, 2016).

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Nishita, like the Fortiers and Hervé-Gruyers, emphasizes that the secret to making more

money is farming and marketing smarter, not getting bigger. It’s about using know-how to improve

yield on the same scale of land along with improved customer interface. Thus not only for the

Japanese manuals but for the French and the English farm books too, it’s about never doing

something that nature will do for you. It’s about harnessing ecological relations so that you put your

efforts into things nature won’t do for you, like build websites, speak to customers, and make

deliveries.

Furuno Takao’s farm is a straightforward illustration of what is meant by not doing what

nature will do for you. Furuno maintains seven hectares of rice paddy (~17 acres) on which he raises

thousands of ducks every year. The ducks allowed him to replace all chemical and mechanical

weeding. Once the rice seedlings are established, he drapes a net over the fields and releases the

ducklings into the water. As they hunt for food, the ducks eat emerging weeds and provide a minor

cultivation to the soil. To be sure there is enough food for the fowl, Furuno grows blue-green algae

in the paddies and places fish within their waters. The ducks feed on algae and fish, fertilizing the

rice with their excrement. As the algae fixes nitrogen, it also fertilizes the rice, providing as much as

2-5 kg/ha/day. Furuno thereby produces rice and fattened ducks without having to spend any time

weeding or cultivating during the growing season.554 Imagine what would have happened if Ōkura

had understood farming by ducks instead of labor- and capital-intensive applications of oils and

powders to inhibit leaf-hoppers.

What enables Furuno to replace labor and capital investment in weeding and cultivating is

the use of interlocking relations among the plants and animals of his paddy. In growing irrigated rice,

there are weeds. The solution to the weeds is not more effort but an animal that will eat those weeds,

and provides additional income for the farm. Because the animal requires more food than what

554 Furuno Takao. “Nō no omoshirosa to ajia ni hirogaru aigamo nōhō,” in Nakajima Kiichi, Kaneko Yoshinori and Nishimura Kazuo, Yūki nōgyō no gijutsu to kandaekata, (Tokyo: Komonzu, 2010), 28-36.

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weeds will offer, its rations are met not with off-farm purchases but through adding more variety to what would otherwise by a simplified ecosystem of water, rice, and ducks. The additions of the algae and the fish support each other, as well as the ducks, and the rice. Furuno then reaps an organic (and therefore higher value) rice crop, as well as organically-raised ducks for the meat market not by

doing more but by knowing more. The entire network of rice-ducks-algae-fish is modeled off of the

environment in which rice grows naturally.

This example illustrates the principles of interconnection that were articulated by Bill

Mollison in Australia in the 1970s under the moniker of permaculture. Permaculture is a contraction

of ‘permanent agriculture’ and ‘permanent culture’ “as cultures cannot survive for long without a

sustainable agricultural base and landuse ethic.” 555 It centers agricultural practice on observing natural systems, drawing out the wisdom of traditional farming systems and synthesizing it with the best of modern scientific and technical knowledge. However, it does not privilege science/technology over the modeling of nature. “Permaculture is not energy- or capital-intensive, rather it is information intensive. It is the quality of thought and the information we use that determines yield, not the size or quality of the site.” 556 This is epitomized in farming such as

Furuno’s and encapsulated in pig and chicken tractors, which may sound fancier than it is. Both

types of animals can be let loose upon arable where they will root and scratch their way through the

surface layers, eating weeds, seeds, root networks and insects along the way, leaving a perfectly

usable seed bed.557

Another permaculturalist writes of permanent agriculture as designing human settlements, not just gardens. He argues that be holding values such as stability and permanence, truly successful designs will create self-managing systems. These systems rely on the diversity of their members, so

555 Bill Mollison, Introduction to Permaculture, (Tyalgum, Australia: Tagari Publications, 1995), 1. 556 Ibid., 31. 557 Bill Mollison, Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual, (Tyalgum, Australia: Tagari Publications, 1988), 299-300. The example is cited by Logsdon in multiple texts, as well as in (livestock book), (Japanese permaculture book).

195 farm self-sufficiency is off the table. Just as a successful permaculture farm blends various plants and animals together to create a mutually beneficial environment, human beings require the interaction and cooperation of community to thrive.558 It is that placement of people within the same context as animals and plants that gives human beings a managerial role in farming, rather than one predominated by labor. Moreover, the acknowledgement of human dependence on both the natural world and society gives the concept of diversity a nested relationship, one in which the interdependence of farm life and social life are mutually reflective. It also keeps human beings within the network of nature, not outside of it. It is to argue that no matter our technological capacities, we cannot escape or outdo nature permanently.

