Chapter 12 1. Food-based: 5,000-year farming civilization

The Chinese nation has created a splendid oriental civilization with its own diligence and wisdom, and farming civilization is the foundation of oriental civilization, and food-based is the core of farming civilization. According to research by historians, China is the first country in the world to grow rice, millet (grain), sorghum and other food crops. Rice, rice husks, rice stalks, and rice leaves were commonly found within the scope of excavation at the Hemudu site in Yuyao, Zhejiang.This shows that as early as 7,000 years ago, rice was planted on a large scale in the Yangtze River Basin in my country.

In the Banpo ruins in Xi'an, Shaanxi, carbonized millet (grain) grains were found.This shows that as early as 6000-7000 years ago, millet (grain) was planted in my country. In the Neolithic site in Jingcun, Wanquan County, Shanxi Province, sorghum seed grains, millet ears, and millet husks were found, which shows that sorghum and millet were planted in my country as early as six or seven thousand years ago. In the Western Zhou Dynasty site at Diaoyutai, Bo County, Anhui Province, many wheat seeds were found, which shows that we had grown wheat as early as 2000-3000 years ago. Buckwheat grains were found in the Eastern Han Tomb of Mozuizi, Wuwei, Gansu.This shows that as early as 1700 years ago, wheat was planted in my country.

History proves that as early as 5,000 years ago, our ancestors began to use the land under their feet to grow the most basic food for human beings—grain.Perhaps it was an unconscious attempt at the time, but it resulted in a great sublimation of mankind.Human beings began to move from the era of hunting, nomadic and picking wild fruits to the century of growing food for living.Settlement-based agriculture gradually replaced animal husbandry, and large forests and pastures were reclaimed as farmland. The scene of "Chilechuan, under the Yin Mountain, the sky is dark, the wild is vast, the wind blows the grass and sees the cattle and sheep" is replaced by the scene of "the wind blows the rice and beans and the waves".

After Yu of the Xia Dynasty controlled the water, he created water conservancy, painted Kyushu, fixed the land tax, and fixed the farming season, which established China's traditional agriculture.The large-scale planting of grain has formed a splendid Chinese farming civilization.During the Spring and Autumn Period, iron farm implements and ox farming began to appear in China, at least 1,000 years earlier than Western Europe.In grain processing, China was the first to use pestle and mortar.In the Spring and Autumn Period, there was a stone round mill, and the pedal pestle and mortar appeared in the Han Dynasty, and the fan cart was made, 17 centuries earlier than Western Europe.China's ancient grain planting and processing technology has been at the forefront of the world for thousands of years.For this reason, it is summarized as: "Everything must be based on people, the country is based on people, and people are based on food."

China's grain production has a glorious history worthy of showing off. With the food-based thought, except for a few nomadic tribes and fishermen in China, most people in China mainly focus on planting food.As early as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, on the one hand, people reclaimed a large amount of wasteland and expanded farmland; on the other hand, they adopted intensive farming to increase food production.With the continuous development of agricultural production tools, production technology and crop varieties, China's grain output has long been in the leading position in the world.

According to some calculations, the average yield per mu of medium-sized land during the period of social stability in each generation was 108 kilograms in the early Warring States period; 132 kilograms in the Qin and Han Dynasties; 167 kilograms in the Tang Dynasty; 173 kilograms in the Ming Dynasty; It was the highest output in the world at that time. Around the first year of AD, the agricultural harvest in Western Europe was generally only 4 to 6 times the amount of sowing; while China's Warring States period around 300 BC exceeded the amount of sowing by more than 10 times.Throughout the Middle Ages in the European continent, the agricultural harvest was almost maintained at a level of 10 times or more than 10 times the amount of sowing; while in the 17th century, the yield in the Taihu Lake area of ​​China in the Ming Dynasty had reached 30 times the amount of sowing.According to records in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Tongxiang Fengshou in Zhejiang Province produced 337 kilograms of rice per mu, with an average yield of 258.4 kilograms per mu.In some areas, such as Wuxing in Zhejiang, the rice yield per mu was as high as 449.4-611.8 kilograms.Is China's agriculture getting old?The farming civilization created by the Chinese nation has been at the leading level in the world for thousands of years, but since modern times, especially since the 18th century, China's modern agriculture has declined step by step.Please refer to Mr. Wu Hui's comparison of the grain production status of our country in the past dynasties: From the table, it is not difficult to find that since the Tang Dynasty, the raw grains per capita in China and the raw grains produced by each labor force have gradually declined. Raw grain was only 314 kg, which was lower than the 460.5 kg at the end of the Warring States Period; the raw grain produced by each labor force was only 1,131 kg, which was also lower than the 1,659 kg at the beginning of the Warring States Period.In the 20th century, due to the crazy plunder of imperialism, the cruel exploitation of feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism, coupled with continuous wars and frequent disasters, China's agricultural economy fell into collapse on the eve of the founding of New China. In 1931, my country’s average grain yield dropped to 135.5 kg per mu, in 1947 it dropped to 90.3 kg, and in 1949 it was only 85.5 kg, only half of that in the Tang Dynasty; the average grain yield per agricultural labor force was only 700 kg in 1949, Not only is it only 1/3 of the Tang Dynasty, but it is less than 1/2 compared with the Warring States period.

