I want to be emperor

Shen'an Farm demonstrated a complete set of mechanized harvesting process for Luo Zhixue and his team. The steam combine harvester produced by Hekou Machinery Company was used by them with excellent performance.

Powered by the high-performance steam engine produced by Tianjin Machinery Company, it integrates the two major processes of harvesting and threshing. When harvesting, the combine harvester continuously harvests and threshes the rice. The threshed rice flows out from the rear side, and the farm workers only It needs to be kept in sacks and stuffed into pockets.

Then these sacks full of grain will be loaded into the carriage that follows.

The overall harvesting efficiency is very high, far from being comparable to manual harvesting.

After watching the harvest, Luo Zhixue also went to watch the plow cover. They used the steam plow machine produced by Tangshan Machinery Company, and their steam plow machine also used the advanced steam engine produced by Tianjin Machinery Company.

This kind of steam plow machine is also huge in size and requires many people to operate, but its efficiency is not to say, it is much better than ox plowing and horse plowing.

However, Luo Zhixue also knew that despite the high efficiency of the mechanized equipment driven by these steam engines, the cost of use would not be low.

The main reason is that these mechanized equipment are very expensive and require complicated maintenance during subsequent use, which is not affordable for ordinary farmers at all.

At present, even in the Northeast region, which is most suitable for mechanized planting, only medium and large farms can afford these things at present, and some small farms, free family farms of farmers, cannot afford them at all.

Of course, these self-cultivating farmers in the Northeast generally have a large area of ​​land, which can be hundreds of acres at every turn. Therefore, it is impossible to use the traditional method of ox farming, and horse farming is generally used.

Harvesting is not using manpower, but using a power harvester.

Regardless of whether it is powered by a steam engine or a horse, the planting mode in the Northeast is very different from that in the Guan.

After all, there are few people outside the customs and a lot of land, so we can only adopt the method of extensive planting and low harvest like horse farming, and it is impossible to adopt the method of intensive farming represented by cattle farming.

In general, there are many people and little land in the customs, especially in the south of the Yangtze River, northern Jiangxi, Huguang and other major grain producing areas. It seems that there are many fertile fields, but the population is also very dense. It is impossible for ordinary peasant families to have tens of acres or even hundreds of acres of land.

In the case of less land, it is natural to use the method of intensive farming represented by ox farming to increase the yield per mu.

This is the difference brought about by the geographical environment and population density, and it cannot be said that the method is better.

At least for the current Great Chu Empire, whether it is mechanized planting, horse plowing, or cattle plowing, even if there are no cattle, only purely human methods can be used. In fact, these types of planting modes exist widely.

While the Great Chu Empire vigorously developed and promoted mechanized planting, it also vigorously developed and supported power-storing mechanical planting and horse farming in the north and northwest regions.

In the southern region, large-scale encouragement and support for cattle farming, tax incentives, policy support, etc. are provided for cattle farms that breed cattle on a large scale, and for workshops that produce manpower threshers, various hoes, sickles and other agricultural tools, and small machinery factories provide Tax incentives and policy support, etc.

The Great Chu Empire's support for agriculture is comprehensive and will not be limited to a certain place.

And there is also a lot of support for advanced technology. For example, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has been engaged in hybrid rice, and at the same time, there are a series of researches on the cultivation of high-yield wheat and the localization of corn.

There are more than a dozen research institutes directly under the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry for the research of staple food, fruits and vegetables and other crops. In addition, there are also some small-scale agricultural research institutions under the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of each province.

And some results have been obtained one after another, such as the localized cultivation of some exotic crops, the most typical of which are corn, potatoes and sweet potatoes.

After all, these three types of crops do not have high requirements on the environment, land, or even water sources. They are all grown on dry land or even mountainous land. After localized cultivation, large-scale promotion and planting can effectively use more land for farming.

For example, in the southern region, the terrain is generally hilly, and there is not much arable land suitable for growing rice.

How to increase food production in the Southern Hills?
Rice alone is not enough. Rice has very high water requirements, and breeding, chemical fertilizers, and increasing the number of cattle are all routine operations. The yield per mu has increased, but it will not change the fact that the cultivated land itself is too small Reality.