This concept is at the heart of two innovative approaches to permaculture farms. Both

Shawn and Stephanie Jadrnicek’s ‘bio-integrated farm’ in South Carolina and Ben Falk’s ‘resilient farm’ in Vermont make every effort to unleash the innate capacities of biological processes in ways that increase production and reduce human labor (while decreasing the use of limited resources and diminishing costs). The farms draw upon an overlapping cluster of approaches that include mixing ponds, pasture, arable and trees in measure with the landscape, so as to make use of topographical features and to play to seasonal variation. When done optimally, nutrients flow from one system to the next, enriching each parcel in turn. Moreover, little if anything is wasted. Rainwater is collected.

The sun’s position by season is contemplated so that light can be harvested for heat and light, sometimes by refracting it off pond surfaces. Compost is made aerobically, which results in heat.

Pipes conduct water through the compost piles and can warm 1.1 gallons of water per minute to

140ºF.559 Urine is used to inoculate wood chips, particularly charcoal, which when used as a fertilizer provides nitrogen. Compost toilets allow for humanure to be kept within the farm system rather

558 Ross Mars, The Basics of Permaculture Design, (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2005 [1996]), 1-4. 559 Shawn Jadrnicek, The Bio-Integrated Farm: A Revolutionary Permaculture-Based System Using Greenhouses, Ponds, Compost Piles, Aquaponics, Chickens and More, (Whiter River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2016), 15-17, 213.

196 than flushed away.560 Grazing multiple types of animals on the same land allows for them to aid each other, such as when chickens groom sheep and thereby save them from fly infestation.561 Even insects are put to work. The natural voracity and quick growth of the black solider fly, Hermetia illucens, can be channeled towards quick compositing while producing an animal feed.562

While these examples are merely gleanings from within much more complex systems they affirm, once again, that the critical factor in this line of farming is brain work, not so-called backbreaking labor. By using natural processes combined with technological simplicity, human involvement and effort are streamlined. Wendell Berry identified the outcome of that approach when he wrote that farming cannot take place outside of nature because nature and farming are interdependent. If one cannot not flourish neither can the other. To realize that makes the farmer into a conversationalist, a person asking nature what nature can do to help them.563 The good news is that “no crime is involved in plagiarizing nature’s ways. Discovering the underlying principles involved and carrying them over for use on cultivated land violates no patents or copyrights. In fact, all that it is necessary to do–if we want a better agriculture–is to recharge the soil surface with materials that will rot. Natural processes will do the rest.”564

Implications

Regardless of language or location, the agricultural systems presented here are some of the most seductive agronomic approaches in practice today. They are seductive because they whisper to would-be farmers and established farmers alike, promising many of the same things that Duhamel,

Young and Ōkura assured their readers: increased profits, easier labors, stability, security and flavor.

But what has changed is significant. The language of improvement, for improvements sake, is gone.

560 Ben Falk, The Resilient Farm and Homestead: an innovative permaculture and whole systems design approach, (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013), 108-109. 561 Ibid., 132. 562 Jadrnicek, The Bio-Integrated Farm, 247-249. 563 Wendell Berry, Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2009), 7-8. 564 Edward Faulkner, Plowman’s Folly, (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1943), 12.

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The idea that the improving farmer is at the forefront of innovation in the scientific and agricultural

worlds isn’t ventured. The authors of these works, rather, challenge the established notions of what

it means to be a farmer according to the logic of institutions, industry and the state. In fact, they are

often told that because of the scale of their holdings, their approach to agriculture and business, and

the nature of their view of land, labor, seeds and life, that they are not farmers at all.565 The resulting tone is therefore not one of writing as a member of the farming community, as it was for Duhamel,

Young and Ōkura, but of resistance.

It is that theme of resistance that unifies the farm books of today. It is having not been heard by established ways of knowing and their aligned experts that drives these writers to point out, wherever they can, that they are not in the wrong, that their ideas are to be entertained and tested.

