Lords Trying to Survive: Strategizing from a Rundown Yard

Open up wasteland, breed crops, and train agronomic apprentices.

This was the mission requirement that Zong Shen had put forward to Salome Lin Yu before.

If the territory wants to develop farming on a large scale, it must explore agronomic techniques.

Find a set of applicable and efficient farming methods based on actual conditions.

There is no concept of intensive farming in the Endless Continent, and even agronomists have become an extremely niche technical profession.

Because of the vast land and magical magic, studying the laws of nature is far less simple and crude than using magic directly.

Even without the use of magic, the current food output in various places is in a relatively stable state.

Free people in villages, that is, villagers, only need to pay a tax on the output of their cultivated land, and the rest belongs to themselves.

Some areas adopt spring and autumn taxes, while others directly collect grain property taxes. The specific policies are completely decided by the local ruling class nobles.

In the human kingdom of the Endless Continent, except for the Salander Sultanate, some of the customs of the aristocracy followed by the other countries are closer to the middle-class aristocratic system in Europe on Earth.

First of all, the kingdom itself is a main body, extending downwards to huge cities, state cities, villages, and settlements.

Depending on the geographical area and the level of urban development, each kingdom basically has hundreds or even two to three hundred giant city-level units.

The so-called giant city is a relatively broad concept.

There are both super giant cities like the Imperial City and ordinary giant cities located in various places.

However, even the smallest giant city has at least tens of millions of people, almost comparable to the core prefecture-level cities on earth with a high concentration of population and functional areas.

Low unit productivity + vast land + the power of magic eventually formed this "deformed" pattern.

If it were a simple European medieval level, it would be almost impossible to feed a million people, let alone feed tens of millions of people in the region.

The rise of Europe and New America on Earth was inseparable from the increase in productivity brought about by the Industrial Revolution.

Before the Industrial Revolution, hundreds of years of colonial development and slave trade accumulated primitive capital in a sea of ​​blood and corpses. Only in this way can we lay the foundation for the Industrial Revolution and achieve hundreds of years of "advancedness" for future generations.

Many problems actually have historical factors and do not appear out of thin air.

So despite the fact that the human customs and culture of the Endless Continent are similar to those of the European Middle Ages on Earth, the two are fundamentally different.

The earth is not big, and there is no magic, but it has science and technology that can study and summarize the laws of things.

The Endless Continent is huge and has magic, but few people here try to explore the natural laws of things.

Different factors have caused the two worlds to completely diverge. They have the same "appearance" but not the same "soul". They are completely different worlds at their core.

Each giant city has several to dozens of vassals within its jurisdiction.

Down from the city, it governs from a dozen to dozens of villages and several settlements.

This forms a progressively upward regional unit.

It can be understood that dozens of villages support a state city, and a dozen state cities support a huge city.

Among the dozen or so giant cities, there will be one or two super giant cities.

Finally, dozens of huge cities support an imperial city in the kingdom. When converted, it can be understood that it takes tens of thousands or even more than 100,000 villages to support such an imperial city.

In terms of the functional division of administrative regions, only Jucheng and Bangcheng have administrative capabilities.

The giant city governs the state city, while the state city governs the villages, and each has certain autonomy within its jurisdiction.

As for villages and settlements, as the lowest level, they are under the jurisdiction and protection of the state to which they belong.

The population in the village is roughly divided into two categories, namely free people and serfs.

Freedmen only needed to pay taxes on time, while serfs were equivalent to the private property of the local nobles.

Most nobles would designate several special villages within their jurisdiction to settle serfs and cultivate the land.

In contrast, the free people were much more motivated. They kept enough of their own rations, paid enough taxes, and the rest could be sold to caravans in exchange for dinars.

Then use dinars to buy other supplies you want, thus forming an economic cycle.

As for those serfs, they basically relied on the sky for their livelihood.

They farmed and grazed for the nobles, and there were no corresponding indicators at all. All output had to be turned over after deducting ration consumption, so there was no enthusiasm at all.

The supervisors who were appointed to accompany him were also very lazy, and everyone was just messing around.

