Traditional farm tools observed from an ecological and health perspective

Mu Chen

Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine,China

Abstract All walks of life actively promoted emerging technologies when modern agricultural science and technology from the West were introduced to China in the late Qing Dynasty.Despite agricultural machinery being highly popular during the more than 100 years since,traditional farm tools have not been completely replaced and have instead gradually become symbols representing traditional farming culture.From the perspective of ecology and health,this paper discusses the values,scientific notions and corresponding styles of production and life associated with traditional agricultural tools as well as the multicultural values regarding traditional agricultural culture in modern society in China.

Keywords Farm tools,science and culture,nature education,farming culture,horticultural therapy

After the invention of the steam engine and the Industrial Revolution that followed,the application of steam power spread rapidly to various industries,resulting in a new era for agriculture.The British developed the steam-powered cable plough,steam plough and steam-powered tractor from the 1930s to 1950s.The Chinese were amazed to witness these scientific and technological achievements because,at that time,agricultural tools in China were still mainly operated by manpower.

1.Use of Western ploughs in Chinese fields

The establishment of an agricultural society was made possible more than 5000 years ago in China.After thousands of years of development,a rich experience in farming methods,agricultural instruments,animal and plant domestication and so on had been gained,forming China’s farming culture.However,compared with Europe at the same time,China’s traditional agriculture was behind by a long way during the Qing Dynasty (Zeng,2012).Europe had developed modern agriculture due to the progress in natural sciences;that is,‘agricultural science and technology based on and guided by modern Western sciences,plus agricultural institutions and management systems under the capitalist system’ (Wei,2012: 3),which greatly exceeded other contemporary systems in agricultural output and efficiency.

After the Sino-Japanese War in 1894–1895,the gap between China and the West aroused extensive discussions;as a result,China attempted to revive its momentum by attaching importance to agriculture.‘The rise of agricultural thoughts was precisely the crystallization of Chinese people’s deepening understanding of agriculture under the influence of Western agronomy,and their understanding of the reality,which was revealed as a desire to develop a new agriculture under the new conditions’ (Zhao,2000).Western agricultural machinery was undoubtedly a very noticeable one among the many advanced technologies,as steam-powered machines’ production efficiency greatly exceeded that of traditional farm tools in China.

Records of ancient agricultural tools in China were made,as instantiated inWang Zhen’s Farming Book.1In the ‘Pictures of agricultural instruments’section of the book,agricultural instruments were divided into 20 categories used for farming and food and clothing production,such as the wooden and later iron shovel,the wind-powered water scoop,the hat and cloak woven with straw or hemp,the mortar and pestle,and instruments for raising silkworms and silk reeling.Most parts were made of wood,and only a few of iron.Their manufacture was usually low-cost,and they could be made by individuals or in family workshops.Most were powered by humans or animals,although some were powered by wind or water.

The huge gap between China’s traditional farm tools and modern Western agricultural machinery gave people insight into the urgency for changes.

The force of six million farmers in the United States has turned out produce otherwise enabled by more than 53 million horsepower,while China’s workforce of 62 million farmers has only provided a force made possible by 44 million horsepower,with a difference of more than 11 times and more … In the United States,it takes one-third of its people to work as farmers to supply the American people with food,with excess for sales abroad.However,in China,eight out of ten people are farmers,but this is not enough to feed the Chinese people,who often suffer from hunger.Thus,it is conceivable that farmers in China lack machinery and their production efficiency is low.(Xie,1935)

Agricultural modernisation in China has been developing for more than a century,and agricultural mechanisation has become widespread so that traditional farm tools have greatly decreased.However,traditional farm tools have been gradually emerging as cultural symbols,as can be seen in various records.

2.Transformation from farm tools to cultural symbols

Taiping Fengwu,a novel collection by Li Rui published in 2006,is based on the traditional agricultural tools in Li’s home village in the Lvliang Mountains,Shanxi Province,where the instruments are the same as those used thousands of years ago.In the preface,Li wrote that in the summer of 1987,by chance,he bought a pamphlet titledAncient Chinese Agricultural Machinery and Toolsat a second-hand bookstall.In that booklet,a humble one,the history of agricultural tools is covered,which stirred his soul.

