Dhalgren
10-26-2015, 03:18 PM
Raising Peanut Yields
by Yao Shih-chang*
I was born into a poor peasant family forty-eight
years ago. I went to school for four years when I
was a child. For more than ten years I have studied
Chairman Mao's philosophic works in order to use
materialist dialectics. Applied to my scientific experiments
to increase peanut production, this study helped
to raise our brigade's average per-hectare yield of peanuts
from around 1.5 tons before 1958 to 3.4 tons. We've
reached as high as over 6 tons.
Lessons from Failure
Our brigade has some 320 hectares of fields, mostly
hilly. We grow peanuts on about 133 hectares of this.
Before 1955, our average per-hectare yield was about
1.1 tons. We raised this figure somewhat after setting
up our agricultural producers' co-operative that year, but
it was still low.
In 1953 I began trying to raise our peanut yield, but
I experimented without using materialist dialectics, and
started sowing. The soil was dry, and it looked as though
the seeds would not sprout. I had heard about a production
team using deep ploughing and covering the seed
with only a thin layer of soil. I persuaded our brigade
to use their method, but our output dropped that year.
What was wrong? Our leaders suggested analysing
our experience and drawing lessons from it. I turned
to Chairman Mao's On Practice and On Contradiction.
"Only those who are subjective, one-sided and superficial
in their approach to problems," he says, "will smugly
issue orders or directives the moment they arrive on the
viewing things in their totality (their history and their
present state as a whole) and without getting to the
essence of things (their nature and the internal relations
between one thing and another). Such people are bound
to trip and fall."
Chairman Mao's teaching made me realize that my
mistake was imitating others without considering the
local conditions. That team's land is level and fertile, so
their rows of peanuts can be wide apart. The method
of planting in deep furrows and covering lightly works
well in their situation but not for our brigade, where
the land is hilly and the soil layer thin. Our rows must
be close together. When we ploughed deep, the loose
soil fell into the furrow just dug and buried the seeds.
It amounted to ploughing deep and covering deep, and
this was what caused our output to fall.
that my failure was due to lack of correspondence between
my notion of things and the facts. I was acting
blindly and passively in trying to know the objective
world. I decided to apply Chairman Mao's philosophic
thinking in future scientific experiments and really increase
our peanut output.
What Produces the Peanuts?
I determined to study the growth of peanuts so as to
place our efforts to increase yields on a new basis. How
should I go about this?
I started at the blossoming stage, with the knowledge
that the peanut plant yields pods after the flowers wither
But what was the relationship between flower and nut?
I selected two clusters of peanut plants for field observation,
and stayed in the field for three nights during the blossoming
stage. I found that peanuts blossom just
before dawn. From the fourth night I went to the field
before dawn each day, and labelled each flower with the
date it blossomed.
I continued doing this for more than twenty days,
including one rainy night when I went only after
struggling with the thought that one night's absence
wouldn't matter much. Then I remembered Chairman
Mao's teaching that the Marxist philosophy of dialectical
materialism has two outstanding characteristics. One is
its class nature: it is in the service of the proletariat. The
other is its practicality. How could I learn the laws
governing the growth of peanuts if I did not apply
Chairman Mao's philosophic ideas, first of all, to think
always of serving the proletariat. I got a good soaking
that night and was chilled through, but I had followed
from that time on, I persisted in making my observations,
rain or shine. In sixty nights I attached 170 labels to
my two clusters. When the peanuts were dug, I analysed
my data and learned things I never knew before about
peanuts. The time between the opening of the flower
and the ripening of the nut below was at least sixty-five
days. I found also that the first pair of branches was
responsible for most of the nuts.
This was an exciting discovery. The experiment would
need testing, and in fact observation and study the
second year confirmed the conclusions drawn. But
coincidentally I also found that between 60 to 70 per cent
of the pods were produced by the first pair of branches
while 20 to 30 per cent were produced by the second.
The third pair produced only a few pods, and most of
those were empty. Further, the main stem of the plant
bore neither flowers nor pods at all.
(*Yao Shih-Chang, Chairman of the revolutionary committee
of the Tuanchieh Production Brigade, Nanwang Commune in
Penglai County, Shantung Province
I have this is pdf format and it has been photocopied, so copying and pasting is a bitch. But this gives you the idea of what the whole thing is like. All you have to do is separate out the "Praise for Chairman Mao" and the rest is kind of interesting. There are other chapters on transportation, predicting weather, keeping vegetables fresh, treating people with spine injuries - all with regards application of dialectics.
