A Research On The History Of Fertilizer In Jiangnan Region In Modern Era

China is an agricultural country, and during the traditional agriculture period of thousands of years, people always relied on organic fertilizer with the human and livestock manure as the main body or farmyard manure to improve soil structure and fertility and increase grain production. With the development of productivity and the progress of social civilization, China’s ancient organic manures were increasing and the product system and application of organic fertilizer became more and more strict, thus a large number of related knowledge and experience of agricultural production had been accumulated. As the farmer’s proverb goes, "Fertilizer is essentical to the growth of crops", it also can improve the properties of the soil, improve and maintain soil fertility, realize the combination of land use and development, greatly promote the sustainable development of traditional agriculture and the progress of social civilization.From the late period of Tang Dynasty, Jiangnan area had become China’s important agricultural production areas. With rice, cotton and mulberry as the three major crops, the traditional intensive and meticulous farming agriculture in modern had reached a very high level, and it is closely linked with the development and utilization of organic fertilizer. This is mainly manifested in three aspects. First, people had a more profound understanding of increasing yield per unit area through the fertilizer and summarized many theories, such as the recognization of the relationship between base fertilizer and top dressing, the Summary fertilization should be timely, suitable and appropriate, as well as the knowledge of observation on soybean root nodules and fertilization effect. Second, Think of ways to open source and further increase fertilizer types. Manure accumulation method also improved, especially green manur. The wide use of cake fertilizer, the employment of river mud, bone meal and bone ashes, the preparation of mixed fertilizer and so on had become the characteristics of fertilizer development in Jiangnan area. Third, Organic fertilizer application became more sophisticated, and emerged such experience of applying fertilizer with local characteristics including fertilization based on the condition of crop, fertilization based on three factors, intensive fertilization, which illustrated modern organic fertilizer product and application technology have been used to the extreme both in theory and in practice.After the Opium war, when Shanghai, Ningbo and other treaty ports were open one after another, foreign goods flooded in and chemical fertilizer was also introduced into China in 1904. Although in the early period of introduction, Chinese farmers with a history of organic fertilizer of thousands of years knew little about it,, after the publicity of merchants and sales, chemical fertilizer soon opened markets in Jiangnan area, and its application rate rose again and again, even in some areas there was the trend that the use amount of chemical fertilizer exceeded that of organic fertilizer,which not only posed a challenge o the traditional organic fertilizer and farmyard manure, but also had a great impact on the ideas and habits of traditional fertilization. However, subject to the farmers’ weak purchasing power and chemical fertilizer production capacity, as well as the gradually increasing negative impact caused by unreasonable use, the overall use amount of chemical fertilizer was still little in Jiangnan area. It is worth mentioning that in the face of introduction and application of the new fertilizer, agricultural research institutions in morden China had started testing, research, and on the basis of many years of test, according to the chinese situation of that time, made the policy of combined application of organic fertilizer as the main body and chemical fertilizer as a supplement. Until the middle 1980s, the policy of combined application in China still had a broad impact. With the rapid development of industrialization of science and technology, modern agriculture has replaced the traditional agriculture and the importance of fertilizer in agriculture has become increasingly prominent. The per unit area yield has been greatly improved,and less arable land can feed more people, which to a large extent meets the demands of population growth and the improvement of food nutrition and alleviates the shortage of food caused by population explosion. On the one hand, this has greatly promoted the progress of social civilization, on the other hand, the harm of petrochemical agriculture is becoming more and more serious, and there are many new problems to be solved. A large number of traditional organic fertilizer is discarded, and excessive use of and reliance on chemical fertilizer lead to the deterioration of soil properties, the decline of soil fertility, and the pollution of agricultural environment, Food security is also threatened. The negative effect of fertilizer has attracted more and more attention. Now people both at home and abroad have paid special attention to learn experience of organic fertilizer utilization from the ancient agriculture in China, combined the technology of traditional organic fertilizer product system and application and modern agricultural science and technology, and developed new organic fertilizer, in order to when improving agricultural production, improve the properties of the soil, prevent or reduce the soil pollution, protect agricultural environment, and promote the sustainable development of agriculture. Some advocates of alternative agricultureeven urged to reject chemical fertilizer, resume natural agricultural model and practice rop rotation and organic manure. However, this agriculture mode which aimed at getting rid of the plight of modern agricultural developmentwent to another extreme in both design ideas and mode of operation. Noow the inescapable fact is chemical fertilizer still occupies the dominant position in world agricultural production and more than half of the increase in world’s crop production is due to chemical fertilizer, so it is impossible to completely abandon the chemical fertilizer and resume traditional organic fertilize. At present, instead of choosing one of them,people can use both chemical fertilizer and organic fertilizer by more scientific and economical means in agricultural production to realize a perfect combination of production and maintenance, and is not the only choice for either this or that, which has been confirmed by the policy of combined application of organic fertilizer and chemical fertilizer in the modern China.There are great regional differences and imbalance in the use of fertilizer in different regions of modern China. As a typical agricultural area in China, facing the collision and conflict between oriental traditional empirical agronomy and western experimental agronomy-the game and the choice between organic manure and chemical fertilizer product, modern Jiangnan area could not only inherit and constantly innovate the traditional technology of the accumulation and application of organic fertilizer, but also took chemical fertilizer, the the essence of western experimental agronomy for their own use, accepting the good and rejecting the bad, which embodies Jiangnan people embracing mind and living wisdom.Therefore, the policy of combined application of organic fertilizer and chemical fertilizer in Jiangnan region still has a realistic significance to today’s modern agriculture.