All the farm tools used by farmers have an incredibly long history and have experienced various changes in their development,especially those referred to by farmers in dialects,as I had always thought that they were words that didn’t exist in the dictionary at all,and just reflected the stubborn and self-contained preferences for the language characteristic of rural people.Unexpectedly,however,they completely coincide with those that had existed since two or three thousand years ago,and are exactly the same as those ancient words … Thus,all of a sudden an encounter between man and history took place then and there,as sadness and reverie were reverberating for a long time.(Li,2006: 4–5)

Of course,the description of traditional farm tools inTaiping Fengwualso contains criticism of backward farming culture to a greater extent.In recent years,the image of traditional agricultural tools in the mass media has undergone some subtle changes,as can be seen in the 2014 documentaryA Bite of China,in which a scene of ancient oil refining with traditional wooden equipment is revived with close-ups.In 2022,in the documentaryFields in Painting,all kinds of traditional farming equipment in rural areas of China are shown,such as the oil mill,the mortar and pestle,the plough and the hemp or straw cloak and hat;these are not only shown in pictures in ancient books,but are also the daily farming and living tools of local people.

After the large-scale adoption of agricultural machinery,why has attention to and affection for traditional agricultural tools in popular culture been increasing? To answer this question,we need to move beyond just agriculture and think from the perspective of science and culture.In the initial stages of its expansion around the world,the superiority of modern science in improving productivity and efficiently using natural resources gave local people a strong motivation to learn and imitate.However,a lot of local knowledge is in fact matched with the ecological environment,the physical and mental characteristics of local people,and even cultural psychology.With the passage of time,the marginal effects from productivity improvement gradually decrease,while the deep differences and contradictions between modern science and local cultures begin to emerge,which causes impacts on the ecological environment and the psychological status of local people.Therefore,as symbols representing farming culture,traditional farm tools provide a cultural and psychological buffer against those contradictions and even the ‘crisis of modernity’.

2.1 Ecological value

The documentaryFields in Paintingintroduces Mabaoquan Village in Xishe Town,Jishan County,Shanxi Province and Shichao Village in Yanshan Town,Wuchuan County,Zunyi City,Guizhou Province,where many of the farm tools used are similar to traditional farm tools described in ancient books.The narrator in the film attributed this to the limitations of the natural environment,as there is less flat land and more mountains that are inaccessible for large machines.

In fact,traditional farming and large-scale mechanical agriculture not only correspond to different terrains (mountainous areas and flat land,respectively),but also differ more deeply in their respective notions of land use (‘fragmented’ on the one hand and ‘idyllic’ on the other).These differences were compared by Zeng Xiongsheng,an agricultural historian.According to Zeng (2015),the traditional farming model corresponds to the idea of ‘piecemeal’ land use,which can mostly meet the needs of producers’ own material lives under natural economic conditions,and protects the diversity of agricultural organisms and the stability of production by adapting to the natural environment.This model is conducive to improving the output per unit area,making full use of the labour force and increasing farmers’ income.The mechanised farming mode,on the other hand,reflects the idea around ‘idyllic’land,which is to implement singular-mode or larger scale farming under the condition of transformed natural environments for improved competitiveness of agricultural products.Pastoralization is a revolution on fragmentation,but the latter can still provide some enlightenment for the former.

Traditional agriculture in Europe and America features a proportion of animal husbandry much higher than that in China,as there has not been excessive deforestation and reclamation,and the proportions of areas for forestry and fishery are much higher than in China.Moreover,much Western land is flat and fertile,with good conditions for agriculture;therefore,intensive planting can be conducted vigorously,all of which results in ‘idyllic’land use and mechanised farming (Wei,2012).In contrast,in some areas of China,a long history of farming has led to the soil being poor and prone to frequent natural disasters.In addition,complex terrains (such as wetlands and mountains) also hinder the development of intensive operations;thus,a fragmented approach to land use is appropriate to this particular agricultural environment.