The only way is to build more water conservancy facilities and get more rice fields.

At the same time, the mountainous land that lacks water is also used to plant some drought-resistant crops, that is, corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes.

You can also plant some non-staple food crops to increase your income, such as planting soybeans, peanuts, and fruit trees.

Through a variety of means, develop agriculture according to local conditions, increase the total grain output, and increase farmers' income. This is the main strategic task of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of the Great Chu Empire, and even the entire empire.

So don't look at the great Chu Empire's industrial and commercial development is very good, there are many reports, and the high-level officials of the empire are also very concerned.

But in fact, the official investment of the Great Chu Empire in the field of industry and commerce every year is far less than that in the field of agriculture.

In the early years of the Great Chu Empire, the Great Chu Empire came up with a five-year agricultural development plan, and invested 6000 to [-] million Chu Yuan one after another. At that time, the annual central fiscal revenue of the Great Chu Empire was only about [-] million. .

After the end of the first phase of the agricultural development plan, the Great Chu Empire launched the second, third, fourth, and fifth phases, and the capital investment in each phase was massive.

By the time of the fifth phase of the agricultural development plan that is currently being implemented, the cumulative investment and the investment in the next year or so are expected to total more than 4000 million Chu Yuan.

This is only the central fiscal expenditure, excluding local expenditures.

These huge agricultural support funds will be subsidized to farmers in various ways such as agricultural production equipment, agricultural water conservancy facilities, and agricultural tax relief in disaster-stricken areas.

This is why there are a large number of various small agricultural machinery enterprises in the Great Chu Empire, and they have developed very well, because the Great Chu Empire has always maintained subsidies for agricultural machinery manufacturers.

Whether you are a large-scale modern agricultural machinery enterprise that produces steam combine harvesters, or a small and medium-sized agricultural machinery factory that produces power-storage harvesters, or simply there is at least one in every county, which is used to produce common agricultural tools such as hoes and sickles. Small farm machinery factory.

As long as you produce agricultural equipment, you can get financial subsidies, mainly in the form of tax relief.

Among all industrial fields, the taxation of the agricultural machinery industry is the lowest...even after some places have issued their own agricultural machinery support and subsidy policies, some agricultural machinery enterprises can even achieve tax exemption.

In terms of the construction of agricultural and water conservancy facilities, the Great Chu Empire started before the founding of the country, and it never stopped after the founding of the country.

Among them, the most famous and the most invested is the artificial diversion project of the Yellow River. During the diversion process, the water of the Yellow River was diverted to the north by digging diversion channels.

This item alone has benefited the five provinces of Henan, Anlu, Jiangbei, Shandong, and Hebei, not only reducing floods, but also enabling the two northern provinces to obtain more water resources and develop more fertile land.

The Great Chu Empire not only carried out flood control on major rivers, but also actively engaged in various small-scale flood control and irrigation water conservancy facilities.

Irrigation wells have also been developed and reservoirs built in many places.

This kind of seemingly inconspicuous small-scale flood control irrigation, water wells and reservoir facilities, you can't see any effect on weekdays, and you are even used to it, but it will have a great effect during the spring and summer rainy season, or during the dry season.

Through a series of flood control irrigation and water conservancy projects that lasted for 30 years, you can hardly see the impact of the Little Ice Age in the Great Chu Empire today. The grain output in the Great Chu Empire is increasing year by year, never There have been large-scale famines, and even people's lives are getting better every day, and the per capita food is getting higher every year.

In reality, in the first 30 years of the Great Chu Empire, the temperature was colder than that of the Ming Dynasty, the drought was more severe, and there were more extreme climates.

Especially in recent years, that is, 26 years after Chengshun, the temperature is obviously colder than before, and there are obviously more extreme weather.

But none of these had any practical impact on the surging development of the Great Chu Empire.

Because the Great Chu Empire has complete flood control irrigation and water conservancy facilities, ordinary floods or droughts cannot threaten agricultural production at all. If there is a severe flood or drought in a certain place that has not been seen in decades, then the Great Chu Empire also has perfect disaster relief measures. .

Whenever a disaster occurs, the government immediately exempts the agricultural tax and provides special funds to support disaster relief and restore production.

