Agricultural Improvement at China’s First Agricultural Experiment Stations

Abstract

The first agricultural experiment stations in China were established at the beginning of the twentieth century by political reformers who sought to improve the country’s agriculture through scientific research. Inspired by institutional models of agricultural research in Japan and the USA, reformers and agricultural specialists used the experiment stations as testing grounds for new inputs and methods of cultivation. They took a special interest in trying to raise agricultural productivity by importing and experimenting with many new varieties of crops and by testing old and new fertilizers using new knowledge about soil and chemistry. The work of the central government’s experiment station in Beijing on plant propagation, acclimatization, soils, and fertilizers exemplified the research agenda of Chinese agricultural science in this era. In the 1920s, the prominence of the first experiment stations faded as the locus of Chinese agricultural research shifted toward universities and their work in plant breeding.