Southern Song refine advanced agricultural science

1172

Song agronomists compiled increasingly detailed treatises on wet-rice cultivation, systematic crop rotation, natural pest management, and soil improvement that helped sustain a population now exceeding one hundred million - the largest on earth by a wide margin. Innovations in early-ripening rice varieties originally imported from Champa in Vietnam allowed reliable double cropping across the Yangtze delta, producing the grain surpluses that funded the dynasty's military survival.