Xu Guangqi

Xu Guangqi (1562 to 1633) was a Chinese scholar-official of the late Ming dynasty, born in Shanghai, who combined a career that reached the post of Minister of Rites with lifelong work on agriculture. Wikipedia records that after failing the imperial examinations he turned to military and agricultural subjects, and that while out of office from 1607 to 1610 he experimented with Western-style irrigation and with growing sweet potatoes and cotton. He later promoted wet-rice cultivation in north-east China and helped organise self-sufficient military farming settlements near Tianjin. His Complete Treatise on Agriculture, some 700,000 characters long and edited and published by Chen Zilong in 1639 after his death, covered field systems, water control, farm implements, horticulture, sericulture, textile crops, forestry, animal husbandry and famine relief. He also collaborated with the Jesuit Matteo Ricci on translating Euclid, and led the Shixian calendar reform.