African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 1041 New Agriculture

The innovation in water pump technology in Kaporan City is also a microcosm of the development of agricultural fields in East African countries in recent years. Of course, water conservancy is not only related to agriculture, but also has a huge impact on cities and shipping.

However, the natural precipitation in Kapolan is relatively low. Without advanced and complete water conservancy facilities, it would not be possible for it to become the new cotton planting base planned by the Bohemian Province.

For example, cotton can also be grown in the eastern part of the Bohemia Province, and rainfall is relatively abundant, but the quality of cotton is not as good as that in the western region. Generally, the quality of cotton in arid or semi-arid areas is better. When planting cotton and other crops in these areas, the first thing to solve is the water problem.

The most prominent area in this regard is Somalia's cotton-growing area. The water conservancy construction in the Somali region has made the Shabelle River and Juba River basins a world-famous agricultural production area.

The same is true for the city of Kapolan, where the construction of water conservancy facilities began in the 1980s, developed rapidly in the 1990s and was basically formed. The completion of such water conservancy projects in just over a decade naturally required the help of black workers.

As a relatively young country, East Africa's exploitation of black laborers has reached its peak in the past two decades. Without their contributions, East Africa's national agriculture would not have been able to catch up with other countries so quickly.

Even the United States, which has a relatively short history, has a history of large-scale modernization development of hundreds of years. East Africa has narrowed the gap with Europe, the United States and other regions in just a few decades. The sacrifices involved must have been astronomical.

The investigator from the Kapolan City Water Conservancy Bureau did not leave in a hurry after completing his work. He was quite interested in the agricultural development of Kosa Town. As people who often deal with agriculture, this one or two generations in East Africa have also witnessed the tremendous changes in the agricultural development of East African countries.

Kosha Town was originally developed from a village. In the early days, it only planted some food crops, including wheat and corn. With the development of agriculture and changes in national agricultural policies in recent years, Kosha Town began to widely plant cash crops such as cotton and tobacco.

In particular, it took only seven years for the scale of cotton cultivation to grow from almost zero to the largest in the city.

During the First Five-Year Plan period, the cotton planting area in Kosa Town increased at the fastest rate. On the one hand, it was due to the improvement of water conservancy facilities, and on the other hand, it was due to the improvement of mechanization efficiency. Of course, the most important thing was the policy change, which promoted the transformation and development of agriculture in Kosa Town.

Walking in the fields of Kosa Town, you can see large-scale cotton fields. These cotton fields are all large in area, with a standard geometric distribution and divided by canals.

“There are more and more tractors in the town now, and the fields are being planned to be larger to accommodate this new mode of tillage with agricultural machinery. Previously, tillage was mainly done with livestock,” Tal briefed him.

"The output of tractors is increasing. The agricultural machinery station in our town now has a total of 28 tractors. If we include those in the surrounding villages, there should be more than 40 tractors. All of them were newly allocated in the past five years and are equipped with corresponding agricultural implements."

The tractors used in Kosa Town are basically produced by the city of Harare. As for the city of Kapoland where Kosa Town is located, it is a city with a relatively weak industrial base in the province, and its industry is limited to some light industrial fields.

"Agriculture has been undergoing adjustments in recent years, including the merger of villages and towns, water and electricity supply, road construction, farmland transformation, etc. The city is also actively building a new fertilizer plant. It is estimated that our city will be able to use its own fertilizers by the year after next." The investigator also revealed some of the information he had obtained to Mayor Tal.

This is not a secret, but one of the key industrial projects of Kapolan City during the Second Five-Year Plan. In addition, Kapolan City will also build a cotton ginning mill to adapt to the increasing cotton planting area in Kapolan City.

Therefore, during the Second Five-Year Plan, Kaporan was allocated two modern factories, a small-scale fertilizer plant and a medium-sized cotton ginning plant. This shows how difficult it is to industrialize East Africa. The resources allocated to more than 600 cities in East Africa during the Second Five-Year Plan were pitifully few. Some cities did not even have a modern factory. This is also the dilemma of East Africa's current industrial development.

Of course, compared with the First Five-Year Plan, East Africa's Second Five-Year Plan obviously has more advantages. Moreover, East Africa is in the early stages of industrial development, so the road to industrialization is bound to be tortuous. But as time goes by, the speed of industrialization will become faster and faster, especially East Africa has an absolute advantage in emerging industries.

"During the Second Five-Year Plan, it was already quite difficult to be allocated industrial resources. If this was the case for our province, you can imagine the difficulties in other parts of the country. Of course, compared with the past, the development of East Africa in recent years is obvious to all. I don't know much about other places, but in our city, for example, the industrial and agricultural output value has increased by more than 30% compared to before the First Five-Year Plan."

"The towns and villages below are also developing very fast, especially in agriculture. By the time the Second Five-Year Plan is completed, the scale of agriculture in our city will probably have more than doubled."

During the Second Five-Year Plan, Kapolan City responded to the provincial government's plan and focused on increasing the cotton planting area. Now Kapolan City's cotton planting ranks second in the province. If it doubles, it may become the largest cotton planting base in the province.

The confidence of Kapolan City to expand the cotton planting area comes from the water conservancy facilities. If the water conservancy facilities of Kapolan City were not perfect ten years ago, there would not be the conditions to expand the cotton planting area even if it wanted to.

As the westernmost part of the Bohemia Province, Kapolan City still has a large amount of usable land. As for the labor force, although the black population has decreased rapidly in recent years, the city's birth rate is relatively high, so there is no need to worry about labor.

Cotton picking requires a lot of manual labor. After all, East Africa does not have mature cotton picking technology, which is quite regrettable.

Of course, at the beginning of the 20th century, there was no better way to pick cotton for the major cotton-growing countries in the world. Even the western United States had to resort to manual methods. In the past, plantations in the southern United States mainly relied on black slaves to complete this work.

Of course, cotton picking in East Africa mainly relies on the cooperation of nationals and black laborers. Of course, with the rapid decline in the number of black laborers, this also makes East Africa more urgent to develop new agricultural tools.

It's not just cotton. Crops like rice, wheat, etc. have similar needs. However, due to the complexity and difficulty of cotton picking, the progress of agricultural tool research and development is not ideal.

The mechanized planting of rice and wheat has already begun to take shape, but because the technology is still immature, it cannot be promoted on a large scale like tractors.

During the Second Five-Year Plan, technological changes in East Africa's agricultural sector mainly focused on increasing the output of tractors, pesticides and fertilizers, as well as further improving farmland water conservancy construction.

As for the further development of agriculture, it is mainly constrained by the difficulty of technological breakthroughs. However, difficulties do not mean no achievements.

With the development of education and industry in East Africa, new technologies in East Africa are accelerating, and the results of scientific research have increased significantly. Especially during the First Five-Year Plan, a large number of new technologies were applied, which greatly improved the progress of industrialization in East Africa. Therefore, during the Second Five-Year Plan, the East African government will further promote the application of new technologies in agriculture and industry.

(End of this chapter)