Daming 1805

Chapter 308 The fundamental way out of agriculture lies in mechanization
Zhu Jingyuan planned to leave for Xintianfu in March of the third year of Ankang.

But just after the first day, Zhu Jingyuan himself and the people around him have already entered the new state of heaven.

Pan Shien came to Meng County early, and started handing over to Lin Zexu during the holiday.

Zhu Jingyuan also began to seriously think about what he would do first after arriving in Xintianfu.

And according to their own plans, they began to make demands on relevant manufacturers and personnel.

In February of the third year of Ankang, all preparations were completed one after another.

Quicksand City has prepared a batch of crude oil and refined fuel oil.

The petrochemical base has prepared a batch of various plastic materials, rayon and elastic yarn.

Meng County has prepared a large amount of rayon, elastic silk woven fabrics and various types of products.

Daming Airlines has prepared a batch of agricultural aircraft and a large number of radial engines for agricultural aircraft.

A batch of popular cars produced on the assembly line, as well as a batch of gasoline engines and gearboxes for cars have been prepared.

The factory of the Ministry of Industry completed the trial production of plunger fuel injection pumps for diesel engines, and refitted a batch of small and medium-sized diesel engines.

According to Zhu Jingyuan's latest requirements, the factory of Royal Agricultural Machinery Xintianfu produced large tread tires for modern tractors.

Other manufacturers of the imperial consortium also prepared their own materials and machinery, craftsmen, and skilled workers according to the requirements.

All the things to be transported to Xintianfu will not be passed in one go, one is too late, and the other is that they cannot be digested.

However, the number of materials and personnel to go with Zhu Jingyuan is still not small.

All cargo and passenger ships arrived at the Meng County Wharf by the end of February.

On March [-]th of the third year of Ankang, all transit ships were resupplied and completed.

Zhu Jingyuan took the whole family, followed his grandfather and grandmother aboard the Intrepid, and officially set sail for Xintianfu.

The accompanying huge fleet set off from Meng County, went south along the east coast of Mozhou, circled the Western Cape, and crossed the Atlantic Ocean westward.

On March 28th of the third year of Ankang, the fleet sailed at sea for 20 days, and finally approached the mainland of Nanyinzhou.

The Milky Way (River Plata) estuary is more than two hundred kilometers wide, making it the widest estuary in the world.

If one looked at the surrounding scene and the boundless waters, the people on board would not realize that this was the estuary.

But the fleet pilot knew it, so he immediately began to coordinate the formation of the fleet and carefully identify the channel.

After entering the estuary, the water depth has been directly reduced to less than 20 meters.

The fleet continued to sail westward for about [-] kilometers from the north of the river mouth. In the sea area [-] kilometers away from Sanqing City, the pilot ship raised the warning level again.

The overall water depth in the entire water area has dropped to less than ten meters, and all large ships must be guided to sail along a dedicated channel several hundred meters wide that has been manually dredged.

At noon that day, the first ship sailed into Sanqingcheng Wharf.

Zhu Jingyuan and Zhu Zhongliang's Intrepid ship finally stopped on the pier after three o'clock in the afternoon.

The family got out of the cabin, changed to a riverboat with a shallower draft, and continued to Xintianfu City.

After changing boats, Zhu Jingyuan did not enter the cabin immediately, but watched the scenery on the deck of the riverboat with his family.

Looking at the surrounding docks, the big ships from Daming and Meng County are all berthing one after another.

A large number of personnel and materials have gradually begun to replace riverboats.

Zhu Jingyuan looked at this busy scene with a very serious expression and said to Zhu Zhongliang:
"Grandpa, I feel the need to continue dredging the channel.

"It would be best to dredge to a depth of 16 metres, but also at least 12 metres.

"Let large sea-going ships be able to dock directly at Xintianfu.

"Now Sanqing City is only more than 200 kilometers away from Xintianfu by water, but we need to change boats here again.

"The shipping and handling costs add up and it's going to be pretty ugly.

"And the mouth of the Milky Way is so wide that the delta of the estuary is a swamp.

"It is also very troublesome to build railways and roads to go around.

"The most ideal solution is to dredge the channel..."

Zhu Zhongliang looked at the surrounding boats, and felt that it was normal for Zhu Jingyuan to have such thoughts, but the problem was:
"The water depth is 16 meters... Are you going to take a [-]-ton ship directly?"

Zhu Jingyuan nodded as a matter of course:
"Now there are [-]-ton passenger ships and oil tankers, and sea-going ships will become bigger and bigger in the future.

