Lu Ming

Chapter 316 The Curve to Save the Nation
Regarding the strategic value of horses, this actually involves the strategic layout of the entire Crossover Group and the deduction of future social development.

In general, under the current situation of extreme demand for imported materials, the high-level empire will not invest much resources in horse breeds-are horses useful?have!Is it a necessity?no!
Huo Xiong's control of the policy is very accurate, so he clearly told Huang Xu that the Animal Husbandry Corporation will not get involved in this troubled water. The expansion of horse breeds is not the most urgently needed cause for the empire, so if the army insists on doing this , then ask them to squeeze out internal resources. As for public resources, this will definitely not work.

Huang Xu understood what Huo Xiong meant.However, for a project like horse breeding that requires long-term blood transfusion, it is not cost-effective to use internal resources, so Huang Xu still tried his best to persuade Huo Xiong.

So the two started a round of discussions while sitting on the motorcycle.

Regarding the utilization of livestock, it is usually divided into two directions: labor and food.

Forced labor includes plowing and riding.

The technologically prosperous world of later generations developed little by little, including horse farming with a history of thousands of years.

Horse plowing is the most efficient way of plowing land. Both European farmers and early North American pioneers used horse plowing. The efficiency of heavy-duty horses was the highest before the appearance of tractors.

However, horse farming can’t be played in the Eastern Continent—Han is a mountainous country, and the area of ​​mountains, hills and plateaus accounts for 69% of the country’s total land area.In other words, the Han nationality has never been a nation suitable for raising and using horses.

This data also needs to cut down the grasslands in the north that are suitable for raising horses: Before the Qing Dynasty, Mongolia had always been the base area for nomads to attack the Central Plains, so it had to be included in the data for mountainous areas where horses could not be raised.

The ancient Han people, who only had about 20% of the plain terrain available, could not raise their horses to the level of daily plowing like Europeans or North Americans. The plains were full of people, and the continuous mountains could only survive. For the Yunnan horses, the northerners use hoes and cattle, and the southerners use buffaloes. People restricted by the environment do not have the content of raising horses in their genes.

Therefore, for thousands of years, the most important method of farming in the Eastern Continent is hoes and cattle. Therefore, for thousands of years, people can only exchange horses from Mongolia and Qinghai-Tibet with salt, iron and tea.

As for those cool cavalry stories in history, including Huo Qubing and Zhao Yun. In fact, from Qin’s destruction of the six kingdoms to the million Red Army crossing the Yangtze River, in countless internal and external wars, the main way for the Han people to solve their opponents has always been massive infantry However, a small number of elite cavalry cannot conceal the lack of war horses in their bones.

The matter is specific to the cross-travelers of the new plane.

As mentioned above, after the army generals came to the north, they could buy Mongolian horses and all kinds of bad horses on the spot, including donkeys and mules to form mounted infantry to kill the enemy. There is no need to spend a huge amount of money to cultivate the population.

In this way, the riding function of the horse is not urgently needed at present.You know, the war in this plane is not like the World War I and World War II in the later generations. The industrial countries fought in darkness, and the death rate of war horses was in the millions. The advantage is too great, and the war is usually one-sided, not so cruel at all, and less than a million horses are used.

After removing the function of riding, what remains is the function of farming. However, in this new era of drastic social changes, it is hard to say that farming horses can catch up.

The country established by the people across the world will go through the development process of the old world for thousands of years in just a few years or more than ten years.

In a sense, the newly-baked nobles of the empire are all prophets-knowing things three days ago and being rich for thousands of years, so the prophets will not choose backward production methods.

In the entire East Asia region, where is the best place to explode food?In addition to the Tainan Plain, there is no doubt that it belongs to the Chao Phraya Plain in Thailand.Regardless of climate or water and soil, the plain along the Chao Phraya River is a god-given rice producing area, ranking first in East Asia.

In later generations, the annual rice output of Thailand, which was desperately exported, was 2100 million tons.The vast majority of the rice in this figure comes from the land mentioned above.In addition, the land occupied by the huge amount of pineapple, banana and lychee fruits has not been counted.

According to Chuanzhong's plan, once the country's comprehensive industrial capacity reaches the minimum output requirements - gunboats, tractors, fertilizers, pesticides, then the immigrant fleet escorted by the fleet will prepare to land in the Gulf of Siam.

Using mechanized methods to explode cultivated land and rice in Thailand and the Tainan Plain is the most efficient mode of grain production in the late Ming Dynasty.

The above two pieces of heaven-sent land, together with gas tractors, soil chemical fertilizers, and pesticides, these big killers, even if there are two crops a year, the output of these two places is enough to feed all the disaster victims of the Ming Dynasty, and by the way, support the early days of the empire. colonial actions.

The so-called "dividing the land by beating local tyrants", after success, a group of farmers carrying hoes huddled in the village happily shouted the emperor's grace. The new plane does not allow such low-efficiency scenes.

All farmers must go to the New World. Instead of starving, dying of disease, or killing tens of millions of people in the Little Ice Age, it is better to send them out to colonize.

