It was remarkably prescient coming at a time prior to the, then, forthcoming immanent and major upheavals in farming practice, including the transformation of agriculture by the chemical industry. Secondly, King’s book recorded, with an eye for detail, and with precision augmented by statistics, the principles and practice of what we can now describe as ancien régime organic agriculture. His book described agricultural practices across three populous countries which were self sufficient in food and had been feeding large populations, from the same soil, for millennia. Organics advocates have viewed it as an validation of their methods and it remains of interest to organics scholars because of its influence, its persistence, and its testimony. Thirdly, King, as well as Hopkins, chose a term, in their case ‘permanent’, that qualified ‘agriculture’, and thereby differentiated the practice of ‘permanent agriculture’ from ‘orthodox agriculture’ as preached by the USDA.
The term arose from a conflict, a clash of ideologies, and signalled a cleavage of the territory of agricultural theory and practice into different camps; it a cleavage which remains to this day. As a distinguishing term, ‘permanent’, was the first of many such distinguishing terms for alternative agricultures. ‘Permanent agriculture’ emerged in response to, and out of a conflict with, the USDA’s view of agriculture. There is the parallel with ‘organic agriculture’ which emerged,hydroponic net pots framed as a contest, three decades later as Northbourne’s “organic versus chemical farming” . ‘Permanent’ was a precursor to ‘organic’, the term which has, in the interim, become the dominant descriptor to describe non-orthodox, alternative agriculture. Fourthly, King called for a “world movement” to introduce and develop permanent agriculture practices. He noted that “China, Korea and Japan long ago struck the keynote of permanent agriculture it remains for us and other nations to profit by their experience”. The call for a “world movement” o alternative agriculture eventually manifested in France, in 1972 as the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements.
As China is now adopting organic agriculture on a grand scale there are increasing opportunities to compare, across the divide of a century, places and practices that were documented by King. He described, for example, Chongming Island which is now increasingly adopting modern organic agriculture practices . King’s book has a special place in the canon of agricultural writers in general and organic farming in particular, and Farmers of Forty Centuries has earned its standing as a ‘classic’. In describing, with the eye of a scientist, an agricultural world that has all but disappeared, the work offers an accessible record of agricultural practices of increasing interest as the world faces the challenges of novel and contested agricultural technologies. Coffee is an important commercial crop. Coffee is an important cash crop in Uganda because the tree crop is the principal cash crop and the country’s largest agricultural foreign revenue earner . At the farmer level, coffee remains an important source of income since its production accounts for over 10% of total income of the farmer .
At the national level, income from coffee currently contributes around 20% – 26% of Uganda’s export earnings In 1999, coffee exports totaled 150,000 mt representing US$125.316 million in foreign ex-change earnings. Exports by value for Uganda coffee is of 398 million $USD in 2009 . The improvement of coffee yield quality and quantity at farm level remains importantly an area that requires encouragement as part of national strategy to increase the production of coffee in Uganda. Thus, improvement and stability of coffee productivity are very important in the Uganda national economy. However the improvement needs the understanding of farmers’ perceptions and knowledge of pollinators and pollination services for coffee production among other key production and management factors to consider.