F. H. King

F. H. King pursued agricultural science by joining soil physics, field observation, and practical questions about long-term food production. He taught agricultural physics at the University of Wisconsin and later led soil-management work for the United States Department of Agriculture. Farmers of Forty Centuries grew from his 1909 travels in China, Korea, and Japan, where he examined intensive cultivation, irrigation, composting, crop rotation, and the reuse of organic materials. King died before completing the manuscript, and his wife, Carrie H. King, prepared it for publication in 1911. The book’s fuller title identifies its subject as permanent agriculture in East Asia, emphasizing systems that sustained densely farmed land across generations. King records tools, field layouts, transport, labor, and household economies alongside soil practices. Farmers of Forty Centuries has remained influential because it treats farming as an interconnected system and preserves detailed observations from a period of rapid agricultural change.