Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 884 Entrepreneurship and Development ([-])

On September 1651, 9, at the junction of the Santa Maria River and the Camaquan River, seven or eight hundred Ming people in only single clothes were busy in the river channel during the dry season.They stood by the river covered with reed mats and door panels (to prevent them from slipping into the mud at the bottom of the river), wielding shovels, and shoveled the chapped riverbed inch by inch—if these rivers were not widened quickly during the dry season , If it is dredged, then after the summer flood season, perhaps this river will still not be able to sail boats. This is undoubtedly difficult for the seven or eight hundred Ming men who have been settled here.

If the waterway is blocked, the materials cannot be transported up. This is the truth that everyone understands.Other materials such as building materials (bricks, cement, lime, sand and gravel, etc.) are okay. After all, everyone can barely hold on if they continue to live in shacks. The situation of these pioneers in the deep hills of the west of the lake is very worrying.Although there is no Indian harassment here, the wild grass and forests are everywhere, and the food is not very rich, which is very difficult for them.

At present, their forward pioneering base named "New Castle" on the map, all the materials needed for daily life need to be collected from the "Red Star Farm" further downstream.The location of the Red Star Farm is located near the city of Amaral Ferrado in the later Brazil. It is also a pioneering farm that has only been built for a few months. Currently, in addition to the more than 500 Ming people arranged by the Executive Committee, there are also some from Denmark. A hard-earned cattle breeder in the DeLand area.

As we all know, the cattle on the Jutland peninsula of Denmark almost feed the entire Netherlands and surrounding areas, and the local herdsmen still have a lot of uniqueness in cattle raising technology.Most of the cattle in Red Star Farm are imported from Denmark (to increase the variety of domestic cattle and enrich the gene pool of cattle), so they recruited some poor Danish cattle farmers to the east coast to develop.The treatment for these "technical immigrants" is very good. Not only are they given a set of standard brick houses in the east coast style for free, but they will also give each person two cows as a reward. Mixed-grazing farms were established.After all, hilly areas are rich in pasture resources, which are perfect for raising cattle and sheep. It would be a pity not to make good use of them.

The construction of Red Star Farm is much better than that of New Castle!Because a 72-ton inland river steamer can go directly to the temporary wharf on the bank of the Camaquan River via Pasture Ridge, a large amount of construction materials, machinery and equipment, living supplies and even livestock personnel can reach there relatively easily.So naturally, the local construction will not be bad - in addition to the farm department and warehouses, hundreds of brick and tile houses have been built successively for the new Danish cattle breeders to live in, and it is said that they are still under construction Concentrating water supply facilities and sewage treatment pools, excavating irrigation canals, a series of construction achievements have blinded the eyes of hundreds of pioneers in New Castle, and they can only work harder to dredge the river channels in order to hope that those inland rivers Steamboats could one day sail right up to their docks too.

People from Newcastle came to Red Star Farm every four or five days. They took a huge team of mules and horses to transport all kinds of food back as much as possible, and occasionally brought back some tools, cloth, wine and shredded tobacco. It is not easy to transport.The food shipments included flour and a little cured meat — mostly beef, from nearby Mucaoling Township in Xihu County.

Speaking of Mucaoling Township, whether it is Red Star Farm or the pioneers of New Castle, it is like thunder.Without him, most of the supplies needed to sustain life in Gein's two places are supplied here.In other words, it is the fruit of Mucaoling Township's development over the years, silently supporting the development of the people on the east bank in the upper reaches of the Kamaquan River.You must know that Mucaoling Township was gradually developed under the support of Dafeng Township, which is located on the bank of Duck Lake and near the mouth of the Kamakuang River, and now it is finally their turn to support the pioneering activities in the upper reaches. .

After years of development, Mucaoling Township has a population of more than [-] people, distributed among the vast hills and mountains.With their amazing courage, industriousness and intelligence, they wiped out the nearby Guarani people, opened up vast farmland, and built brick kiln factories, turning this barren land into a poetic mountain pastoral .

Of course, as a typical hilly agriculture, the agricultural structure of Mucaoling Township is quite different from that of plain areas.For example, the farmers here raise a particularly large number of cattle and sheep, especially the Andalusian black cattle, which are the largest in the east coast, and their number is almost seven or eight times the population of the township, which is amazing.

