Fan Shengzhi was an agriculturalist in ancient China whose exact life dates and personal details are unknown, as public information is limited. He is known today mainly through his representative work, The Book of Fan Shengzhi. One of the earliest extant Chinese agricultural treatises and an important record of Han-dynasty farming techniques, the original text is believed to have been lost after the Song dynasty, and what survives has largely been reconstructed through later compilations. The preserved chapters deal with agriculture in the Guanzhong region, covering cultivation, seed selection, fertilization, irrigation, drought prevention, and crop growing. The language is concise and practical, with attention to operational detail and a clear emphasis on summed-up experience. Its accounts of techniques such as quzhong and souzhong reflect the tradition of intensive farming and influenced later agricultural writings and dryland farming in northern China. Within agriculture and forestry literature, The Book of Fan Shengzhi is pioneering, and Fan Shengzhi is accordingly regarded as an important figure in Han-dynasty agronomy.
