28 agriculture: Asia and the Pacific and crushing the earth Further medieval era innovations included the curved-shaft plow, which was more efficient in cutting the soil, and new iron tools that further improved cultivation, including the machete Paired with the breast harness, which had been developed around 200 B.C.E., the new plow allowed draft animals to breathe easily while pulling heavier loads The plow, which both crushed and plowed the soil, could turn left and right and even turn around Another new metal tool was the wheelbarrow, which could carry both people and cargo Large, self-powered bucket waterwheels and other water-pumping devices allowed for the lifting of water over riverbanks into adjacent irrigation canals In China and elsewhere, woodblock-printed books made the new agricultural technology widely available The construction and extension of water-control projects in the Yangtze River basin of China and Sri Lanka and throughout mainland Southeast Asia and Java and the development of tank agriculture in southern India to retain the seasonal monsoon rains for dry-season agriculture supported the introduction of crop production into previously marginal lands By the 10th century farmers in many of the wet-rice-producing regions cultivated new strains of earlyripening rice, which was initially developed in the Cham regions of central Vietnam With the new industrial technology and the widespread use of fertilizer (animal manure and composted organic matter), wet-rice farmers could easily produce two rice crops annually This freed land for the growth of vegetables and fruits for the marketplace in the cooler winter months or coincident with rice production, as vegetables were planted on the mounded earth that separated the rice fields Road and canal constructions supported the transport of rice surpluses to other regions In China some areas chose to import rice and devoted their labor to cultivating lychees, oranges, and other cash crops for the marketplace; the same was true in the eastern Indonesian archipelago’s Spice Islands, where local workers exclusively farmed and gathered spices and depended on rice imports from Java as their source of dietary staple By the end of the 15th century sweet potato tubers, which entered southern China ports from the Pacific island basin, were grown in every region of China as a common winter dietary staple Sweet potatoes were roasted and sold as a street food in Beijing, Xi’an, Chengdu, and Shanghai, among other Chinese cities Farmers of the Song era (960– 1279) supplied China’s markets with other new commercial crops, most notably cotton and tea, the latter of which was previously used as a medicine and in Buddhist rituals Silk was another local cash crop, but it required considerable human labor A farmer had to raise 700,000 silkworms to produce 150 pounds of silk Land Tenure and Political Economies Permanent use of land, through planting, the creation of irrigated fields, or the utilization of fruit-bearing trees and palms, was subject to a variety of local arrangements through the Asian agricultural regions Among these land distributions were 1) lands regarded as the common property of the community, even though portions of the common land were known to belong to specific community members; 2) lands under individual and familial inherited control; 3) landed estates that were inhabited by mixtures of assigned laborers, war captives, and slaves and were managed by a temple-based staff; and 4) tenant farming arrangements that were subject to the authority of resident and absentee landed aristocrats, including rulers who sent dependents into the forest to clear and cultivate new lands under the control of royal retainers and kinsmen Except for China, during the medieval era Asian labor shortages resulted in competition for labor rather than land, with resulting patterns of labor dependency and bondage that resulted from conquests rather than the development of tenant farming arrangements In the Khmer realm of Angkor Cambodia, Java, Myanmar (Bagan), and the Tamil regions of southern India, the elite with existing claims over land minimized the intervention of an emerging state elite in their demands for taxes and labor services by concentrating their family economic resources under a Hindu or Buddhist temple’s administration In many cases these arrangements were a front by which members of the donor family, rather than the temple staff, managed the family land assigned to a temple, the temple receiving only a designated share of the income What was transferred by the donors was not “ownership” of land but the right to income from the land As noted, in medieval era Asia landholding meant rights to the production and labor service of the property inhabitants rather than absolute possession Income rights could be transferred; while inhabitants of the land continued to farm the land, their production was subject to a series of income claims, including those of the state, the temple, and the donating family, which retained guarded rights to the property, most notably the administrative and political rights over its inhabitants In China, owing to inheritance distributions to male children at a father’s death, warlord seizures in the eras of transition, and movements of the old gentry to cities to become metropolitan elite, aristocratic and temple estates declined under the Tang (618–907) and Song dynasties In previous times agricultural lands were “owned” by hereditary gentry and temple estates The decay of these old estates paired with new Song tax policies allowed for land ownership among commoners Besides working their family’s assigned estate lands,