Nong Zheng Quanshu [Complete Treatise on Agriculture]

      Written by Ming Dynasty official Xu Guangqi . Xu Guangqi (1562-1633), was born in Songjiang of Jiangsu Province, an area where agriculture was quite developed. Xu had a deep love of agriculture. During his three-year leave for mourning his father, he carried out extensive experiments of farming in his hometown, and later went to Tianjin several times for further experiments, which helped him finish this encyclopedic work on agriculture. Xu died at his post, and his work was published post mortem with the help of his friends. The work was divided into 60 volumes, with more than 700,000 characters. It covers farming, farmland management, water conservation, farm tools, forestry, mulberry cultivation and raising silkworms, animal husbandry, manufacturing, and famine relief.

Apart from his own experience in cultivation of grain and cotton crops, Xu devoted much space to water conservation and famine relief in his work. He studied the famine years in Chinese history, including 111 locust plagues in history. He held that to fight famine it was necessary to build water control facilities; for instance, to fight famine in the Northwest, it would be better to build water conservation facilities and reclaim wasteland there to expand grain production than to transport grain supplies there at high costs. Apart from the author's own views, this great work of agricultural science also quoted large amounts of literature of the Ming and previous dynasties.