I want to be emperor

Chapter 469 Agricultural subsidies of 500 million taels

At the end of December in the fourth year of Chengshun, Luo Zhixue also presided over an imperial development meeting at the end of the year.

The main participants in the meeting were senior officials from agriculture, industry and commerce, as well as officials from the Ministry of Education and Civil Affairs.

This time the development meeting is mainly to finalize the overall development plan for next year and even the next few years.

The development of an empire can't be a mess of a hammer here and there, let alone doing whatever it thinks of today.

Even the most basic agricultural development requires a long-term plan and continuous investment, so that a good, cyclical and gradual development model can be formed.

The purpose of this development meeting is to finalize the overall development plan for the next few years.

And before formulating various development plans, Luo Zhixue first put forward the request!

For a development plan, there must always be a goal.

"The core of the development outline for the next few years is still to solve the problem of food and clothing!" Luo Zhixue directly put forward the request at the beginning of the meeting: "Food is the most important thing for the people. In the future of [-] years or even longer, the focus of our work will still be to solve the problem of food and clothing!"

There is nothing more important than eating!
Only when we have enough to eat can we develop industry and commerce, fight wars, and pursue other things.

Not enough to eat, and then one-sided pursuit of industry and commerce, world hegemony and the like are all nonsense.

This is also the reason why the Great Chu Empire has invested a certain amount of money and food in the newly occupied areas in the past few years to restore the local people's livelihood.

This is more evident in this year's Northern Expedition.

The Northern Expedition of the Great Chu Empire required the mobilization of the entire empire, the dredging of the canals, the collection of tens of thousands of transport ships, and the collection and transport of millions of shi of grain to the north, not for the supply of the army.

The army's demand is actually not that great. To put it a bit more extreme, even if the food supply in the rear is not enough for pure military operations, food can be collected on the spot.

However, if the Great Chu Empire transferred millions of shi of grain to the north during the Northern Expedition, plus the grain consumption caused by the hundreds of thousands of troops going north, then the northern provinces would fall into a huge famine.

Under the large-scale famine, the northern provinces will be devastated for thousands of miles in minutes, and the land will be full of starvation. The tragedy will not be much better than that of Shaanxi and western Henan.

Therefore, at the same time as the Northern Expedition, the Great Chu Empire transferred millions of shi of grain to the north for the simple purpose of avoiding large-scale famine in the northern provinces.

As a large amount of food was successively transported to the north through canals and seas, and was successively put into the local market, although the people in the northern provinces had a difficult life and found it difficult to eat enough, it was still common for people to starve to death.

But after all, there was no large-scale famine, which avoided the turmoil in the northern provinces, made the local area quickly stabilized after the war, and then provided the possibility for the rapid recovery of agricultural production.

The issue of food will be the top priority of the empire's internal affairs in the next few years, and Luo Zhixue feels that it is necessary to emphasize this point to these courtiers under him again.

In the face of the problem of food, the so-called industry and commerce are not worth mentioning, because you can't import a large amount of food from the outside these days. When the internal food production is insufficient, it is useless to earn more money, after all, money cannot be eaten.

Without agriculture, there is no stability, without work, there is no wealth, and without business, there is no life.

Among the three of agriculture, industry and commerce, agriculture is the foundation!

So Luo Zhixue set the tone without hesitation at the development meeting.

But he is also afraid that his courtiers will go to extremes, and it is not advisable to emphasize agriculture and suppress business.

So he went on to say: "To solve the food problem, the first priority is agriculture, but we can't just look at agriculture, because industry and commerce can bring us more, better production tools, and better resource allocation to improve production efficiency. , to increase food production capacity.”

"For example, all kinds of agricultural tools provided by steel companies can effectively promote agricultural production and increase food production."

"Grain companies can allocate surplus food in some places to places where there is a shortage of food."

"At the same time, industry and commerce can provide more tax revenue for the finance, and these tax revenue can be fed back to agricultural production through the construction of various water conservancy, transportation and other infrastructure."

"At the same time, industry and commerce can also bring more jobs and increase people's income."

"But it must also be noted that the goal of industry and commerce is not to make more money, but to make the people eat more."

"Agriculture, industry and commerce should cooperate with each other to achieve spiral development and finally solve the problem of food and clothing."

Simply farming in the old way will not be enough to eat, and simply opening a factory will starve to death.

What Luo Zhixue needs is for agriculture and industry and commerce to support each other and cooperate with each other to form a good complementary mechanism.

The reason for this emphasis is that the current Great Chu Empire is different from the later modern countries: the current Great Chu Empire is a very typical domestic demand economic model, and it is basically impossible to import a large amount of food from the outside world.

Under such circumstances, in order to feed the majority of the people, there must be enough food within the empire.

Therefore, no matter what method is used, whether it is to develop industry, build water conservancy facilities, or directly subsidize farmers, the core purpose is to increase food production.

So at this time, basically everyone understood the core purpose of Luo Zhixue: to increase food production!
Especially Yuan Gaofeng, the minister in charge of industry, commerce and economics, said directly: "Our core development goal in the next few years is to increase food production, and this requires the cooperation of all industries!"

"In terms of industry, we can rely on the advantages of the iron and machinery industries, focus on the development and promotion of a batch of better farm tools, and develop a batch of farm tools with better production efficiency and put them into rural areas."

