Max Fresca

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Max Fesca (1846 – 1917 was a German specialist in agriculture and agrochemistry, hired by the Meiji government of Japan as a o-yatoi gaikokujin foreign advisor from 1882-1885.

Fesca was employed by the Geological Research Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce in 1882. He also taught courses at the Komaba Agricultural School (later merged into Tokyo Imperial University). Fesca found that the relatively low productivity of the Japanese farmer compared with German farmers was not due to small size of their land plots as was commonly suggested, but due to shallow tillage methods which required the extensive use of fertilizers that the farmers often could not afford. This was compounded by a poor understanding of crop rotation, and lack of heavy draft animals to permit deep tillage.

Fesca came to be regarded as the “father of modern Japanese agriculture" through his introduction of new farm implements, deep tillage methods, crop rotation and new seeds. During his time in Japan, he faced a constant uphill struggle against the Rōnō (expert farmers), a hereditary title granted by the Tokugawa bakufu to farmers with exceptional skill or local knowledge. While these farmers formed the backbone of traditional agricultural methods and their local knowledge was invaluable, their insistence on traditional time-proven methods was a strong conservative resistance to the new western methods Fesca attempted to introduce.

During his time in Japan, Fesca made a comprehensive survey of agriculture in the province of Kai, and also wrote a number of technical papers on the land reclamation of wild grasslands in the Kanto area.

Fesca returned to Germany in 1885, and was nominated professor at Berlin Agricultural College. In 1890, he published Beiträge zur Kenntniss der japanischen Landwirtschaft.