Research On Techniques For Traditional Chinese Manure In The Ming And Qing Dynasties

Fertilization in agricultural production was attached great importance to during Ming and Qing dynasties, when "more manure and more labor in farming" was going round in agriculture area. It was in that time that many fertilizer sources of high quality was exploited, and technique for composting and utilizing fertilizer was greatly innovated. Therefore, scientific evaluation of the technique level is of great significance to the research into history of agricultural science and technology.This study, combining with the factors of nature, society, economy and technique, tries to enucleate the development regulation of fertilizer technique and to examine its impact on agricultural production and process of social economy.Western modern agriculture recently displays a great deal of disadvantages and defects, and thus many western experts turn to research into Chinese traditional agriculture, especially Chinese traditional agricultural technique of manure, hoping to find the clue of organic agriculture. Since the reform and opening-up, however, farmers in China have started paying more attention to chemical fertilizer but less or rather little to manure, which is severe in some areas. Seeing that, it is important to study Chinese history of fertilizing, seek the potential of traditional fertilizing technique and inherit the good traditional fertilizing technique.This article adopts the knowledge of modern agrology and botanic nutriology in the direction of dialectical materialism and historical materialism. Its research approaches mainly contain philological method and comparative method. Literature on agriculture and chorography are its main sources of information.This article starts with social and economic background of fertilizer technique development during Ming and Qing dynasties. And then it reviews the fertilization theory and technique progress in that time. In addition, this article considers the national main trends and area difference of fertilizer categories changes and compost technique development, on the grounds of sorting and analyzing them systemically. Finally, it summarizes several categories of fertilization technique, and research the inner contact fertilization techniques between successive crops under the multi-ripeness, consulting some chorography and other literature references, such as Complete Works on Agricultural Administration and Shen's Works on Agricultural Administration, and combining with the...