"The status of Xintianfu determines that its cargo throughput will be very large.

"And according to my understanding, the mouth of the Milky Way is too wide, so the water is so shallow.

"After entering the inland waterway, the water of the Milky Way became deeper instead.

"I read the package saying that the water depth in many places is more than ten meters, and there are even many places more than 20 meters deep.

"Because the amount of water in the Milky Way is very large, there is not much difference from the Yangtze River.

"If the overall channel is dredged to 16 meters, then a large ship under [-] tons can go directly into the inland for thousands of kilometers.

"The entire core area of ​​Xintianfu can be connected more closely."

Zhu Zhongliang also nodded:

"It makes sense, but the amount of work is not small.

"The water depth outside Xintianfu City is only two to three meters, and the previous channel was dredged to eight meters.

"You're going to deepen it to 16 meters, which is definitely not something that can be done in a few years.

"The key is to have enough manpower and equipment..."

Zhu Jingyuan immediately said:

"The manpower in Xintianfu is sufficient, as long as they are freed from tedious agricultural production.

"And this is what the industrialization of Xintianfu must do, and the dredging of the waterway is also in the service of industrialization.

"We can also find a suitable place to build a hydropower station and supply electricity while dredging the waterway."

Zhu Zhongliang replied as a matter of course:
"How do you liberate the population? Farming already needs people, and land reclamation needs more people."

Xintianfu is currently a huge rural area, with less than [-]% of the urban population.

The remaining more than [-]% of the population are agricultural population directly engaged in agricultural and animal husbandry production activities.

If the population of agricultural products processing industries such as brewing and canning is included, the proportion of agricultural population in Xintianfu may exceed [-]%.

Zhu Jingyuan also said as a matter of course:

"Mechanization, the only way out of agriculture is mechanization."

At the end of last year and the beginning of this year, Zhu Jingyuan had already carefully considered the matter of Xintianfu.

I and the royal consortium have prepared a lot of large projects, various high-tech and large-scale industrialization projects.

At that time, Zhu Jingyuan originally wanted to prioritize these projects and consider which ones could be carried out simultaneously.

But after thinking about it, Zhu Jingyuan slowly discovered that he should first consider how to farm efficiently.

If he and the imperial consortium want to industrialize in Xintianfu, they need to liberate enough people from agricultural production.

Agriculture is the foundation of the whole society, and industrialization should first serve agriculture and liberate the population that is bound by agricultural production.

Now when I see the transfer of ships between rivers and seas, I think of the dredging of the Milky Way channel, and when it comes to the manpower required, I think of this again.

In Zhu Jingyuan's previous life, when the local industrialization of the Thai and Western countries, the local land was not enough compared to the population.

It is impossible for farmers to become rich by farming, unless they are landlords who own a large amount of land.

If the wages of the factory are enough to make the farmers rich, it will be more convenient to absorb the population from agriculture.

But Xintianfu is different. Xintianfu has vast arable land and pastures, and even more extensive land to be developed.

The total population of Xintianfu is estimated at 6000 million, which is comparable to the population of Germany at the time of World War I.

However, the land area controlled by Xintianfu was more than 30 times that of Germany at that time.

Xintianfu can still be regarded as a vast land and sparsely populated.

Even if all the 6000 million people are engaged in agriculture in a broad sense such as agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, sideline fishing, etc., they can still live quite well.

At the same time, Xintianfu was also the most important supply base of agricultural and animal husbandry products in Ming Dynasty.

While liberating the population from agricultural production, the agricultural production capacity of Xintianfu must not be reduced, and the supply of agricultural products in the entire Ming Dynasty must not be affected.

To achieve these two goals at the same time, the only way out is mechanization.

Zhu Jingyuan and his family left Sanqing City for Xintianfu City on a riverboat escorted by small warships around them.

After the ship left the city, Zhu Jingyuan raised his eyes and looked outside Sanqing City.

From the end of February to the beginning of March in the Ming calendar, it is the autumn harvest season in Xintianfu.

Around Sanqing City to the north of the Milky Way, the annual rainfall exceeds [-] millimeters, which is a suitable place for growing rice.

Now on the land outside Sanqing City, there is an endless sea of ​​golden rice.

A large number of people and horses come and go in the sea of ​​rice, harvesting and carrying the harvest of this summer.

In this era, agricultural production still mainly relies on manpower and animal power.

Large farms use horses, small farms use cattle.

The number of horses and cattle in Xintianfu may be greater than the local population.