"Nowadays, the price of iron products among the people is still relatively high. If farmers want to buy a good hoe, they have to save money and save money. However, tools such as high-quality hoes are sharp tools for opening up wasteland and farming. Therefore, the most urgent thing is to make iron Increase the production capacity of farm tools and lower the price.”

Yuan Gaofeng came from an industrial background. Although he was engaged in some arsenals before, he has been in charge of the industrial and commercial industry in recent years and has his own understanding of industry.

He quickly grasped the key points from Luo Zhixue's instructions and put forward his own solution: "From next year, we can provide appropriate tax-free subsidies for manufacturers of farm tools to reduce the price of farm tools, and at the same time, we can target Some subsidies for specific farm tools are given, and part of the cost is directly borne by the government, so that farmers can obtain farm tools at a cheaper price."

As he said that, he also smiled: "This will not only allow farmers to obtain a large number of cheap enough iron farm tools, but also further stimulate the development of the iron smelting industry and the machinery industry, which will bring us more profits and taxes. , It is not certain that the last part of the increased profits and taxes can offset the financial expenditure of farm implement subsidies."

"With a good operation, maybe we don't need additional financial support, so farmers can get a large number of cheap iron farm tools, and it can also expand the scale of the iron smelting and machinery industry. It's a double win!"

After hearing this, Luo Zhixue nodded slightly: "The idea of ​​supporting and subsidizing farm tools is feasible, and a detailed plan will be made later."

At this time, the Minister of Counsel Guo Quanshu also said: "To solve the problem of food and clothing, the most important thing is to increase food production. To increase food production capacity, in addition to more and better farm tools, complete water conservancy facilities are also needed."

Guo Quanshu is not only in charge of personnel, but also in charge of water conservancy and transportation.

There are only five ministers of counselors in the civil service system, and basically each of them has to share a lot of things.

"I don't need to say much about the importance of perfect water conservancy facilities to agricultural production. There are obviously large tracts of fertile land in many places, but because of the lack of water conservancy facilities, there are floods in the rainy season and water shortages in the dry season."

"Especially the floods in the Lianghuai area are very serious. There was not much rain in the Lianghuai area last year, but floods still occurred in large areas."

"Even in some major grain-producing areas, the Jianghan Plain, the coasts of Dongting Lake, the coasts of Poyang Lake, and the coasts of Taihu Lake are also threatened by floods, which have a great impact on grain production."

"I think that funds and manpower should be allocated to renovate the water conservancy facilities!"

"Water conservancy facilities can not only prevent floods and droughts, but can also be used as irrigation facilities to turn more inferior fields into superior fields."

Luo Zhixue said at this time: "In agricultural production, the important role of water conservancy cannot be ignored. We must draw up a comprehensive plan for the construction of water conservancy facilities!"

-

In a development meeting, the Great Chu Empire basically drew up the development direction for the next few years.

That is to solve the problem of food and clothing!
In order to solve this core problem, the Great Chu Empire will start from multiple aspects, rather than simply encouraging land reclamation and farming.

It is a package plan covering agriculture, industry and commerce.

After preliminary demonstrations, Luo Zhixue made a comprehensive choice and initially drew up a development plan for the next five years.

Some of the more important plans.

Further encourage multiple cropping and land reclamation, and give preferential policies of exempting agricultural tax for a certain number of years.

Support and subsidize the production and use of farm tools, and reduce the production cost and sales price of farm tools through preferential tax policies and special subsidies for specialized farm machinery manufacturers, so as to ensure that more farmers can buy farm tools at affordable prices.

To support and encourage the research and development and production of new agricultural tools, such as threshers, Luo Zhixue personally instructed the relevant teachers at the Royal Institute of Technology to make them produce a pedal-type thresher according to his own description, which is mainly used for rice thresher .

This kind of threshing machine can greatly improve the efficiency of threshing, and the principle and process are also very simple. The frame is made of wood, and the iron parts are only gears and bearings.

Finally, it is targeted to build extensive water conservancy facilities in agricultural areas, mainly grain-producing areas!
The various plans mentioned above are all directly aimed at increasing grain production, and the budget given is also very large!
It is expected to invest 500 million taels per year in the first three years, and a total of 2000 million taels in the next two years.

In the next five years, the Great Chu Empire plans to invest 500 million taels of agricultural subsidies in order to increase food production and avoid large-scale famine as much as possible.

As soon as this news came out, especially after it was spread all over the world through the Di Bao, it immediately caused an uproar in the world!

After hearing the news, many gentry had expressions of disbelief: In order to feed a group of mud-legged people, would you spend 500 million taels of silver?Luo Ni is crazy!

Emperor Longxing, who was far away in Xi'an, was also stunned when he heard the news!

Sixty-five million taels of silver, that prodigal son of Luo Zhixue, this amount of money is enough for him to build temples all over Xi'an and raise monks all over the city!

After Sun Chuanting heard the news, he was silent for a long time, and finally sighed: "It's difficult!"

In the far Northeast, after hearing the news, Huang Taiji, the captive of the East, said, "Where did he get so much money? Sixty-five million taels, enough for us to spend for ten years!"

(End of this chapter)