Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 2002 Hunting Country ([-])

"The popularity has gradually increased." Walking on the outskirts of Hexi Township, Wang Dazhuang said with a smile, looking at the golden wheat fields on both sides of the road and the large row of adobe houses behind the fields.

It was already December (1687) and it was harvest time for the wintering wheat on the East Coast.The closer the harvest is, the more nervous the farmers are. They must pay attention to the weather and hope that they will not encounter bad weather during the harvest days; They ran to the village committee without hesitation and asked the director of the militia to open the arsenal to meet those barbarians; they would pay more attention to those Spanish colonial officials in beautiful costumes and boat caps. They gesticulate, and then retreat after the village chief sent a dozen silver coins, as if they had never been here.

In fact, because of the great convenience of transportation, Hexi Township and other areas on the right bank of the Paraguay River are actually not short of grain, and they can be transported from the nearest river, which has become one of the most important grain-producing areas on the east bank.But the problem is these farmers who cross the border, why don't you let them farm?Open a factory?Grazing?That's not realistic!The most stable way to absorb the population at the same time is actually to open up wasteland and grow food in the local area, and open up a stable area until the whole place is occupied. years and has proven to be very effective.

Similar to the core area of ​​the East Bank, the people on the East Bank who reclaimed wasteland on the Chaco Plain on the right bank of the Paraguay River also practiced a three-crop crop rotation system. They mainly used winter wheat, rice, alfalfa, soybeans, corn and other crops, and also raised some poultry and white pigs. Animals such as horses and horses are used to subsidize the family.

According to the preliminary plan of the Ministry of Agriculture, the relatively humid eastern half of the Chaco Plain will be treated as an important food producing area in the future, just like the Hejian and Pampa Plains.As for those old agricultural areas, due to rapid economic and social development, grain production is decreasing day by day, and fewer and fewer people grow food.Especially in places close to the cities, farmers have basically switched to planting vegetables, melons and fruits, and horticultural nurseries, but no one is growing food. This has led to a growing shortage of food production in the developed eastern coastal areas, and they have to rely on transportation from internal areas. Maintain consumption.

Even in recent years, some people in the Ministry of Agriculture have proposed to discuss whether to allow farmers in some developed counties to pay land taxes in currency.At present, the land tax is collected uniformly across the country. In the form of grain, the tax rate is set at 10%, that is, every farmer with land has to pay this tax, and the tax is collected by each township and village level.That is to say, even those farmers who no longer grow food in developed areas have to pay land tax every year, which is the so-called "public grain payment".Therefore, farmers in these places have to find a way to buy enough grain from the market to pay taxes every year, so that they can pass the customs.

Based on this consideration, the Ministry of Agriculture has been planning to allow some areas to pay land taxes in currency, so as to reduce unnecessary consumption during procurement and transportation, and reduce the cost of the entire society.Anyway, there are large tracts of good land in the east coast and neighboring Spain. It is enough to arrange to open up wasteland every year, and the reclaimed wasteland can always fill in the gap.What's more, because of the large amount of meat and fish products eaten, the people in the East Coast Republic do not consume a lot of grain. Therefore, there is a lot of surplus grain every year, and they have to find ways to export it. There is no need to worry about insufficient grain production.

Judging from the above-mentioned aspects, the main grain production areas of the current East China Republic are mostly concentrated in the so-called "underdeveloped areas", that is, the inland hinterland of the eastern coastal zone, Hejian, Yanzhou, etc., which are known as the land of fish and rice. The Pampa Plain to the east of the Burma Railway, and the newly reclaimed areas in China and some cross-border reclamation places.Their economic strength is weak, the population is not large enough, and technology and capital do not exist. Therefore, they can only rely on agriculture to slowly accumulate capital, and then develop in other areas.

"Pay attention to the weather, and pay attention to the maintenance of those rented agricultural machinery. Don't wait until you are using it and suddenly find that it won't start. I will go crazy." Noma’s fresh air, while instructing several subordinates, he only heard him say: “The food we produce here is not only for our own use, but also find ways to export it to other places in exchange for various materials needed for development. Now we There are more than 650 million people in the country. With such a rapid economic development, the farmland in some places has been abandoned. This is really unreasonable. Is our country producing enough food? I don’t care about the economically developed areas. Anyway, here we are poor and poor, and the common people still hope to rely on selling the surplus to go to the eastern region to exchange some daily necessities, building materials and labor tools."

