The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette. (Starkville, Miss.) 1910-1920, 1910-11-05
Where Five Acres is Large Farm.
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than we doing with our plenty. We waste
more in year than they make. Even with a
hundred acres of land the farmer in the South
is likely to consider himself poor, but when 1
asked my Japanese guide the other day If 2 cho
Give acres) would be an average-size farm here
he said: No, not an average; such a man would
be regarded as a mddle-cass farmer-a rather
large farmer" And the figures which have just
obtained in a call on the National Department Of
Agriculture and Commerce more than justify the
reply. Forty-sx farmers out of every 100 in Japan
own less than II acres of land; 26 more out of
every 100 own less than "a acres; and only one
man In hundred owns as much as rs acres. In
the matter OF cultivation also 70 per cent cultivate
less than "a acres, and nearly half tenants)
This year the situation is even worse than usual
for disastrous floods have reduced the rice crop
(rice represents one-haf Japan's crop values) 20
per cent below last years figures, and many people
will suffer. But ordinarily these little pocket
handkerchief farms yield amazingly 1t has been
shown by Prof. F. H. King that the fields of Japan
are cultivated so intensivey, fortified SO pains
takingly, and kept so continuously producing some
crop. that they feed 2.277 people to the square
mile-21,321 square miles of cultivated fields in
the main islands supporting population Of 49,
542,376. II the titled fields of North Carolina.
for example, supported an equal number of peo-
pie per square mile. the population so supported
would be 29,525,969. OF IL Msssspprs 1875
square miles Of land under cultivation supported
thirteen times the population OF the State. could
live of their produced
Properly Managed Lands Do Not Wear Out
And yet these lands have been in cultivation for
unnumbered centuries. Some OF them may have
been cleared when King Herod trembled from his
dream Of newborn rival in Judea, and certainly
1.-The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that
was Rome had not faded from the earth when
some of these fields began their age-long ministry
to human need. And they have been kept fertile
simply by each farmer putting back the ground
every Of fertility taken from 1t, for CONNER
cial fertilizers were absolutely unknown until our
generation.
or course with population so dense and with
each man cutivating area no larger than
garden-patch in America, the people are poor, and
the wonder is that they are able to produce food
enough to keep the country from actual want.
Practically animal meat is eaten; II we except
fish, the average American eats nearly twice as
much meat in week as the average Japanese
does in year: $50 pounds Of meat per capita is
required per year for the average American, to be
exact, against 1t pounds (about q ounces) for
the average Japanese! Many Of the farmers here
are too poor to eat good quality Of rice.
Consequently Japan presents the odd phenomenon
of being at once exporter and large importer
of rice Poor farmers sell their good rice and
buy poorer quality brought in from the mainland
Of Asia and mix it with barley. Only about one
farmer in three has horse OK; in most
cases all the work must be done by hand and with
crude tools. 1t is pitiful-or rather l should say,
it would be pitiful II they were not so content
ed-to the men breaking the ground not by
blowing but digging with kuwas: long handled
tools with blades perhaps six inches wide and two
feet long. At the Agricultural College farm in
Komaba about thirty Japanese wedding rice
with the KAMA tool much like an old-fashioned
sickle, except that the blade is straight: the right
hand quickly cut the roots Of the weed or grass
plant and the left hand as quickly pulled 1t up.
With the same sickle-like kawas about thirty other
Japanese were cutting and shocking corn: they