The benefits brought by such a huge amount of livestock are obvious. First of all, the large amount of manure it produces enables the arable land for wheat cultivation to maintain sufficient fertility, which is crucial to obtaining a good harvest—— According to Xihu County According to data from the Bureau of Agriculture, the seed-to-harvest ratio of winter wheat in Mucaoling Township has reached 1:19, the highest in the country, which explains everything well.

With the increase in the number of cattle herds, the number of beef and dairy cows in Mucaoling Township is bound to usher in a geometric growth in the next few years. In this era when the domestic beef price has not completely dropped to a "reasonable price", Aiming at the market and establishing a large-scale meat processing enterprise has become an inevitable choice.And they have indeed done so. Since last year, Mucaoling Township has been ordering machines and recruiting manpower, and then opened a project led by the Xihu County Government and the Mucaoling Township Government (and also made some real investment), and some rich peasants in the countryside have vigorously The invested joint-stock animal husbandry product deep processing enterprise - Mucaoling Meat Products Factory.

This factory currently has hundreds of workers, most of whom are Italian and Scottish laborers (commonly known as indentured slaves) brought from Europe by famous labor brokers Valentino and Mendes.Since last summer, they have found a place suitable for the construction of a small inland wharf by the Camaquan River, built several spacious factory buildings with local abundant timber resources, dug an ice cellar at the same time, and purchased a road with a refrigerator (Ether refrigerator cooling) inland steamships, the investment is not too small, and the determination is not too strong.

After the factory was established, the factory began to visit the villagers' homes to buy beef cattle that were too old to work, and then pulled them to the slaughtering workshop of the factory for unified slaughter.The slaughtered beef is directly sent to the ice cellar for storage. In the future, it will be transported to nearby densely populated industrial cities such as Ping'an County and Zhenhai County by transport ships with cold rooms to make profits.In addition, another part of the meat (perhaps this accounts for the majority) will be sent to the processing workshop next door for further processing-mainly salting.

Salting is carried out in specially-made pickling tanks, that is, workers put a certain concentration of Brine, after stirring well, put in various types of meat (mostly lean meat), then seal it up and wait for it to marinate by itself.

This method of soaking in salt water was also first suggested by Danish immigrants to the people on the east coast, and then quickly accepted by the builders of the factory-this method is most suitable for large-scale industrial production, and fools would not accept it!The cured bacon generally contains 5%-9% salt, which is suitable for the consumption taste of ordinary urban workers, and it sells well, with a red color like that in Europe (because the marinated mixture contains a lot of nitrate, Some dry-cured bacon containing saltpeter is not the same at all, so the sales in Ping'an and Zhenhai counties are quite good, which makes investors very happy.

What made them even more gratified was that the Joint Staff Headquarters of the East Bank Republic also ordered a large amount of bacon and ham from them to supply the daily consumption of the troops; The Southern Railway Company in the south has placed orders for a large amount of cured meat from them to supply its huge labor force. To be fair, these are actually the largest customers of the Meadow Ridge Meat Factory at the moment.

The cost of cured meat products produced on a large scale and industrialized is often much lower than that of products that are cured by farmers themselves and sold on the market.Coupled with its relatively uniform taste (salt content is strictly controlled), safe purchase channels and supervised processing, this makes it very obvious in terms of its competitive advantage over ordinary villagers’ retail-style self-processed cured meat. In the end, they are often completely out of the competition.

This is almost the first industrial pickled product factory in China (the meat joint factory in Dongfang County is based on the state-owned ranch in Muchang Township and sells fresh meat to the capital area). Won the unanimous praise of everyone.Today, even the Department of Immigration and the General Administration of Development have begun to order a large amount of bacon from them to support the consumption of the pioneers in the new settlements.

This is the case for the Red Star Farm and the two or three thousand pioneers in Newcastle near the local area. The General Bureau of Exploitation purchases up to two tons of bacon and ham from the Grass Ridge Meat Factory every month to feed those who are dry and heavy. The pioneers who work hard can supplement nutrition, and this alone can bring them hundreds of yuan in profits every month, which is not surprising!And if we look at this on a national level, if so many newly built settlements buy relatively cheap and uniform bacon from them every year, what a deal it would be!

(End of this chapter)