Composite farming has always been prevalent in China.While rice is mainly cultivated in the south of China,and millet and wheat in the north,neither the north nor the south has ever been the site of monocultures (the planting of single crops).Take rice as an example.Different strains are often planted;some are drought-resistant,some are floodresistant,some are insect-resistant and others are animal-resistant (Zeng,2011).In the north,in addition to millet and wheat,beans,sorghum and other grains are also grown,which not only provides more choices for the taste buds but also improves the soil fertility and reduces the risk of potential disasters caused by single crops.Take another example,regarding functional planning.Many areas in China are also more suitable for complex and elaborate models.For instance,in Sichuan Province,there is a typical ‘piecemeal’ mode of land use in Chengdu Plain and hilly areas,as can be seen in Linpan,West Sichuan,which refers to the rural residential environment formed by organic integration of farmyards and the surrounding natural environment,such as tall trees,bamboo forests,rivers and peripheral cultivated land.Of course,we must also admit that the value for tourism and cultural creation of ‘the Forest Plate of West Sichuan’ today is far greater than its worth for residence.

One’s fascination with traditional farm tools,to a certain extent,lies in the‘piecemeal’mode of land use they represent.As mentioned above,fragmented farming has more advantages than large-scale agriculture in resisting natural disasters and protecting biodiversity.

2.2 The value for physical and mental health

When it comes to the advantages of agricultural machinery,efficiency is the most highly valued,and‘one person managing a large farm’becomes a beautiful dream about the mechanised future.The implicit idea is that farming is regarded as an activity that,ideally,needs as little human labour as possible;the higher the ratio of agricultural output to human input,the better.However,people’s feelings are varied and are not normally dominated by a single value.Many literary works,scientific essays and investigations have held that traditional ‘hands-on’ farming not only brings people fatigue and pain,but is also a price they must pay in exchange for their subsistence;however,it means much more for most humans.

In medicine,there is a kind of treatment called horticultural therapy,which promotes people’s physical and mental health through interaction between humans and plants.The earliest recorded horticultural treatment took place in the seventeenth century,when some poor people had to work in a hospital garden to pay for medical expenses that they could not afford.That was when the role of horticultural labour in promoting patients’ recovery caught people’s attention.Since then,some hospitals have provided opportunities for patients to engage in activities,such as farming and harvesting,which both provide food for the hospital and help patients to recover (Sun,2015).One explanation for the principle of horticultural therapy is the physical activity theory.Since the Industrial Revolution,as mechanisation and automation have spread,radical changes have taken place in people’s lifestyles,one of which is that people’s physical activity has been greatly reduced.Many studies have confirmed that insufficient physical activity is an important factor for many chronic diseases that are very harmful to human health.According to Macera et al.(2003),an increase in physical activity could decrease the risk of death by 20%–35%.In general,diabetes,hypertension and other common diseases in modern society can be ascribed to the industrial transformation of agriculture,in that the energy intake of human beings through diet far exceeds their output of energy,which leads to widespread‘wealthy diseases’.

In addition to the physiological impacts,the reduction in agricultural activities also has a bearing on people’s psychological status.Accelerated urbanisation has led to greater separation between human beings and nature.The negative effects on children have been noted,and a concept of ‘nature deficiency’ has been put forward;that is,children in modern cities have too little contact with the natural environment,which leads to various psychological and behavioural problems.Children with nature deficiency suffer from a series of physical and psychological diseases,such as inattention,sensory degradation,obesity and depression(Louv,2009).

This laid the foundation for‘nature education’;that is,the full involvement of children’s senses in nature through various activities.Participants’ perception of other creatures and the natural environment is cultivated in the process of interacting with nature,thus healing their hearts,enhancing their personalities and enlightening their thoughts.Engaging in agricultural activities is an important means of nature education.

