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Introduction
¡°Before there was any man to till the ground,¡± ¡°The Lord God planted a garden.¡± (Genesis 2:5, 8). God was the first farmer. Agriculture was divinely instituted. Therefore agriculture is scared.
¡°Shen Nong, the Divine Agriculturist, Began to teach people to grow crops producing five kinds of grain, to adapt themselves to the use of land, to demonstrate how moisture and fertilizer would drain from high to low, and to personally search as many as a hundred kinds of herbs.¡± This was recorded in the Classics of Huai Nan Zi in the second century B.C. regarding the origin of agriculture some 5000 years ago.
Agriculture was divinely inspired. God taught man how to farm.
China is today the world¡¯s only longest continuous civilization in the world. For Bob Whyte (St. Peters, Oxford) China is an agricultural civilization with rhythms and balance. F.W. Mote (Princeton) said that China is centered upon the earth, therefore, the earth is China¡¯s foundation. F. H. King of University of Wisconsin stated that the reason the Chinese farmers have been farming the same earth for 4,000 years is mainly due to the use of manure. Dr. Cover Yu of Oxford said the deepest crisis in China today is axiological crisis, a value crisis. J. King Fairbank of Harvard said that a long Chinese history is due to centralization of authority and promotion of intellectual unity. John Merson of Australia said that the imperial examination of China is how China perpetuated the traditional values. Pearl S. Buck in her book ¡°the Good earth¡± showed how the traditional moral values penetrated the peasant¡¯s level. Wolfgang Franke said that the purpose of the entire Chinese history is to fulfill the Mandate of Heaven. In addition, Richard Willhelm in his translation of I-Ching said that ancestral worship is the height of Chinese civilization. Joseph Needham after some 60 years of research concluded that the secret of China¡¯s long history is to uphold agriculture above commercial interest.
¡°We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land, but it is fed and watered by God¡¯s almighty hand; he sends the snow in winter, the warmth to swell the grain, the breezes and the sunshine, and soft refreshing rain. All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above; then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord, for all his love.¡± This is a poem written by German poet Matthias Claudius (1740-1815). It is now used as a hymn for Harvest Thanksgiving Sunday.
The top picture on the cover of this book shows an armillary sphere similar to that used in the Su Song astronomical clock of 1088. The second level of the picture shows Emperor Yong Zheng of Qing Dynasty prayed to God to send good wind, good clouds and good rain for good harvest. The picture immediate to the left below shows Emperor Yong Zheng transplanted rice with the peasants. The picture shows that old days agriculture is in labour intensive, but it could re-absorb a lot of unemployment from the cities today. The picture to the immediate right shows that the renewable form of energy using the animals to plough the fields instead of using petroleum. The bottom picture shows that family farming confers family¡¯s stability by preserving family unit. In all the pictures, Emperor Yong Zheng disguised himself as a peasant helping others.