At the same time, the Great Chu Empire Grain Corporation was able to transport grain from other places immediately, opening up the supply!
Then the Ministry of Industry and local industrial management departments will immediately organize companies to recruit workers in the disaster area!

All kinds of finances from the superiors will be allocated as soon as possible, and then a series of work-for-relief measures will be launched to carry out infrastructure construction in the local area.

Under such circumstances, even if the local farmers have no harvest throughout the year, it is impossible for you to starve to death, because the Great Chu Empire still has a guarantee measure, that is, immigration!

Even if other options fail, the empire will use the ultimate trick: immigration!

The people in the disaster-stricken areas were directly taken in, and then transported to the domestic frontier areas where railways were opened in the northeast or northwest, or they were directly transported to Southeast Asia or even the Americas by large-tonnage steam ships for immigration.

Anyway, places with less people and more land have a huge demand for population. No matter how many immigrants there are, they want them, especially in Malacca and America, where there are more places.

If you are still willing to go to a more difficult place, the immigration process does not cost a dime, and the official provides it all for free, even the rations are provided until your first harvest season.

If you go to an ordinary place, the government can also cooperate with a number of government-run banks to provide interest-free loans, travel expenses, grain types, and rations for the first year without worrying about it.

If you have money in your own pocket and can bear the immigration costs yourself, then you can go to various good places, such as Malacca, which has been developed and mature, and there are also free land shares!
With a variety of disaster relief measures, it is impossible for the local disaster-stricken people in the Great Chu Empire to starve to death.

Of course, if you are unwilling to accept the official arrangement, and you have no money in your pocket, and insist on yelling that it is my freedom to starve to death, then there is no way.

And behind the overseas immigration, it can also be seen why the Great Chu Empire needed a lot of land when it expanded abroad, and it didn't set up any slave plantations.

The overseas expansion of the Great Chu Empire is different from that of European countries.

The overseas expansion of the Great Chu Empire is for more arable land and to feed more people. Therefore, after the Great Chu Empire conquers a place, it often adopts repeated clean-ups to completely wipe out local organized resistance, and then carry out a large number of immigration. , and in this process, the militia was used to expel the natives, and finally occupied the entire land, and cultivated and worked on this land to prosper.

There is no colonial rule, economic plundering of these things.

The overseas expansion of the Great Chu Empire has a pure purpose: to want land but not people!
The overseas expansion of European countries is mainly for various economic interests, so they will focus on trade, route monopoly, colonial economic plunder, etc., and then produce slave trade, slave plantations and other phenomena.

Based on the different fundamental purposes of the two kinds of overseas expansion, there are huge differences in many ways between the overseas expansion of the Great Chu Empire and the overseas expansion of European countries.

This is some basic logic difference between the high level of the Great Chu Empire and the high level of the European countries. The high level of the Great Chu Empire is out of maintaining the rule, and there is no such thing as eternal life.

Senior executives of European countries, what is the basic logic of their overseas expansion?for money!
And the logic of overseas expansion of the Great Chu Empire is actually the same thing in China. Why disaster relief?
Because they are afraid of creating refugees!

Otherwise, you really think that the bosses care about the life and death of the untouchables, because they are afraid that the great famine will lead to a large number of refugees, which will turn into chaos in the late Ming Dynasty.

The Great Chu Empire evolved from the rebel refugees in the late Ming Dynasty. Luo Zhixue himself was born as a refugee, so the natural market has been guarding against this from beginning to end.

Therefore, the Great Chu Empire tried every means to eliminate the possibility of a great famine, and then a series of measures such as emphasizing agriculture, water conservancy, and immigration emerged.

The Northeast Development is actually based on almost the same underlying logic.

Northeast Development, what is being developed?
Steel and various minerals?Although this is done, in fact, these are incidental. There are more steel and coal mines in the Great Chu Empire. To be honest, in terms of the current production capacity of the Great Chu Empire and the demand for steel and coal, it is not bad for the Northeast. .

The purpose of the Great Chu Empire's development of the Northeast is also very simple and pure. It is to develop the large black land on the Northeast Plain in the Northeast region, and then grow food!
The Northeast Plain, that is, the Liaohe Plain, the Sanjiang Plain, and the Songnen Plain, these three plains are extremely fertile, and there were no people there before. Once fully developed and planted, it means that the Great Chu Empire will have a lot more out of thin air. food production.