In North America,Germany,Britain and other regions and countries,farming gardens or allotments in urban communities have been widely popular and are considered as a way to effectively strengthen social relations,increase social assets and improve diet structure so as to cultivate a healthier lifestyle.Most studies on the health benefits from community farms show that participating in the labour in those farms can play a positive role in one’s health,communities’ cohesion,education,job satisfaction and leadership (Yu and Du,2022).

Recent decades have witnessed rapid urbanisation in China,where a large demand exists for nature education and horticultural treatment.However,due to their source in Western cultural soil,many concepts and methods thereof are not acclimatized to or naturalised in China.Therefore,although concepts such as nature education were introduced to China long ago,the public’s awareness and acceptance of them are relatively low,and most of the related practice has been confined to small circles.Thus,research about this has been conducted mainly on Western cases.

Looking back on history,we would find that the traditional farming culture in China was a form of nature education and horticultural therapy,as self-healing through farming activities was a very common endeavour in Chinese traditional culture.This can be instantiated in the poems by Tao Yuanming,an ancient Chinese poet,in which he described his village life,his comfortable and free state of mind and the heartwarming social environment.In his poems,farm tools became objects of poetic expression,such as in ‘I weed early in the morning and return home with a hoe and the moonlight’ (晨兴理荒秽，带月荷锄归),‘I hope the crop grows well and everything goes smoothly in the spinning month’ (但愿桑麻成，蚕月得纺绩),and ‘Although farming is tiring,I can relax with a drink’(虽有荷锄倦，浊酒聊自适).

At present,there are few studies on the influence of Chinese farming culture on humans’physical and mental health from the viewpoint of medicine,except for the principle governing horticultural treatment.For example,horticultural therapy takes on various forms and types,through which all parts of the human body can be exercised,which can train and strengthen patients’sense of balance,spatial perception and action coordination.In fact,agriculture and horticulture are similar in many cases in China,because the Chinese have the traditional habit of growing vegetables and mixed grains in yards and on balconies.Thus,the principles of horticultural therapy are equally appropriate for such less intensive farming activities.

Horticultural treatment integrates sports into activities that are vital and vivacious.The achievements from these activities are visible and tangible,which makes otherwise boring and exhausting training interesting and vigorous.In particular,some horticultural therapists are able to design auxiliary gardening tools especially suitable for the disabled so that the benefits for health care and rehabilitation via horticultural therapy can reach a wider population (Sun,2015).A considerable proportion of agricultural tools in ancient China were invented to save manpower;these kinds of agricultural tools enable people to exercise without being too tired.Therefore,from the viewpoint of keeping fit,they can also be regarded as good aids for exercise.

Some studies have discussed the healing value of ancient gardening activities in China.Horticulturists in ancient China noticed that gardening can rid people of sundry thoughts,allowing them to remain pure and abstinent and to stay spiritually self-restrained,calm and thought-free.In other words,growing flowers and plants can enable humans to maintainqior energy,preserve bodily essence,keepqiand blood flowing smoothly,and be relaxed and at ease,thus pleasing the body and mind and strengthening the body(Zhang and Zhang,2012).

2.3 Maintenance of values and social order

In addition to healing the body and mind,Chinese nature education also attaches great importance to its efficacy for moral cultivation.In some aristocratic families in classical China,even if the family members did not need to work in person for financial purposes,the parents would encourage their children to engage in some farming activities as a way to cultivate their bodies and minds.One example was Zeng Guofan,the first of four famous ministers in the late Qing Dynasty.He repeatedly mentioned the importance of farming in his family letters.In a letter to his brothers in August of the fourth year of the reign of Emperor Xianfeng,he demanded that:

Besides studying,it is an excellent thing for our sons and nephews to be taught to sweep the house,clean tables and stools,collect dung and weed the fields,and they must not refrain from doing them simply to preserve their face.(Zeng,2014:280)

In another letter,Zeng wrote:

Our sons and nephews ought to work at farming while studying,so as to keep the old habits of their ancestors and be careful not to be ruined by any sign of bureaucracy.Don’t allow them to sit in comfortable chairs or demand the services of servants for water and tea.It is a prerequisite that they collect firewood and dung for fuel;they should also learn from time to time about things like ploughing the fields and planting crops in fields.(Zeng,2014:275)

As for the economic conditions,the Zeng family’s children certainly did not have to do any of the above.That he paid so much attention to ‘farming while reading’ was mainly for the cultivation and morality of the younger generation.