"However, this country's policy also needs to be fine-tuned, right? The protective price for grain purchases that has been implemented for so many years has finally been canceled with the sharp increase in military expenditures. The direct impact is that the funds flowing into agriculture have decreased and stabilized. The average grain price of more than 20 yuan in 20 years has also fallen below the integer mark, and it has reached the historical position of 19.9 yuan, which is really discouraging." Wang Dazhuang continued to complain: "Now our country mainly relies on reclaiming wasteland and farming land. , the price of the grain market is now low. If things go on like this, I am afraid that it will discourage people's enthusiasm for land reclamation. Can't all the people on the real side go to cut trees and mine? How can there be so many jobs! When you have [-] mu When land is no longer an honor, but gradually becomes a kind of burden, I think the original well-executed land reclamation policy will not continue to be implemented? What do the people of the State Development Bureau do for food? In this situation Xia even wrote a letter demanding that the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Finance restart the minimum purchase price of grain, alas!"

It is said that as of August 1687, the total population of the Eastern China Republic was estimated to have reached a little over 8 million people.Among them, Ming people accounted for about 655%, second- and third-generation nationals born in the local area accounted for about 28%, white men accounted for about 59.2%, and white women accounted for about 6.8%.In addition, there are a total of about 6.1 non-national labor groups, of which blacks and whites each account for 20.8%, and the rest are Indians of various ethnic groups. Overall, the number of this group is declining year by year, reflecting the fact that people on the east coast have grown from It is increasingly difficult to plunder people overseas.

A total of 700 million people consume a lot of food every year, not to mention that people on the east coast generally like to drink, and consume a lot of grain to make wine every year, so agricultural security is still very necessary.But on the other hand, the climate conditions on the east coast are really good, and the soil has become very suitable for planting after many years of reclamation. Coupled with the popularization and use of some simple fertilizers and the cultivation of improved seeds, the grain output It has been very high, causing great downward pressure on prices.However, in order to maintain the so-called immigrant real border policy, the east coast government has been purchasing grains and grains at protective prices (a quota of 100 million tons), forcing a large amount of financial funds to subsidize them, almost 300 million yuan a year. The funds on this have almost become a big financial hole.

Even if the purchased grain is further processed by the government and put on the market, or finds a way to export to Brazil, the Caribbean, or finds a way to export to other places, and recovers a lot of losses, the annual subsidy for agriculture is still more than 100 million Yuan Zhiju.This money may not have been a big deal in the past, but since the government invested heavily in the navy a few years ago, causing military expenditures to skyrocket, it has felt a bit strenuous, so the policy was eventually canceled after a lot of debate, and the price of food has also increased. Last year, the price fell to 19.9 yuan/ton, and this is the data when there was a small harvest of grain in some areas last year, otherwise it would be even cheaper.

Wang Dazhuang is now a government official in the Hexi region (although legally it is still the territory of the Kingdom of Spain), so he is very sensitive to this issue.He was worried that once this situation continued, it would become unprofitable to go to the frontier to farm, so how could anyone flock here so actively?Wouldn't they have been sailors, explored the Brazilian plateau, hunted bison in the Southern Cone, and found silver in Chile?In that way, the income may be much higher, although the risk will be much higher.

He asked himself that if he was in power, he would like to destroy all the grain planting industries in the developed eastern coastal areas and replace them with cash crops, or simply drive these people into factories to create more wealth.What?The market is limited, so many commodities cannot be digested even if they are produced?Grandma's, the east coast is just too few people, too much land, too rich resources, and too fertile soil, which made it look like this.If it is seen by the densely populated India or Chinese, I don’t know how it will feel!Especially at this time, the farmers in mainland China, after seeing that the model of [-] acres per person on the east bank is almost unsustainable (not a lack of food, but too much food produced), I don’t know how they will feel .

"Major Wang, there are really not many people who are willing to buy more than ten acres of land. They would rather spend their time doing odd jobs or doing handicrafts, so their income seems to be much higher. Or even if someone buys twenty acres , Thirty acres of land, and after harvesting a season of staple food, they will also try to grow some cash crops such as tobacco, hops, sunflowers, peanuts, and sesame seeds, which will also make more money than simply growing grains. Let me say that the country has given up on the staple food. It’s okay to protect the purchase price. Originally, more than 600 million people don’t need so much food. There are too many farmers in our country. In fact, the supporting effect on food prices is not as great as we imagined.” An accompanying official said: “It is a widely known fact that farmers’ income lags behind that of workers, and it has been going on for many years. Farmers It has long been no longer a glorious middle class. I prefer to call them the lower-middle-income group. Immigrants are now less and less appealing to rural children. Many people even prefer to go to sea to find more opportunities , This made the South China Sea Group smile almost crookedly, they finally no longer have to worry about the lack of enough sailors, and the country's navigation industry has unexpectedly become more prosperous because of this."

This made everyone feel a little embarrassed. It seems that the expansion of the peasant class has come to an end, but how will the policy of immigration and solidarity be implemented in the future?

(End of this chapter)