In fact, only the Liaohe Plain and a small amount of land in the Songnen Plain that are currently being developed have made the Northeast China the largest food supply base of the Great Chu Empire. The sum of the province and the government.

As for the south of the Yangtze River, although the grain production in that area is larger, the population is also denser, and the food supply to the outside world is relatively small.

At present, the development of the Great Chu Empire in the northeast region focuses on further developing the Liaohe Plain and increasing the development of the Songnen Plain.

At the same time, preliminary research and development preparation work will be carried out on the Sanjiang Plain.

In the sixth phase of the agricultural development plan, the development of the three major plains in the northeast will be the key content.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry is counting on the development of this area to effectively increase the per capita grain output in the Great Chu Empire.

The per capita food production in this country has increased, coupled with the extensive import of food from the Southeast Asia region, plus the meat and food imported from India and the Americas, the domestic per capita food consumption can reach the goal expected by the high-level empire: per capita Four hundred kilograms of grain!

Based on the importance of domestic self-produced grain, Luo Zhixue delivered a speech on further supporting and encouraging agricultural production after finishing his inspection of Shen’an Farm, emphasizing once again the empire’s emphasis on grain production and further expanding grain sources to ensure per capita consumption of grain level.

After finishing the inspection of Shen'an Farm, Luo Zhixue continued to take the imperial train to the north, and arrived at the northernmost city on the Northeast Railway Line, which is Changchun, the provincial capital of Northern Liaoning Province.

In fact, the provincial capital of Northern Liaoning Province is not in Changchun, but in Jilin further east, just because the Northeast Railway does not pass through Jilin, but passes through Changchun.

Due to the convenience of transportation and the consideration of future agricultural and industrial development, the government of Northern Liaoning Province directly moved the provincial capital from Jilin to Changchun after careful consideration.

However, the railway in Changchun has only been opened for only half a year, so the industrial development in this place has not yet started, not only in Changchun, but in fact the industrial and commercial development in the entire Northern Liaoning Province is not good.

The population is too small, and the industrial foundation is lacking. You said that there are various mineral resources... There are more Liaodong in the south, and the mining is more convenient, and all kinds of supporting facilities are very complete. You don’t need to go further north, where it’s colder and the traffic is less. It is convenient for Liaobei Province to do these things.

Therefore, the economic model of Northern Liaoning Province in the past mainly relied on agricultural production.

However, the agricultural production in Northern Liaoning Province is different from ordinary agricultural production. In fact, there are not many self-cultivating farmers, because few people were willing to immigrate to Northern Liaoning Province in the early years... There were not even many people, so naturally they couldn't make a lot of them. Homesteading system.

In order to develop the local area, Northern Liaoning Province attracted a large amount of investment and attracted a large amount of capital from the agricultural field to open up various large-scale farms in Northern Liaoning Province.

As long as you are willing to come and invest in a farm, the land will be rent-free, and various other preferential policies will also be given, even the agricultural tax will be exempted for three years and two reductions for you.

Therefore, a large number of farms have been established in Northern Liaoning Province, invested by both official and private capital.

Among them is the "Liaohua Farm" invested and established by Liaohua Agricultural Company. This farm is not only the largest farm in Northern Liao, but also the largest farm in the Northeast, and even the largest farm in the Great Chu Empire.

This year, the rice planting area alone has reached more than 30 mu!

And also has a large area of ​​soybean and wheat and other planting areas.

There are also livestock such as horses, pigs, chickens and ducks, among which there are more than 5 Toyoshu horses alone.

And this Liaohua farm is only one of the largest farms of the company. In fact, the company also owns farms in Liaodong and Heishui, and has a large livestock base in Monan.

There are also several agricultural products and meat processing plants.

Liaohua Agricultural Company is the most powerful enterprise in the agriculture and livestock industry in the Great Chu Empire, and its market value on the Jinling Stock Exchange is as high as tens of millions of Chu Yuan.

In terms of scale and strength, it is not much worse than those so-called large textile or machinery enterprises!
The company's headquarters base is naturally also the focus of Luo Zhixue's inspection!