But this is not to say that these writers and their agricultures survive in spite of the agro-industrial-

corporate complex that supports large farms and industrial agriculture. These farmers exist because

of the inabilities of large farms and industrial agriculture to provide for the needs and wants of

everyone who eats. They exist because food, culture, community, health and peace of mind cannot

be dictated by just a few corporations and governments. Ultimately, these farmers exist because they

have ideas worth trying and they know it. They are supported by their successes, not subsidies.

The examples provided here show that intensification can be achieved without relying on

increasing applications of labor. The examples cited here reveal that intensification is feasible using

some best-practices that have been around for centuries in combination with new ideas about how

to harness natural cycles and freely-available energy. Intensification doesn’t mean having to work harder, or having to relegate more of the earth’s population to scratching away at the earth in misery and poverty. It means working smarter.

565 Fortier, The Market Gardener, 5; Gene Logsdon, Living at Nature’s Pace: Farming & the American Dream, (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2000), 209-215.

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As this chapter has shown, there is a complementarity of techniques among these different

agricultures. Once a farmer has familiarity in one system, she has the knowledge and ability to pick

out ideas and practices from another and fluidly integrate them into her own agronomy, a way of

farming for her site, in a way that fits her interests, needs and goals. Farmers who succeed in

adapting the practices of one system to another are able to utilize alternative experiences and points

of view. Such application is an opportunity to think in different ways about daily efforts, to

reappraise what has become common, custom, or assumed. The amalgamation of new practices is

therefore a mental cross-fertilization, a way to enrichen the mental components of agricultural

production.

Present-day farmer-writers are clearly working on that now. While their numbers are limited,

there is a growing acknowledgment that the experience of farmers recorded in books is viable for

the alternation of practices. As we have seen, some have even turned to historical texts to glean

relevant ideas for trial. But as far as I am aware, there is no concerted effort to study historical works

in any systematic way, to resuscitate the agronomic systems that contextualize and inform them.

This is where institutional-affiliated researchers and their resources can be practical and useful.

There is an opportunity to diversify the available research on historical practices so that it can be used to rejuvenate our agricultural systems. There is an opportunity to study something of material value. Such study does not require justification the way that rather esoteric projects do. Moreover, it speaks to the intended mission of institutions like the land-grant colleges in the United States and the formerly imperial universities in Japan, created for the specific purpose of helping farmers.566

This chapter has argued for continuities between the case studies and present-day manuals.

It has specifically aligned Duhamel’s approach to fruit production, Young’s thinking on pasture

566 Wayne D. Rasmussen and Gladys L. Baker, The Department of Agriculture, (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972), 9-10; John S. Maki, “The Japan Helpers,” in Clark L. Beck and Ardath W. Burks (Ed.), Aspects of Meiji Modernization – The Japan Helpers and the Helped, (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1983), 28. 199 farming, and Ōkura’s emphasis on value-added, on-farm production with manuals written in the present day. It has done this to illustrate that there are specific inheritances that continue to inform the trajectory of small-farmer-led agricultural improvement. It has drawn on new farming books and explored their common vision to demonstrate that despite a growing diversity of approaches to farming in the present-day there is a core concept that informs these agricultural systems. That core is the desire to maintain ecological balance while fostering economic viability. The extent of that viability differs by practitioner. Some have accomplished tremendous incomes and others have contented themselves to be paid in leisure. Regardless, their works illustrate the ways that historical farm literature can inform the continued improvement of agriculture. Their works also suggests ways in which the now divergent streams of analysis given to agricultural themes can be brought together.

Towards that purpose, more attention and respect for the small farmer is not only feasible it is justified. There is no reason to rely on historical or policy findings that emphasize large farms when there are such vibrant counterexamples before our eyes in the world, and in our historical sources. We just need to be willing to see them.

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Conclusion. Reconstitution and the Garden

This dissertation provided an account of best practices in three languages and cultures

spanning some three hundred years. It argued, like the Hervé-Gruyers, that “our imagination is

limited by visions of the past.”567 That is, when we misapprehend the nature of historical agriculture, we cannot grasp the complexities of farmer accomplishments. In missing those, we undervalue and then overlook the capacities within historical farmer knowledge to continue to inform practice in the present day. Instead, this dissertation reasoned that farmers, past and present, transmogrify soil, light

and water into life, that they are people worthy of respect for their knowledge and expertise, for

their labors and contributions, for their outlooks and perceptions.