This situation has led to a situation where the per capita cultivated land area in the Endless Continent is not small, but the average yield per mu is very low.

Therefore, Zong Shen must not copy the farming methods of the aborigines, otherwise the territory will not be self-sufficient in food even if it waits until the Year of the Monkey and the Horse.

Of course, lords have the privilege of loyalty, and the people under their command will definitely not be as passive as serfs.

This is also a manifestation of the unnatural privilege of the lord. Strictly speaking, as long as the loyalty of the subjects is raised to more than 90 points, it is basically equivalent to having serfs who will not complain. If it is raised to more than 95 points, the loyalty of the subjects will be They will consciously work hard.

If the loyalty is raised to 100 points, then the people will even die for the lord resolutely.

As long as Zong Shen is willing, there is no need for him to carry out any free citizen reforms. He only needs to provide enough food to restore hunger and satiety every day and then arrange tasks.

Under the protection of the loyalty mechanism, lords can exploit their subjects to their heart's content.

It is no exaggeration to say that this is an enhanced version of the "slavery" model.

And he is still a "slave" who will not resist and rarely complains. After all, apart from loyalty, the Endless Continent is a world with a huge gap in the strength of individual units. The strong can suppress all unstable factors on their own.

However, Zong Shen was not willing to do this. The simple and crude method was very convenient, and it was neither troublesome nor brain-consuming. He only needed to pat his head and move his butt to give the order.

However, it may not be in line with the optimal development law of productivity improvement.

What he needs is a vibrant territory, necessary classes, and a relatively stable economic cycle.

Give full play to the individual differences of each territorial citizen and differentiate into new strata.

You must know that the so-called absolute fairness is inherently a paradox.

From an individual point of view, everyone is a completely different individual, a brilliant spark among countless flashes, whether it is personality, character or abilities in all aspects.

Since everyone is different, fairness itself is bullshit.

Why should those who have flexible minds, strong bodies, and the courage to fight and fight to complete the initial accumulation talk about equality with those who are weak and slow-minded?

Assuming that Zong Shen worked day and night and turned on plug-ins, but his final development level was the same as that of the Leping Party, how could it be fair?

So true fairness is not about forcing everyone to the same level.

Instead, we strive to improve everyone’s living standards and popularize people’s livelihood and welfare.

Try to shorten the distance between the pyramid tip and the pyramid base.

This is true fairness.

Cutting up the strong and feeding the weak is a perversion.

It is also abnormal to let the weak fall into the dust and lack the guarantee of survival.

In Zong Shen's eyes, the best possible social class structure is not cylindrical or pyramidal, but spindle-shaped.

The spindle is thick in the middle and thin at the top and bottom.

This is Zong Shen's ideal.

As for universal unity, unless he can become a god, it is all empty talk.

The individual differences and differences in thinking of intelligent life make this impossible to come true.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. If you want to build the utopia in your mind, you have to start with farming on the territory in front of you.

His arrival disturbed no one.

The surrounding breeding fields are full of busy farmers and farm wives.

Salome Linyu herself was observing something in the sweet potato field.

The green wheat fields undulate in the breeze, tomato vines hang along the wooden poles, and from time to time you can see butterflies rising and falling among the green vines.

Zong Shen did not disturb them, but walked towards the sweet potato field.

This group of agronomic apprentices will still need to be trained for a period of time before they can graduate.

You need to accumulate at least a dozen seasons of crop harvesting experience.

In the process of personally cultivating crops and harvesting them, knowledge and practice are integrated, and relevant agronomic knowledge is mastered.

After all, these agricultural apprentices are all "amateurs", unlike Salome Lin Yu, who is an experienced naturalist Dru Yin.

These five hundred agronomy apprentices will become the "seeds" of the territory's era of large-scale agriculture. They will learn more professional farming knowledge, and coupled with the [Special Knowledge School], the territory also offers subjects such as grazing, poultry/livestock raising, etc.

In this way, more professional and efficient knowledge can be used to cover the superficial farming experience in farmers’ heads.

