Scott Carlson: Happy Birthday, F.H. King, Professor and Pioneer of Sustainable Agriculture
[Scott Carlson is a senior reporter at The Chronicle, covering architecture, sustainability, and energy.]
The Writer's Almanac notes that Franklin Hiram King was born on this day in 1848. He was an early advocate of sustainable agriculture and a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he studied soil and soil fertility.
Last year I happened to pick up a copy of Farmers of Forty Centuries, which documents King's travels through Japan, China, and Korea and his reflections on how farmers there had managed to feed so many people on so little land for so long. The book, first published in 1911, is amazing—required reading for anyone interested in sustainable agriculture or sustainability generally. Among the subjects: the reuse of waste material in the soil (including human manure, and the sanitation problems that go with that), the growing of rice, the production of silk, the struggle to find sufficient fuel, and local customs and diets (largely vegetarian)....
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The Writer's Almanac notes that Franklin Hiram King was born on this day in 1848. He was an early advocate of sustainable agriculture and a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he studied soil and soil fertility.
Last year I happened to pick up a copy of Farmers of Forty Centuries, which documents King's travels through Japan, China, and Korea and his reflections on how farmers there had managed to feed so many people on so little land for so long. The book, first published in 1911, is amazing—required reading for anyone interested in sustainable agriculture or sustainability generally. Among the subjects: the reuse of waste material in the soil (including human manure, and the sanitation problems that go with that), the growing of rice, the production of silk, the struggle to find sufficient fuel, and local customs and diets (largely vegetarian)....