Jia Sixie

Jia Sixie the Chinese agronomist of the Northern Wei dynasty (flourished around 540) whose book Qimin Yaoshu, or Essential Techniques for the Welfare of the People, is the oldest surviving comprehensive treatise on agriculture in China and one of the most important works of its kind in the world.

Life and Times

Jia Sixie lived in the sixth century during the Northern Wei dynasty, a period in which northern China was ruled by dynasties of Xianbei origin and in which the turmoil of the preceding centuries had disrupted agriculture. The details of his life are poorly preserved, and even the dates of his birth and death are uncertain.

He served as an official in the northern administration, most probably in the region of the Yellow River plain, where he had the opportunity to observe farming practices at first hand. He travelled through the countryside and questioned farmers, and he gathered the practical knowledge of the people among whom he served.

The disorder of the age gave his work its purpose. Convinced that the recovery of prosperity depended on the improvement of agriculture, he set out to collect and systematise the best methods of cultivation then known, drawing on earlier texts, on the experience of farmers and on his own observations.

The Qimin Yaoshu

His great work, the Qimin Yaoshu, was completed around 544. Its title may be rendered as essential techniques for the welfare of the people, and it was intended, as the preface explains, to provide the knowledge by which a household and a state might be made secure and prosperous. It is the earliest complete agricultural treatise to survive from China.

The book is divided into ninety-two chapters and covers an extraordinary range of subjects. It treats the cultivation of grains, vegetables, fruit trees and mulberry for silk, the management of livestock and poultry, the brewing of wine and vinegar, the making of salted and fermented foods, the storage of grain and the preparation of medicines. It is a compendium of the practical arts of rural life.

Its value lies in its combination of breadth and detail. The author gives precise instructions on such matters as the time of sowing, the depth of planting, the rotation of crops, the selection of seed and the treatment of soils. He records the practices of different regions and compares them, and he is careful to distinguish what he has verified from what he has merely heard.

Methods and Principles

Jia Sixie approached farming as a systematic art. He emphasised the importance of preparing the soil thoroughly, of sowing at the right season, of using well-chosen seed and of tending the growing crops with care. He understood the value of crop rotation and of green manuring, and he advised the prudent management of labour and resources.

He was attentive to the differences of soil and climate and to the need to adapt methods to local conditions. Rather than prescribing a single rule for all places, he recorded the variations in practice and advised the reader to choose what suited his own land. This sensitivity to circumstance marked an advanced understanding of agriculture.

He also gave thought to the economics of the farm. He treated agriculture as the foundation of wealth and of social order, and he urged the careful keeping of accounts, the storage of surplus and the diversification of production so that a household might withstand bad years. His book is at once a manual of technique and a treatise on rural economy.

Sources and Scholarship

The Qimin Yaoshu is a work of careful compilation. Jia Sixie drew on a large number of earlier books, many of which have since been lost, and he quoted them extensively, so that his text preserves fragments of older agricultural writings that would otherwise be unknown. This has made the book a crucial source for the history of Chinese science.

He also incorporated the knowledge of contemporary farmers. Throughout the work he refers to what he has seen or been told by experienced cultivators, and he often cites their practices alongside the prescriptions of the ancient texts. This combination of book learning and practical testimony gives the book its distinctive authority.

The style is plain and direct, concerned with clarity rather than elegance, and the arrangement is orderly. Modern scholars have studied the text for its evidence on climate, crops, technology and social conditions in sixth-century northern China, and it is valued both as literature and as a scientific document.

Influence and Legacy

The Qimin Yaoshu became the model for the long tradition of Chinese agricultural manuals. Later works on farming, and the great compilations of the imperial age, drew upon it and followed its example, and its influence extended to Japan and to other parts of East Asia. It remained a standard reference for centuries.

Its importance was recognised again in the modern period, when historians of science identified it as the earliest complete agricultural treatise in any civilisation. It provides invaluable evidence of the advanced state of Chinese agronomy, of the techniques available to farmers, and of the range of foods and crops cultivated in the period.

Jia Sixie is remembered as the father of Chinese agricultural writing, the scholar-official who turned his learning to the practical welfare of the people. His book embodies the Chinese conviction that good government rests on the prosperity of the farmer and that the investigation of the natural world serves the needs of society.

See also

• Agriculture in China
• Northern Wei
• Chinese agronomy
• Farming manual