It illustrated this through the works of three promoters of agricultural improvement from

three different places and times; writers who articulated a remarkable amount of commonality in the

intensification, rationalization and optimization of agriculture. Those likenesses in outlook and

practice were then connected with the present-day, particularly through the farm books of

smallholders in Canada, France, England, the United States, Australia and Japan, through which they

live on. That eighteenth and nineteenth century articles for improvement have continued to develop

and yield despite monumental changes in the technological and scientific capacities of agriculture

indicates the feasibility of reconstituting historical best practices and suggests that when we seek

techniques worthy of replication there will be much to consider.

When one looks closely at the practices and intentions of these eighteenth and nineteenth

century case studies, two distinct trajectories become visible. One was labor- and land-intensive

small-scale cultivation, particularly well-suited to diversified agriculture. The other was a capital-

intensive, land-extensive and labor-saving approach that preferred monoculture. As I have argued,

all farmers do battle, at least internally, with to what extent elements of both approaches will or will

567 Hervé-Gruyer, Miraculous Abundance, 196.

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not manifest on their farms, annually. But once fully-fledged systems of agricultural production

emerge and a crop rotation, or absence thereof, are locked in, a farmer is not merely orchestrating what has been rehearsed but is in active competition with other farmers. The success or failure of one farmer may then become a condition of success or failure for another.

Competition among farmers may very well go back to the beginning of at least mythic agriculture. In the Old Testament, as punishment for transgressing G-d’s prohibition on the fruit of

the tree of knowledge, humankind was dismissed from the garden and forced to live by the sweat of

their brows. Yet the sons of Adam and Eve did not adapt the same models of husbandry. Abel, a

herder, lived by managing other lives that in turn provided for human and divine needs. Cain, on the

other hand, did live by the sweat of his brow. He worked harder than his brother and he received

less, for the yield of the earth was lesser in vigor and quality than the fecundity of animal wombs.

For this reason, Cain’s sacrifices were inferior to Abel’s. So out of anger, frustration and envy for his brother’s ease, as well as his receipt of G-d’s pleasure, Cain killed his brother; and he was punished.

A double curse was thus enacted on Cain – first that for knowledge, agriculture, and then for murder, isolation.568

Murder was not Cain’s only option. He might have learned from Abel. He might have taken

from Abel’s pastoralism the things that worked best for arable cultivation and succeeded in forming a less onerous cropping system, one that would have produced more self-worth and maybe more

divine approval, too. Cain elected not to. His mistake was not replicated by Duhamel, Young or

Ōkura. When gardens revealed crops, practices and management styles that were worthy of

emulation on the open fields, they borrowed readily. The New Husbandry, four-course system and

the integration of transplantation with intercropping were all successful adaptations of gardening to

568 Here I would like to acknowledge the work of Daniel Quinn, without which I might never have found an expedient way to explain this. Daniel Quinn, Ishmael, New York: Bantam, 2017 [1992].

202 arable cultivation. None of them sought to destroy gardens and gardeners. They each sought to give farmers the effectivity of gardeners; consequently, they revealed that agriculture and horticulture, or any other category that would diminish one, either or both, are false dichotomies.

That process, of learning from each other in the spirit of cooperation rather than competition, ought to continue. An ever widening range of ideas for how to delimit the sweat of our brows without reducing the availability of food is desirable. Farm book writers, past and present, have been at work on that for centuries but because their literature has been displaced, forgotten and discarded, it has become difficult to see it for its goals and accomplishments. To do that effectively, we resume the contexts of their composition, contexts in which the long-term stability and health of the soil, or cropping context, matter more than profit because the latter could not exist without the former.

This dissertation has pointed to historical models and a few of their contemporary iterations; it has argued that effective historical practices can be revived, synthesized and further improved for our immediate and long-term needs. It has also argued that conscious acceptance of historical precedents matters, for the telling of history and the continued improvement of alternative agricultures. It asserts that by returning to emphases on good heart, by conceptualizing farming as husbandry, stewardship and medicine, we render an alternative interpretation for the “punishment” of agriculture. In other words, it has argued that by rethinking farming in history we enable a reassessment of the many topics and themes that derive from agriculture.

Agriculture does not have to be drudgery that requires societies to replace farmers with machines, to reduce all life to commodities, and to think of the living soil as a mere resource. We have and have had for some time the capacities to make agriculture fulfilling, healthful and productive. Assuming such a view is to realize that after all the wandering, conflict and pain we have within our hands and minds the capacities to create Edens of our own making.

203

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