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AI Summary
Farmers of Forty Centuries; or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan is an early 20th-century work by American agronomist F.H. King. It documents his 1909 journey through East Asia, where he studied how densely populated nations managed to sustain agricultural fertility for over 4,000 years.
Through firsthand observations, King explores traditional methods such as composting all organic waste (including human manure), intensive small-plot cultivation, meticulous water management, crop rotation, interplanting, and the efficient use of every available scrap of land.
He contrasts these time-tested practices with the extractive, short-sighted approach of industrial agriculture in the West, warning that without a similar ethic of soil stewardship, modern farming would lead to exhaustion and collapse.
The book is part travelogue, part agricultural treatise, and has become a foundational text in the fields of organic and regenerative farming — valued for its detailed, respectful, and data-rich account of enduring, sustainable land use.