In March of the 10th year(1861)during the reign of Emperor Xianfeng,Zeng Guofan wrote a letter to his fourth younger brother about Zeng Yuping’s(Zeng Guofan’s grandfather’s) way of managing the family,which was characterised by a fourcharacter formula of ‘books,vegetables,fishery and pigs’ (书蔬猪鱼);that is,‘reading,growing vegetables,raising fish and feeding pigs’.He wrote another two letters to his fourth younger brother in October and December,saying:

I have nothing to worry about though away from home,but I am always afraid that any member of our younger generation might be accustomed to arrogance,extravagance and ease.Family failure is inseparable from luxury;failure of a person cannot come about without ease;annoyance cannot arise without one being arrogant.My brother,refrain from them.(Zeng,2014:837)

The state of affairs changes all the while,and our sons and nephews always give priority to modesty and diligence,avoid arrogance and laziness,and the way to protect our family is also to refrain from arrogance and leisure.(Zeng,2014: 847)

In Zeng Guofan’s view,doing some agricultural work personally can overcome the bad habits of the younger generation,shape a good character and family style,and thus maintain the family’s prosperity.

In fact,when agricultural machinery was first introduced into China,some people had a premonition that machinery would cause a moral crisis.For example,Liu Xihong,a Chinese ambassador to Britain,after inspecting lots of advanced agricultural machinery and understanding the then British society,thought that it was not a good thing to use agricultural machinery,which could save manpower,but which,on the other hand,would induce people to start to hate labour.Machines could enable the rich to save money on hiring employees,but they would deprive the poor of food and clothing.While it is easy for people to seek comfort and harbour desire,it would also easily cause them to do evil things;and,when people lose their basic means of subsistence,they are also more prone to do evil.

Naturally,not much attention was given to these moral concerns at that time.Thousands of years of intensive cultivation and reclamation had burdened the cultivated land in China with increasingly scarce natural resources and frequent natural and man-made disasters.Under such circumstances,living a frugal and diligent life had become a habit engraved in the bones of the Chinese,and most people would learn to live a hard life by themselves,which was not something that needed ‘active learning’.Only a few families in the wealthy class (such as Zeng Guofan’s family) were aware of the significance of a farming culture in shaping people’s values and actively taught their children the values by words and examples.

In recent years,with the general improvement of people’s living conditions,‘hardship education’ is not only valued by parents of the wealthy class but has also gradually come to be regarded as necessary by parents of most ordinary families.Agricultural activities are one of the means of hardship education.In the third episode of the documentaryFields in Painting,Memories of Farming and Weavingrecorded the farming life of farmer Wang Luliang’s family for three generations.Wang says that,at the age of 13 years,his father could get full marks with his labour,and he wants to inherit his father’s hardworking quality.Furthermore,he wants to pass that quality on to his children because on his farm children from different families can experience the labouring process of transplanting rice seedlings in the fields.After a hard day’s work,the family could sit around and enjoy an outdoor dinner,the narrator says:‘If you plant a grain of millet in spring,you will reap ten thousand seeds in autumn.The land never fails to live up to those who treat it well.’ That touches upon the core of Chinese farming education—the education for better personality and morality imperceptibly integrated in the process of labour—so that the traditional values can be maintained and passed down.

3.Conclusion and discussion

At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China,agricultural machinery was gradually introduced into China.This resulted in traditional farm tools that had lasted for thousands of years in China being gradually withdrawn from the historical stage of the country.However,their significance as cultural symbols has gained increasing attention.This paper has examined the cultural significance of traditional farm tools from the perspective of scientific and cultural diversity.