Again, ignore the adoration of Mao, but the rest is interesting. This pdf came from Marxists.org,
by Yao Shih-chang*
I was born into a poor peasant family forty-eight
years ago. I went to school for four years when I
was a child. For more than ten years I have studied
Chairman Mao's philosophic works in order to use
materialist dialectics. Applied to my scientific experiments
to increase peanut production, this study helped
to raise our brigade's average per-hectare yield of peanuts
from around 1.5 tons before 1958 to 3.4 tons. We've
reached as high as over 6 tons.
Lessons from Failure
Our brigade has some 320 hectares of fields, mostly
hilly. We grow peanuts on about 133 hectares of this.
Before 1955, our average per-hectare yield was about
1.1 tons. We raised this figure somewhat after setting
up our agricultural producers' co-operative that year, but
it was still low.
In 1953 I began trying to raise our peanut yield, but
I experimented without using materialist dialectics, and
started sowing. The soil was dry, and it looked as though
the seeds would not sprout. I had heard about a production
team using deep ploughing and covering the seed
with only a thin layer of soil. I persuaded our brigade
to use their method, but our output dropped that year.
What was wrong? Our leaders suggested analysing
our experience and drawing lessons from it. I turned
to Chairman Mao's On Practice and On Contradiction.
"Only those who are subjective, one-sided and superficial
in their approach to problems," he says, "will smugly
issue orders or directives the moment they arrive on the
viewing things in their totality (their history and their
present state as a whole) and without getting to the
essence of things (their nature and the internal relations
between one thing and another). Such people are bound
to trip and fall."
Chairman Mao's teaching made me realize that my
mistake was imitating others without considering the
local conditions. That team's land is level and fertile, so
their rows of peanuts can be wide apart. The method
of planting in deep furrows and covering lightly works
well in their situation but not for our brigade, where
the land is hilly and the soil layer thin. Our rows must
be close together. When we ploughed deep, the loose
soil fell into the furrow just dug and buried the seeds.
It amounted to ploughing deep and covering deep, and
this was what caused our output to fall.
that my failure was due to lack of correspondence between
my notion of things and the facts. I was acting
blindly and passively in trying to know the objective
world. I decided to apply Chairman Mao's philosophic
thinking in future scientific experiments and really increase
our peanut output.
What Produces the Peanuts?
I determined to study the growth of peanuts so as to
place our efforts to increase yields on a new basis. How
should I go about this?
I started at the blossoming stage, with the knowledge
that the peanut plant yields pods after the flowers wither
But what was the relationship between flower and nut?
I selected two clusters of peanut plants for field observation,
and stayed in the field for three nights during the blossoming
stage. I found that peanuts blossom just
before dawn. From the fourth night I went to the field
before dawn each day, and labelled each flower with the
date it blossomed.
I continued doing this for more than twenty days,
including one rainy night when I went only after
struggling with the thought that one night's absence
wouldn't matter much. Then I remembered Chairman
Mao's teaching that the Marxist philosophy of dialectical
materialism has two outstanding characteristics. One is
its class nature: it is in the service of the proletariat. The
other is its practicality. How could I learn the laws
governing the growth of peanuts if I did not apply
Chairman Mao's philosophic ideas, first of all, to think
always of serving the proletariat. I got a good soaking
that night and was chilled through, but I had followed
from that time on, I persisted in making my observations,
rain or shine. In sixty nights I attached 170 labels to
my two clusters. When the peanuts were dug, I analysed
my data and learned things I never knew before about
peanuts. The time between the opening of the flower
and the ripening of the nut below was at least sixty-five
days. I found also that the first pair of branches was
responsible for most of the nuts.
This was an exciting discovery. The experiment would
need testing, and in fact observation and study the
second year confirmed the conclusions drawn. But
coincidentally I also found that between 60 to 70 per cent
of the pods were produced by the first pair of branches
while 20 to 30 per cent were produced by the second.
The third pair produced only a few pods, and most of
those were empty. Further, the main stem of the plant
bore neither flowers nor pods at all.
(*Yao Shih-Chang, Chairman of the revolutionary committee
of the Tuanchieh Production Brigade, Nanwang Commune in
Penglai County, Shantung Province
I have this is pdf format and it has been photocopied, so copying and pasting is a bitch. But this gives you the idea of what the whole thing is like. All you have to do is separate out the "Praise for Chairman Mao" and the rest is kind of interesting. There are other chapters on transportation, predicting weather, keeping vegetables fresh, treating people with spine injuries - all with regards application of dialectics.
Again, ignore the adoration of Mao, but the rest is interesting. This pdf came from Marxists.org,