Agriculturalism, also known as the
School of Agrarianism, the
School of Agronomists, the
School of Tillers, and in Chinese as the
Nongjia (農家/农家), was an early
agrarian Chinese philosophy that advocated peasant
utopian communalism and
egalitarianism. The Agriculturalists believed that Chinese society should be modeled around that of the early sage king
Shennong, a folk hero who was portrayed in Chinese literature as "working in the fields, along with everyone else, and consulting with everyone else when any decision had to be reached." They encouraged farming and agriculture and taught farming and cultivation techniques, as they believed that agricultural development was the key to a stable and prosperous society.