Many factors and conditions conspire to give to the farms and
farmers of the Far East their high maintenance efficiency and some
of these may be succinctly stated. The portions of China, Korea and
Japan where dense populations have developed and are being
maintained occupy exceptionally favorable geographic positions so
far as these influence agricultural production. Canton in the south
of China has the latitude of Havana, Cuba, while Mukden in
Manchuria, and northern Honshu in Japan are only as far north as New
York city, Chicago and northern California. The United States lies
mainly between 50 degrees and 30 degrees of latitude while these
three countries lie between 40 degrees and 20 degrees, some seven
hundred miles further south. This difference of position, giving
them longer seasons, has made it possible for them to devise systems
of agriculture whereby they grow two, three and even four crops on
the same piece of ground each year. In southern China, in Formosa
and in parts of Japan two crops of rice are grown; in the Chekiang
province there may be a crop of rape, of wheat or barley or of
windsor beans or clover which is followed in midsummer by another of
cotton or of rice. In the Shantung province wheat or barley in the
winter and spring may be followed in summer by large or small
millet, sweet potatoes, soy beans or peanuts. At Tientsin, 39 deg
north, in the latitude of Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Springfield,
Illinois, we talked with a farmer who followed his crop of wheat on
his small holding with one of onions and the onions with cabbage,
realizing from the three crops at the rate of $163, gold, per acre;
and with another who planted Irish potatoes at the earliest
opportunity in the spring, marketing them when small, and following
these with radishes, the radishes with cabbage, realizing from the
three crops at the rate of $203 per acre.