It is often seen that farmers use two or even four horses to consign the harvested grain and plow the farmland with large iron plows.

The emperor drives six, and the princes drive four. Many peasant coachmen in Xintianfu can play with four horses, which is close to the princes of the Spring and Autumn Period.

The use of such a large number of livestock is still due to the lack of suitable power machinery.

At this time, there were actually gasoline-powered and steam-powered agricultural tractors.

But the gasoline engine was boring, the steam engine was too bulky, and the early tractor design was immature, so the scope of application was relatively limited.

According to the experience of later generations, the most suitable engine for agricultural tractors is a small and medium-sized diesel engine.

It is more powerful than a gasoline engine, lighter than a steam engine, simple, safe, solid and durable.

However, until the fuel injection problem of diesel engines is solved, and the scale of the oil industry is large enough, there is no way to popularize it on a large scale.

None of this should be an issue now, or soon.

When Zhu Jingyuan planned the diesel-electric submarine last year, he told the Ministry of Industry the design idea of ​​the plunger fuel injection pump, the most critical component of the diesel engine.

The Ministry of Industry has completed trial production, and the accompanying fleet this year includes a batch of modified diesel engines with plunger fuel injection pumps replaced.

From last year's new year to the beginning of this year, Zhu Jingyuan specially planned and designed commonly used agricultural machinery.

At the heart of this is the GM diesel-powered tractor.

Modern people are used to the shape of a tractor, but this shape was also formed after a long period of exploration, and it is a design that is almost complete.

Steam-powered tractors appeared in 1868, and became popular after the maturity of diesel engines in the 20s.

The key design on modern tractors, the two huge tread tires, was designed in 1932.

There are not many technical reasons for this. The main reason is that after the tractor is widely used, the users slowly confirm that this design is the most suitable for the tractor after long-term use.

Therefore, as before, Zhu Jingyuan directly skipped the experience accumulation process and copied the typical complete body optimal design.

In addition to the tractor body, there must also be supporting, tractor-driven, combined agricultural machinery.

Including dump trucks, mounted plows, mounted harrows, seeders, rice transplanters, harvesters, water pumps, etc...

Many of these devices already exist, and they only need to be driven very differently. Now they can be used after targeted adjustments based on the design of new agricultural tractors.

Zhu Jingyuan's plan is to design and produce general-purpose tractors in this way first, and then use them with matching combined agricultural equipment.

Complete this small-scale general-purpose agricultural machinery first, and realize the fully localized production in Xintianfu as soon as possible.

After Xintianfu's machinery industry system matures, it will gradually develop large-scale special agricultural machinery.

The tractor project is much simpler than various military projects, even the automobile project is much simpler.

According to Zhu Jingyuan's request, the Ministry of Industry quickly completed the basic design of the tractor.

The agricultural machinery factory in Xintianfu has also produced matching tires and pre-prepared the chassis, which is now waiting for assembly and testing.

The Royal Agricultural Machinery Company also has a factory in Xintianfu, but the scale of the previous factory was not very large.

It is mainly responsible for the production of various agricultural machinery used with animal power.

The original crawler tractors with gasoline engines are not easy to use, so the production scale of power machines has not been expanded.

Zhu Jingyuan sent them a message after the Chinese New Year, asking them to start preparing for the construction of a diesel tractor factory in advance.

And let them directly dock with the Ministry of Industry to jointly complete the design of the new diesel engine tractor and the preparation work before production.

In other words, after Zhu Jingyuan arrived in Xintianfu, the first thing to do, during the industrialization of Xintianfu, the first industry to start should be the tractor factory.

Then there should be an agricultural aircraft factory that should be built simultaneously.

Compared with diesel tractors, agricultural aircraft is a fully mature technology.

When Zhu Jingyuan invented the airplane, he directly prepared the agricultural airplane design in advance.

Daming Aviation Industry Co., Ltd. has already completed the production line in the local area, and then build a new production line in Xintianfu.

It can be expected that during the gradual application of these agricultural machinery, the agricultural production efficiency of Xintianfu will increase rapidly.

The population required for agricultural production has naturally been greatly reduced.

Then Huangzhuang can introduce more people into factories as workers.

Xintianfu is Huangzhuang, and workers and farmers are theoretically employees of Huangzhuang.

In theory, changing peasants to workers is just a job adjustment.

Although there will definitely be various problems in actual operation, it should be much more convenient and easier than passive adjustments in the industrialization process of various countries in history.

(End of this chapter)