Valley Emperor

The Datang Empire now has a population of more than 300 million people, and the amount of food that so many people need to consume is an incomparably huge amount. Although the agricultural production level of Datang today is much better than before, it has begun to use less machinery. The production efficiency of equipment, water conservancy facilities, bird droppings and other measures have increased production, but the per capita grain output is still at a relatively low level.

In fact, the per capita grain output of Datang is not as good as that of most of Datang's overseas territories, such as Luzon, Banten and other overseas provinces, where the land is fertile and the grain output is very high.

Not to mention places like South Africa and the Americas, where there is a lot of fertile arable land and a small population. Many immigrant families own hundreds of acres of land, and they do not use cattle as the mainstay of farming as they do in the native country. In the deep ploughing mode, shallow ploughing is carried out with horses. Although the yield per mu is less, it cannot support the amount of land that others cultivate.

Most of the families who immigrated to North America use horses to cultivate hundreds of acres of land, and the per capita food production is very high.

The huge agricultural production capacity of overseas territories is now gradually feeding back to the local area, but the cost of ocean transportation is still relatively high, and the direct transportation of relatively cheap food is relatively loss-making. Therefore, the overseas territories generally import economic crops with relatively high unit prices to the mainland. Not directly importing food.

However, this will also allow the local people not to temporarily use too much arable land to grow cash crops such as cotton, but instead to grow food.

But even so, it is not so easy to feed more than 300 million local people.

Once the overall economic policy of the empire is changed, large-scale urbanization begins, and the peasant population is led into the cities, which will inevitably lead to a large amount of land being abandoned and reduce food production.

No one farms the land anymore, and there is nothing that can be done about this land being abandoned.

And the solution is not without it, that is to improve the efficiency of agricultural production.

For example, in the past, it took two people to plant one mu of land to obtain 300 kilograms of grain. Now, using mechanical equipment, chemical fertilizers, and water conservancy facilities, one person can cultivate one mu of land and also obtain 300 kilograms of grain.

In this way, part of the rural labor force can be freed up and guided into the industrial and commercial circles, thereby increasing the income of peasant families.

Improving the technical level of agricultural production is the best solution.

How to improve?

This is the problem facing Chen Lifu and others.

"We need to increase the mining and import of guano from South America and other regions. The current amount is far less than the local consumption!"

"South America, especially the Principality of Chile, has abundant guano resources, and the mining difficulty is very low. It can be mined with only a small labor cost. We can completely increase our support to exploit more guano resources!"

"Not only bird droppings, but also saltpeter should be imported more. Before, we imported saltpeter only for the defense industry, but before the Royal Institute of Technology has successfully synthesized nitrogen fertilizer from saltpeter ore, and the Principality of Chile has abundant nitrogen fertilizer. Saltpeter resources!"

"As long as we can get enough guano and saltpeter, it will be enough to raise the local agricultural production to a new level!"

"But it's not enough to rely only on natural fertilizers. After all, the quantity is limited, and South America is too far from the mainland, so the freight is not low. Even if we exempt all customs duties or even give freight subsidies, the price is relatively expensive."

"We still have to think about artificial synthesis. I have seen relevant research from the Royal Institute of Technology before. They are trying to reduce the artificial synthesis cost of some chemical fertilizers. We can directly give them more funds for their research. , let them get it out as soon as possible!"

"There is also a need to increase investment in the cultivation of hybrid rice and other high-yielding grain crops. This is a project that the Son of Heaven personally designated in his early years. Although the investment in these years is not low, in my opinion, it is still far from enough. , a lot of their cultivation work is cultivated by trial and error. As long as the funds are sufficient, the time can be shortened. It takes a hundred years for one person to cultivate rice, because he may need to do many cultivation experiments, but if we invest enough, It is completely possible to organize a hundred or even ten thousand people to carry out different stages of cultivation experiments at the same time, which can greatly shorten the time."

"We also need to increase investment in water conservancy facilities. In the past, we only focused on flood and drought prevention, but now, in addition to basic flood and drought prevention, we also need to pay more attention to irrigation. Water conservancy projects are not only used to prevent It is used to irrigate and increase food production!”

"In terms of production tools, the agricultural production equipment in the vast rural areas is still insufficient, and many families still use the most basic agricultural tools, while many higher performance and more advanced agricultural tools are too expensive to enter. The vast rural areas, let alone steam tractors, can only be used in large farm areas, and are completely unsuitable for most of our rural areas!"

There are more people and less land in the empire, and the amount of farmland that each family holds is limited. Even horse farming cannot be used, let alone the use of large-scale machinery such as steam tractors. Nowadays, it is most suitable for the production of small family farms like the Empire. The mode of cultivation is still intensive and meticulous, using cattle and even manpower to cultivate, so as to ensure that enough food is produced on a small area of ​​land.

If you learn to use horse farming in North America, the yield per mu is not enough.

A cabinet meeting, although at the beginning it was talking about changing the demographic structure and increasing the proportion of middle-income groups~www.wuxiaspot.com~ But in the middle, it became how to increase the income of farmers, because the number of farmers occupying the empire is too large. many.

In the end, it became how to increase food production.

But in the final analysis, it was to increase the income of the low-income groups in the empire, especially the peasant families who accounted for the vast majority.

And this matter is not simple, it involves many departments, and the cabinet has discussed it repeatedly for several months.

It was not until February of the 39th year of Xuanping that the detailed charter was officially submitted.

This charter integrates the opinions of various cabinet ministries and formulates a plan for 'revitalizing the rural economy'.

Of course, the core is still to increase food production.

Although there is a lot of content on the booklet, in summary, the four main aspects are chemical fertilizer, grain improvement, water conservancy facilities, and agricultural equipment.

From the cabinet's point of view, the easiest way to see results in the short term is the construction of rural water conservancy facilities.

The construction of rural water conservancy facilities does not refer to those big projects, but to the construction of small water conservancy facilities that go deep into rural areas. Although this aspect has been done before, it has not been paid enough attention. Now, it is preparing to invest heavily.

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