• Leads to a population boom
• A labor-intensive crop

As grown throughout East Asia before modern times, rice required much labor — to prepare the paddy fields, plant and especially transplant the seedlings, as well as to weed, harvest, thresh, and husk.

Agricultural manuals helped to disseminate the best techniques for rice cultivation. The flooding of the paddies brought in many nutrients and reduced the need for fertilizer. A high seed-to-yield ratio and ease of transportation are other advantages of this crop.

There were also many varieties of rice, including drought resistant and early ripening varieties, as well as rice suited for special purposes such as brewing.

Since rice cultivation was so labor intensive, many people remained in the countryside to do the work. Still, there was an ample surplus to feed those who worked in manufacturing and commerce and to sustain a high level of material as well as aesthetic culture.

Farms produced the food to feed city people, and most Chinese remained farmers. The rectangular fields in this scene from the scroll (above right) are divided by irrigation channels, but the scene doesn't give us enough information to determine which crops in particular are grown there. We do know, however, that millet, wheat, and sorghum were the basic subsistence crops in the north, and that rice predominated in the south.