The Chinese developed a magnificent system of working the land with high
sustained yields. There were problems. High levels of intenstinal worms
and parasites because of the unsanitary ways of handling wastes. Even so,
multi-cropping achieved yields the west could never achieve, except in
specialty agriculture, such as the Paris market gardens.
England, like the U.S. in modern times, excelled in cutting costs rather
than increasing yields. In fact, US yields are still relatively low.
The key to England's "success" was in increasing net yeilds, what was left
over after the farm workers took their share. In France, the Physiocrats
pushed the idea that net, rather than gross yields were the goal.
Ricardo Duchesne wrote:
> If P asks us to drop our Western biases and look at Chinese
> economic performance in terms of its specificities most
> fundamentally at its superior agrarian sector and its land-saving
> innovations, he says next to nothing about Chinese agricultural
> productivity. We are definitely told indirectly it was highly
> successful in the way it was able to sustain relatively high living
> standards right through the 1800s. Even as China apporached the
> soon-to-come Malthusian limitations of the 19th century, its
> population doubled between 1750 and 1850 without any
> generalized fall in per capita income (p125). Why? Because
> despite the worsening person/land ratios so visible in regions like
> the Lower Yangzi, the Chinese were able to attain large gains in
> per-acre yields through such land-saving innovations as greater use
> of fertilizers, more multicropping and extremely careful weeding
> (p141). But P will hardly go further than this. He no doubt offers
> substantial numbers showing how much they consumed and
> produced crops like sugar, tabacco, tea and rice. But there is
> really no analysis of the agrarian system as such or the land
> saving technologies. There is an Appendix (B) comparing
> 'estimates of manure applied to North China and Europeans farms
> in the late 18th century, and of resulting nitrogen fluxes'. However, I
> would say that the Appendix, like the rest of the book, equivocates
> on the most crucial questions determining land productivity.
>
>
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
