Old Korean farmers protected topsoil by using land wisely

International studies scholar regrets loss of organic farming practices in Korea

By Kang Hyun-kyung

Old Korean farmers were wise — they knew how to grow crops and vegetables without destroying the earth. They collected rainfall during the summer monsoon season to prepare for water shortages and recycled by-products of human activities, such as excrement, as fertilizers. Their organic, sustainable farming led to relatively high crop yields compared with Western farming.

A portrait of Franklin Hiram King in his book, “Farmers of Forty Centuries” published in 1911 shortly after his death

Emanuel Pastreich, professor of international studies at Kyung Hee University and director of the Asia Institute in Seoul / Korea Times

American agricultural scientist Franklin Hiram King (1848-1911) discovered these attributes of East Asian farming during a nine-month tour to Korea, China and Japan in 1907. He wasconcerned about soil depletion in the United States and determined to explore the agricultural practices in the region to learn how farmers here were able to prevent the problem for centuries.

King learned a lot from the trip. He was amazed by the East Asian farmers’ wise use of land and water. He summarized his findings in his book, “Farmers of Forty Centuries,” published by his wife Carrie Baker King in 1911, shortly after his death. He suggested applying the East Asian organic farming model in the United States.

In the past century, however, agricultural practices in Korea and the United States have regressed rather than progressed. Organic farming, which had amazed the American agronomist, disappeared in Korea after Western-style agriculture was introduced to the rural areas. The United States did not follow King’s advice and is now suffering the consequences — topsoil erosion.

Emanuel Pastreich, professor of international studies at Kyung Hee University and director of the Asia Institute in Seoul, lamented the way agricultural practices in the two countries have developed in the past century.

“Traditional agriculture in Korea was very well done. There was an essential technology that Korea lost. It was a mistake to lose that,” he said. “Agriculture in Korea, Japan and China had very high productivity per hectare. It produced a lot of food in a small area. It didn’t require artificial fertilizers, as it would have been done with human feces collected and leaves and other things in the local area. So you don’t have to use any other extra fertilizers.”

Pastreich said King’s suggestion of highly efficient organic local farming was a smart idea but was not heard in the United States. According to Pastreich, the United States has gone in the opposite direction.

“Today, if you look at the consequences, particularly in California and also other places, we have low water levels, unsustainable farming activities and great loss of the topsoil, which used to be very rich,” he said. “A lot of topsoil has washed away to the oceans, and productivity has become low. Agriculture also requires a lot of artificial fertilizers, which are very expensive.”

Before his East Asian trip, King worried about the fallout of Western-style farming, which relies heavily on artificial fertilizers and pesticides to grow crops, on the environment.

The rich soil in Korea, China and Japan captured his attention. East Asian farmers had been cultivating the land for thousands years, but the land remained fertile. The soil’s condition here stood in stark contrast to that in the West. According to King, Western farming practices exhausted healthy virgin fields owing to generations of unsustainable farming practices, whereas those in East Asia had not caused such fallout after 30 centuries of farming.

“(Koreans, Chinese and Japanese) have an unimpaired inheritance moving with the momentum acquired through 4000 years, (and they are) people morally and intellectually strong, mechanically able,” King wrote in the book.

King, who taught students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as chair of agricultural physics before joining the U.S. Department of Agriculture as chief of the division of soil management from 1901 to 1904, saw farmers in the East Asian region use human feces as fertilizer, a practice that is not permitted in the United States.

The agronomist realized that East Asian farmers’ use of human excrement in farming did not necessarily mean they were unaware of health and sanitation issues. For example, they boil their drinking water.

“The drinking of boiled water has been universally adopted in these countries as an individually available, thoroughly efficient safeguard against that class of deadly germs that has been almost impossible to exclude from the drinking water in any densely peopled country,” he wrote in the book.

During his trip to Korea, he was impressed particularly by Korean farmers’ smart use of water and by-products of human activities. He saw farmers collecting water from the heavy summer rainfall as well as from the hills and using that water for their fields. In addition, for fertilizers, they used green herbage for humus, other organic matter and ash from the fuel coming from the hills to grow crops, which resulted in high productivity without the use of artificial fertilizers.

King’s book has been translated into Chinese and Japanese. In Korea, however, the American agricultural scientist is unknown, perhaps because of the timing of the book’s publication. In 1911, when the book was released, Korea was still a colonial state of Japan. Koreans were unable to pay attention to King’s findings because during the colonial days, they were trained to believe that they were inferior people who would find it difficult to survive without the help of the superior Japanese.

After the country gained independence from Japan after World War II, the drive to modernize rural areas created the wrong perception that traditional organic farming was backward.

Farmers began turning their attention back to organic farming in the 2000s following rising demand for organic food and other products. Consumers seeking healthy lifestyles began to take an interest in the conditions in which their food is grown and raised. According to the Korea Rural Economic Institute, organic crops accounted for 9 percent of all agricultural products in the market in 2012. The consumption of organic products is expected to continue to increase, as the government pledged to implement measures that support organic farmers.

Although soil depletion is not a problem in South Korea, Pastreich said King’s warning still holds true, as shown in the topsoil erosion in North Korea that began during the great famine in the mid-1990s. He said topsoil erosion in the North is the greatest threat to South Korea.

“The desertification will start to spread and will not be stopped by the demilitarized zone,” he said. “Preservation of the topsoil and water is a major priority.”

Pastreich, however, was optimistic about the future of rural Korea, as he sees opportunities in agribusiness. He said there is still a lot to discover in rural Korea and this could draw many tourists, including the Chinese, if an effective tourism promotion plan is in place.

“My sense is that if China and the world become more sophisticated, those tourists’ interests will not be going to shopping malls to buy lipstick or eyeglasses or luxury watches,” he said. “What would Chinese tourists want in 10 years? They would want to go to rural Korea, stay in a beautiful hanok-style house, ride horses on the mountain and eat gourmet traditional regional foods.”