These people needed to carve out tropical plantations, and farms in North America and New Zealand, for their children and grandchildren, at the cost of a high mortality rate.In the mountainous land of the Ming Continent, except for the livable plains, the rest of the population will migrate away under the plan of the crossing crowd.

Under this kind of strategic deduction about the future, horse farming has been placed in a very low position again - concentrating resources on two plains to mechanize agriculture is the cabinet's established strategy, and if one day needs to use horses, it is also immigration The story after North America.

Now that the two most important functions of horses, riding and plowing, have been offloaded and postponed, the remaining edible function horses are even less accessible.

It is also deprived of the function of service, but the creature of cattle is still the most well-deserved first domestic animal: beef steak, beef brisket stewed with milk and potatoes are the best food that can really change the national physique.

After Huo Xiong broke down and explained the issue about cattle and horses, Huang Xu had nothing to say. After all, the times are different, and the internal and external environments faced by the country are also different, so the attitude towards cattle and horses cannot be based on the experience of the old world. Rote.

After clarifying the pros and cons, Huo Xiong finally gave Huang Xu some curvy ideas to save the country as a "technical consultant".

Considering the current situation in the racecourse, Huang Xu and the others are actually superfluous to discuss embryo transfer.Because apart from the few Arabian horses, there are no qualified surrogate mares with shoulder height, so how can we talk about embryo transfer?So Huo Xiong suggested that Huang Xu calm down first and collect the mare before talking.

Regarding mares, short southern horses are definitely not acceptable: the size gap is too large, and even if embryo transfer is done in the future, the height of the foal will be affected by the mare's pelvis.

Regarding this aspect, Huo Xiong pointed out: The Army actually has room for maneuver.Because the cabinet is concerned about import quotas, as for the army buying horses from the aborigines with money, the cabinet will not take care of such things.

So where to buy horses?Huo Xiong mentioned two places: Hangzhou and India.

Since Hangzhou is the terminus of the Grand Canal, cattle and horse dealers from the north will transport goods to the port every year.It is not new for rich people in Jiangnan to use horse-drawn carts well, so the army can entrust comrades at Hangzhou Station to buy some mares of qualified height. Of course, the price will not be cheap.

As for India, Europeans can be entrusted to organize the supply of mares.

Regarding the breed of horses, the Army actually does not have high requirements, because the ultimate goal of the military is very simple, which is to cultivate warm-blooded riding horses that can travel long distances at a constant speed.

This requirement is much lower than that of cultivating warm-blooded horses capable of sprinting. In fact, most warm-blooded crossbreeds can meet the requirements of the army.

So Huo Xiong revealed the information here: India not only has excellent breeds of Mawarima and Katiawama produced by itself, but also because of the needs of wars and sacrificial ceremonies, and the climate in South India is not suitable for horses. Therefore, the upper class often imports horses from Arabia and West Asia, and there are a large number of Arabian horses.

Hearing this, Huang Xu basically agreed with the routine pointed out by Huo Xiong.

In the end, Huo Xiong also made a promise: as long as the horse farm has enough basic mares population, the animal husbandry head office will provide technical support for free in terms of file establishment, hybrid breeding, and embryo transfer.

Of course, for the frozen horse embryos that need to be sold by the emperor, the army still has to figure out a way.

"The big deal is to use the private quota rewarded by the emperor. Anyway, the embryo tank is not big, and you guys like horses so much." Before leaving, Huo Xiong said with a smirk.

"Let's go!" Huang Xu threw another cigar to Huo Xiong, then waved him off with a smile and cursed.

As for the private quota of one cubic meter per person for everyone's private goods, it has long been hyped into sky-high prices.Let the military leaders of the army personally contribute a little volume to serve the public's great cause of raising horses. Huang Xu thinks it is very unreal.

He judges others by himself, as he likes to smoke imported cigars, that little personal space will be used up sooner or later, and no one can let him contribute, not even sending beautiful women.

"There is a long way to go." Huang Xu stood on the green grass, looked at the motorcycle going away, and sighed.

Comrade Huo Xiong, who had gone away, was in a good mood at the moment.After talking about some things, everyone found the crux of the problem.This also allowed the headquarter of the Animal Husbandry Corporation, which has been caught in the middle, to get out: the technology belongs to the technology, and the politics belongs to the politics. This is the correct attitude in handling affairs.

After coming out of the racecourse, Huo Xiong ran all the way. It didn't take long for him to return to the lively Chikan Avenue, and then plunged into the Chikan District Government compound.

The Chikan District Government is a three-story brick-concrete structure building in the shape of a "gate".After Huo Xiong parked the motorcycle in the compound, he went up from the podium by familiar ways.

After arriving on the third floor, he wiped his face with his hands, and put on a fierce face that his elder brother came to collect. Then he strode to the door of an office, opened the door fiercely and at the same time Shouted: "Tell your boss to come out! You turned against him? How dare you hide from me!"

(End of this chapter)