The straw of rice and other grain and the stems of any plant not usable as fuel may also be worked into the mud of rice fields, as may the chaff which is often scattered upon the water after the rice is transplanted, as in Fig. 168.
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Fig. 167.—Boat load of grass cut from bottom of canal, to be used as green manure or in preparing compost fertilizer, Kiangsu, China.
Reference has been made to the utilization of waste of
various kinds in these countries to maintain the productive
power of their soils, but it is worth while, in the
interests of western nations, as helping them to realize the
ultimate necessity of such economies, to state again, in
more explicit terms, what Japan is doing. Dr. Kawaguchi,
of the National Department of Agriculture and
Commerce, taking his data from their records, informed me
that Japan produced, in 1908, and applied to her fields,
23,850,295 tons of human manure; 22,812,787 tons of
compost; and she imported 753,074 tons of commercial
fertilizers, 7000 of which were phosphates in one form
or another. In addition to these she must have applied
not less than 1,404,000 tons of fuel ashes and 10,185,500
tons of green manure products grown on her hill and weed
lands, and all of these applied to less than 14,000,000
