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The problem with agriculture in pre-industrial states with rising populations, however, is that when market forces are left to themselves agricultural yields tend to stagnate or even fall. This happens because demand for land increases faster than supply, and so landlords lease out land at increasing rents. They also act as money lenders at high rates of interest. Tenants, facing stiff rents and expensive debts and with little security of tenure, are unable to make the investments – for instance, in improving irrigation or buying fertiliser – that will increase yields on the land they farm.
How Asia Works
Joe Studwell
Tenanted land as a share of all cultivated land was around 20 per cent in the first years after the Meiji government instituted its land reform. By the time of the Second World War, almost half of arable land was under tenancy and 70 per cent of Japanese farmers rented some or all of their fields. Despite the global depression, tenant rents did not fall below 50–60 per cent of crops (and this was after the renter had paid the cost of seeds, fertiliser, implements and all taxes and levies bar the main land tax). It was hardly surprising that output stopped rising in the 1920s.
How Asia Works
Joe Studwell
INTERROGATOR: Let’s look at the current composition of the ETO. The Adventists would like to destroy the human race by means of an alien power; the Redemptionists worship the alien civilization as a god; the Survivors wish to betray other humans to buy their own survival. None of these is in line with your original ideal of using the alien civilization as a way to reform humanity. YE: I started the fire, but I couldn’t control how it burnt.
The Three-Body Problem
Cixin Liu and Ken Liu
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