In terms of the ecological environment,traditional farm tools match the prevalent practice of ‘piecemeal’ land use—a kind of ‘fragmentation’ meant to meet the needs of a farmer’s life to the maximum extent under natural economic conditions by diversified planting.The advantages of this kind of land use lie in it being beneficial for biodiversity,stable production and full utilisation of the labour force.On the other hand,mechanised planting accommodates‘garden-style’land utilisation;that is,monocropping or large-scale operations within a transformed natural environment,the advantages of which are promoting the commercialisation of agriculture and improving the competitiveness of agricultural products.The two styles of land use,each with its own advantages,can suit different natural environments.Fragmentation,for example,has irreplaceable advantages in mountainous areas with cultivated plots of land and frequent disasters.However,an important problem facing agriculture in China is that where ‘pastoral’ cultivation is not suitable,the tradition of ‘fragmentation’ in some places has also been lost.For those areas,with the help of traditional farming,it may be a direction worth exploring to turn them into eco-agricultural demonstration areas,thus increasing their value for tourism,leisure,scientific research,culture and education.

What impact does a reduction in agricultural activities have on humans’ physical and mental health? This paper has discussed the significance of traditional farm tools from medical aspects.One of the trends of modern medicine is that the medical model has changed from a simple biomedical one to a complex mode of biological–environmental–psychological–social medicine,in which biological research is not excluded,while an emphasis is laid on the influence of environmental,psychological and social factors on health and disease as well as on the complete unity among humans’ psychology and physiology,spirit and body,and the collective internal and external environments (Guo,2009).Moreover,as humans’ agricultural activities have been greatly decreasing in modern society,their physical and mental health has been affected.Therefore,disciplines such as environmental education and horticultural therapy have emerged,while similar functions can also be undertaken by traditional farming cultures,in which farm tools can be the carrier for healing the soul and expressing one’s poetry and can be used as auxiliary sports equipment in pastoral activities.

For the inheritance of values and maintenance of social order,traditional farming can make people feel that agricultural products are precious,and it can also help them acquire virtues such as modesty,diligence and frugality.Therefore,the role of farming culture has been emphasised once again in modern education.Japan provides a good example;in the Japanese dramaLittle Forestand films and television programmes about pastoral healing,it can be seen that the mainstream culture in Japan is willing to display an original ecological,harmonious and beautiful rural scene through farming activities.

Japanese rice is a product of a highly successful traditional political strategy and one out of an effort in constructing modern national unity around an imaginary past.Japan,as a nation,is connected with its ancient roots by virtue of its naive,frugal and patriotic farmers’ work.This nostalgic style has always been serving Japanese nationalist goals quite well and is still very popular today (Bray,1997: 25).

In contrast,a singular value system of‘developing productive forces’for agriculture has been dominant since modern society came about in China;therefore,there has always been an inferiority mentality,a habit of self-denial and a resulting desire for all-out innovation in the traditional farming culture.Although a revival of traditional culture is currently being advocated,understanding of that culture remains at a superficial level for most Chinese people.In fact,traditional science and technology cannot be equated with a backward society.It has also evolved and changed through history to become what it is today.Facing impacts from foreign cultures at different times in history,it has been making careful and subtle choices.As a result,tradition is a product of concentration after purification through time,and it is still growing.Thus,we should open our minds more in order to ask:Is traditional culture valuable for universal application? Is it a cultural heritage with only ornamental and commemorative values,or a knowledge system that can still perform a variety of social functions?

Science and technology are skills exercised in a social context,which gives exact meaning to the goods produced and the people who produce them(Bray,1997).When the context disappears,the meaning carried by and endowed in it is naturally gone.If we look at those technologies that existed in history from the perspective of scientific and cultural diversity and explore their rich meanings,it may be helpful for us to understand and deal with the dilemmas that mankind faces,such as the alienation of people from nature and the resulting physical and mental health problems.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,authorship,and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research,authorship,and/or publication of this article.

Note

1.Wang Zhen’s Farming Book(Wang Zhen Nong Shu),which was published during the Yuan Dynasty,is an encyclopedia of ancient Chinese agriculture.Its record of agricultural implements is the most typical and representative in the agricultural history of China,and most of the agricultural tools recorded in later agricultural books are based on it.