Is China's agriculture aging?We cannot help but tremble! Eliminating the factors of internal disturbance and external disturbance, population and land constitute the seesaw that influences China's grain production.From the end of the Warring States period to the middle of the Qing Dynasty, China's cultivated land area increased by 8 times, but the population increased by 18 times. Although our grain yield per unit area also increased by 1.8 times, it could not make up for the demand for food brought about by the rapid population growth. Therefore, since the Tang Dynasty, my country's per capita grain has not only not increased, but has decreased year by year. In modern times, it has fallen to the lowest point.

Around 2100 B.C. during the Xia Yu period, my country had a population of only 13.55 million. By the time of the Western Han Dynasty in A.D. 2, it was only 60 million. It was not until the first half of the 18th century in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties that my country’s population reached 100000000.From more than 10 million to breaking through the 100 million mark, it has gone through a long period of at least 3,800 years. But since then the population has doubled rapidly.By 1762, the national population reached 200 million, and 27 years later in 1790, it reached 300 million. It reached 400 million in 1834, and by 1949, the population of our country was 540 million.

At the end of the Warring States period, China had 90 million mu of arable land, which was almost a fraction of the current 1.92 billion mu, but at that time there were only 20 million people. Although grain production was still in its infancy, due to the large per capita grain area, the per capita The occupied grain still reached 460.5 kilograms, which was not only higher than that of the Qing Dynasty, but also higher than our current level.It can't help but make us feel a fever in our faces. Later, with the massive increase of population, people began to reclaim wasteland and expand grain fields.The first is the Yellow River Basin, which was also a pasture with dense forests and lush grasslands at that time, but it was gradually reclaimed as cultivated land soon.During the Han Dynasty, Sima Qian designated Jieshi (now Changli, Hebei Province) to Longmen (now Hejin Yumenkou, Shanxi Province) as the boundary of agriculture and animal husbandry, with pastoral areas in the north and agricultural areas in the south.Soon, the agricultural area broke through the boundary of farming and animal husbandry and moved northward.In the Tang Dynasty, it moved to the north of Yinshan Mountain, and in the Qing Dynasty, it went straight in. Except for some remote mountainous areas, all the woodland and grass slopes were reclaimed as cultivated land.

At the same time, China's population moved southward in large numbers, gradually developing towards the Yangtze River Basin.Not long after, the vast southern region of our country is almost full of population, and correspondingly, a large number of wasteland is reclaimed.In order to make a living by farming, it is almost to the point of seeing every stitch.Population growth forced people to open up wasteland and farmland, which promoted and promoted China's grain production.According to expert calculations, at the end of the Warring States period, my country's total grain output was 9.135 billion kilograms, which increased to 29.57 billion kilograms in the Western Han Dynasty, 33.235 billion kilograms in the middle and late Tang Dynasty, 60.25 billion kilograms in the Song Dynasty, 72.65 billion kilograms in the Ming Dynasty, and 113.405 billion kilograms in the middle of the Qing Dynasty.

However, the expansion of cultivated land was far behind the pace of population growth, which made China's grain possession level begin to hover or even decline in modern times.Although the total grain output and yield per unit area are both showing an increasing trend, the amount of grain per capita and the amount of grain produced per capita of the agricultural labor force are gradually declining.Even after the Qing Dynasty, China's per capita possession of raw grain and the per capita grain production of agricultural labor were not as good as our country's late Warring States period, the backward era of slash-and-burn farming. Although China is known as "vast land and abundant resources", its arable land resources are quite limited.For thousands of years, generations of Chinese people have been digging food and living on patches of yellow land. Generations of reclaiming wasteland and planting grain have almost reclaimed all the land that can be reclaimed into arable land, including forests, pastures, and lake islands.At the end of the Warring States period, we only had 90 million mu of arable land and 85 million mu of grain fields. By 1949, China's grain sown area had reached 1.65 billion mu, an increase of 19.4 times.During this period, my country's population increased from 20 million to 540 million, an increase of 27 times. The population is still growing, but the arable land in our country cannot grow any longer.After liberation, although we tried to feed the growing population by increasing the area of ​​arable land by killing chickens and taking eggs, the sown area of ​​grain exceeded 2 billion mu in 1956 and 1957, and exceeded 1.9 billion mu in 1958. All hovered between 1.7 and 1.8 billion mu, and began to show a downward trend year by year since the 1980s. By 1994, the grain sown area had dropped to 1.64 billion mu, and fell back to the level of 1949.The population at this time was more than double that of 1949.The ancients used to feed the ever-growing population by continuously reclaiming grain fields. Now, what do the Chinese people rely on to support themselves?