Nongzheng Quanshu: Bringing Farming, Water Management, and Famine Relief into a Body of Knowledge

Xu Guangqi had already died when Nongzheng Quanshu was published in 1639. That date marks the publication of his posthumously edited papers, not the year in which all the agricultural experiences described in the book took place. Born in Shanghai County, Songjiang Prefecture, Xu participated in court affairs while also attending to the practical difficulties of paddy cultivation and cotton growing in Jiangnan and farming in northern China. His understanding of agriculture encompassed cultivation techniques, land systems, hydraulic engineering, grain reserves, and disaster management; agricultural administration therefore provided the organizing framework for the entire work.

In his agricultural activities in Shanghai, Tianjin, and other places, he considered whether crops could be introduced elsewhere, how land and water supplies could be coordinated, and whether sufficient labor was available to sustain new practices. These interests were connected with late Ming problems of public finance, military grain supplies, and famine. An agricultural manual needed both to help people farm and to explain how officials and local communities could organize projects and maintain production, turning experience of successful harvests into more reliable security for people’s livelihoods.

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Xu Guangqi spent many years copying earlier texts, recording what he saw and heard, and offering critical comments. The materials he left were not a finished manuscript ready to print. After his death in 1633, Chen Zilong and others organized his papers, classifying, removing, supplementing, and arranging material to produce a work in sixty juan. The 1639 publication thus incorporated later editorial work: not every sentence in the printed edition can indiscriminately be regarded as Xu’s own finalized wording.

The work has twelve divisions: the foundations of agriculture, land systems, farming, water management, agricultural implements, crop cultivation, sericulture, extensions of sericulture, planting, animal husbandry, processing, and famine administration. It quotes many earlier works, including Qimin Yaoshu and Wang Zhen’s Nong Shu, while preserving Xu’s own comments. Placing quotations alongside editorial comments allows readers to see both the sources of earlier views and the reasons the author agreed with them, doubted them, or called for further trials.

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The water-management section is not a universal checklist for building canals. In discussing flooding in Jiangnan, the book brings together arguments about managing water around Lake Tai, the Wusong River, and elsewhere. These concern the silting of channels, tidal flows, the opening and closing of sluices, and the differing circumstances of higher and lower fields. Even when the aim is simply to drain water away, a measure that benefits one place may harm another. Unless engineers distinguish where water comes from, where it passes, and when it can drain out, even a large project may prove ineffective.

Xu sometimes criticizes the earlier views he quotes, stressing that conclusions inherited from the past cannot simply be copied without considering local terrain and changes in waterways. The discussion of irrigation equipment also includes water-lifting techniques introduced through translations of Western knowledge. Wang Zheng was not the author of this portion; the Jesuit who collaborated with Xu in introducing Western hydraulic methods was Xiong Sanba. New devices were compared in relation to practical water-supply needs, and adoption still raised questions about whether they could be manufactured, who would operate them, and whether they saved labor.

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The divisions on crop cultivation and related subjects describe the growing of grains, cotton, sweet potatoes, and other crops. Sweet potatoes attracted attention as a supplementary food, and the relevant entries discuss not only yields but also the retention of planting material, raising seedlings, propagation, and storage. A crop’s producing a harvest in a single season did not mean that a stable cultivation system had been established in a new region. Whether planting material could survive the winter and be propagated the following year determined whether its introduction could endure.

Such discussions also challenge a simplistic fatalism about local growing conditions: the fact that a crop had seldom been grown somewhere did not immediately prove that the land would always be unsuitable. The book nevertheless does not argue that every crop suits every place. Instead, it calls for comparisons of climate, soil, moisture, and cultivation methods. Applying southern experience in the north required adjustments to practices and conditions, not merely copying a variety’s name or the figures from a single harvest.

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Famine administration occupies a substantial part of the work. Grain reserves, preparations for scarcity, locust control, and foods for famine years are considered together, demonstrating that dealing with famine does not begin only when grain is distributed after a disaster. Maintaining waterworks, storing grain in ordinary times, and choosing a mix of crops could all affect the capacity to withstand disaster. By including materials such as Jiuhuang Bencao, the book also connects plant identification with subsistence in famine years.

These historical materials contain contemporary experience of edible plants and their preparation, and cannot be used directly as modern guides to what is safe to eat. Their historical significance lies in showing how an agricultural manual linked species, images, local knowledge, and official relief. Officials needed to know how to procure grain and organize labor, while ordinary people possessed experience in gathering and cultivation. The compilation attempted to establish knowledge that could circulate between the two.

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Printing increased the opportunities to preserve and circulate the materials, but does not demonstrate that farmers everywhere immediately followed the book. Literacy, access to books, encouragement from local officials, and particular production conditions all influenced whether a method could be put to use. Later reprints and annotated editions kept the work accessible and enabled researchers to distinguish the sources of its different materials and the layers of its compilation.

The contribution of Nongzheng Quanshu was not to propose a single farming method that could serve the entire country. It brought field observations, accumulated textual knowledge, cross-cultural translation, and administrative concerns into a shared structure. Readers could follow a problem through different solutions and then ask under what conditions each applied. This arrangement left more than a catalogue of agricultural knowledge: it also offered ways to compare experience and revise judgments in response to changing land and water conditions, labor supplies, and needs for food.

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