Only in this way can we build a solid foundation for scientific farming and intensive farming.

The meal must be eaten one bite at a time, and the road must be walked step by step.

Use agronomy and related disciplines as a springboard to conduct a preliminary round of knowledge popularization and ability improvement.

From now on, it will be much easier for Zong Shen to learn from the experience of intensive farming on earth that has been tested by reality and promote it, because the acceptance of the subjects has increased.

Walking here, even the air is filled with the fragrance of crops.

As soon as you smell this smell, you will feel a sense of harvest. It reminds Zong Shen of the rice fields in his hometown in the summer when he was a child.

When Zong Shen walked to the sweet potato field, Salome Lin Yu was holding a stem in the middle and looking at it in concentration.

The sweet potato field in front of me is about thirty acres, covering an area of ​​tens of thousands of square meters.

The stems stretching down to the ground are growing happily, and the green sweet potato leaves are growing towards the sun.

He only got a sweet potato vine at the beginning and gave it to Salome Linyu to open up the first seedling field in the yard of the lord's fortress.

So far, the defense challenge has been over for five days, and more than thirty acres of sweet potato vines have been cultivated!

The Kingdom of Avalon is located in the eastern part of the Endless Continent and has a pleasant climate.

There are neither too drastic weather changes nor ups and downs of the four seasons.

Temperature changes always remain within a range suitable for crop growth.

Compared with the bitter cold of the northern border, it is simply an excellent farming land.

But the environment here will also have an impact on those tropical crops.

In general, Zong Shen is quite satisfied with the location environment and climate.

Also satisfied is Salome Linyu.

"Ahem!"

When Zong coughed a few times, the guy was finally awakened from his selfless research state.

Salome Lin Yu slowly stood up straight.

His right hand held a thin wooden knife, and his left hand carefully held a freshly cut sweet potato vine.

Then he turned around and took a look. When he saw the Lord coming in person, he quickly bowed slightly and bowed.

"My lord, you have finally come to inspect the fields in the territory."

"It just so happens that I have a lot of things to report to you!"

Salome Lin Yu shouted at the top of her lungs as she strode out of the sweet potato field and came to Zong Shen.

At this, someone from the sect just nodded lightly. Seeing that Salome was so motivated, he was in a good mood!

He waited until Salome was close before he began to praise her.

“I see the future of the territory here.”

“The food issue that is strangling development will no longer be a problem.”

"You've done a great job. This sweet potato field is growing very well. Maybe soon there will be sweet roasted sweet potatoes on my dining table, and various corresponding by-products will also appear."

Zong Shen's compliment did not make Salome smile.

He always maintained a respectful but not flattering expression, with the issue of farmland in mind.

"Your vision and mind are still so broad."

"But I have to report a few questions to you."

Salome Lin Yu bowed again and Zong Shen raised his eyebrows, indicating for him to continue speaking.

"We need more water!"

He asked the first question, but Mr. Zong didn't say anything, pretending to listen patiently.

When necessary, the lord should also be a qualified listener.

So Salome Linyu spoke in one breath with almost no pause.

"The water source for this breeding field is a nearby stream that flows from the mountains and ravines in the north."

"Even if canals are opened for diversion, the water flow of the creek can barely satisfy the irrigation of this breeding field."

"If you want to fully popularize farming in your territory in the future, water source irrigation will be a big problem."

Hearing this, Zong Shen's brows slowly furrowed.

The creek nearby is the territory's nearest source of water to the north.

The water cellars in the territory also draw water from here, and then store it after purification and toxicity testing.

In addition to farmland irrigation, livestock drinking water also comes from here.

You should know that livestock drink much more water than humans.

This creek may be difficult to meet the development and expansion needs of the territory.

Zong Shende found a new water source!

Either try to dig a well, then find a way to widen the runoff, or get water from the small lake in the south.

Anyway, the water sources around here are very clean.

Seeing that Zong Shen was silent and thinking.

Salome Linyu also returned to silence and did not immediately ask the next question.

Suddenly, Zong Shen seemed to think of something and clapped his hands suddenly!