African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 957 Agriculture, Forestry, Animal Husbandry and Fishery
After Helvey listened to Morse's opinions, he asked Morse to formulate an agricultural development strategy for the city of Kampala, which is also a good phenomenon in the governance of East African countries.

After all, most East African officials do not have rich experience and family heritage like European aristocratic officials, which makes East African officials more dependent on the advice of "experts". The only pity is that there are too few practical experts like Morse.

……

In Rhineland, Ernst was also listening to reports from professionals from the Ministry of Agriculture.

"By 1898, the country's cultivated land area had reached nearly billion mu, second only to Tsarist Russia and the United States in the world. In the past eight years, the newly added cultivated land was mainly in the central and western regions, as well as the southeastern region."

"As the cultivated land increased, the number of farmland water conservancy facilities also increased significantly. More than four million black workers participated in agricultural production activities, and a large number of new water conservancy facilities and reservoirs were built. In the past five years alone, the number of newly built reservoirs reached more than 20,000, which greatly improved agricultural production efficiency."

As a country with a tropical savannah climate, rainfall distribution in most parts of East Africa is uneven, especially with large seasonal differences. The construction of water conservancy facilities has greatly improved the agricultural production efficiency in East Africa.

In the absence of water conservancy facilities, land in most parts of East Africa could only be cultivated once a year. However, after the construction of new reservoirs and other water conservancy facilities, water sources were guaranteed and many parts of East Africa were able to produce two crops a year, and in a few areas even three crops a year.

This means that East Africa can double its grain output without increasing the arable land area, which shows the outstanding achievements of agricultural water conservancy construction in East Africa.

"And in the 1898s, our most important technological advance was the development and popularization of large vehicles and agricultural machinery. In , the number of tractors in the country reached more than , with the highest penetration rate in the Great Lakes and Central regions."

East Africa's tractor production technology is relatively complete. At the same time, as a key scientific and technological project in East Africa, it mainly gives priority to meeting domestic demand. Currently, East Africa is also the country with the largest number of automobiles, tractors and other internal combustion engine vehicles in the world.

The secret of East Africa's advantage in production of agricultural machinery such as automobiles and tractors is assembly line production. Of course, on this basis, Ernst also proposed the concept of a full industrial chain.

This has enabled East African factories to have clear division of labor and cooperative development, which has played a huge role in East Africa's industrial capacity. Take the automobile assembly plant in New Frankfurt as an example. Many of its internal parts are not produced by the factory itself, but are provided by other factories.

Of course, the overall management and establishment of uniform standards by the East African government have greatly improved the reliability of components.

These factories are basically located in the central inland area for the sake of confidentiality, while the coastal areas adopt European and American standards, so that the automobile production plants in Dar es Salaam and Mombasa still use the traditional manual assembly model, which is extremely inefficient.

Of course, East African assembly line models will also be exported in conjunction with cars produced in these manual factories. The former are generally high-end models, while the latter are low-end models.

After all, assembly line models produce more parts, have more uniform quality, and are easier to maintain and repair, so they are portrayed as "high-end products."

However, in addition to industry, the main sources of income for the two places also come from commerce and services, which are not available in inland cities in East Africa.

"The past 30 years have also been a period of great development of my country's forestry resources. The continuous expansion of the territory has enabled us to obtain more forest area, especially the almost inexhaustible forestry resources in the Congo Basin. As for artificial forests, rubber forests are still the main ones."

Before East Africa, the African continent had not been effectively developed for a long time, so a large amount of forestry resources had accumulated, including a large number of virgin forests in the arid Southwest Africa and Somalia. Therefore, at the current stage, the area of ​​deforestation in East Africa is far greater than the area of ​​planting. And this situation will continue, and the area of ​​urban and cultivated land is still on an upward trend, so the plunder of forests will also be a long-term process.

"The livestock industry in East Africa is developing rapidly, especially in high-quality pastures in South Africa and Southwest Africa. The main economy of Southwest Africa is livestock industry. At the same time, the development of livestock industry in the western region has also brought us into a certain competitive relationship with Argentine agriculture."

Argentina is a major animal husbandry country, and in the 19th century it could even be said to be a powerful animal husbandry country. Although Southwest Africa is arid, this also means that there are large amounts of grasslands there. Coupled with the vast land and sparse population, it is naturally conducive to the development of large ranches. At the same time, with the construction of the Walvis Bay Railway and the Port of Alexandria, a channel for Southwest Africa's agricultural and animal husbandry products to go to the sea has been provided.

The main target of the livestock market is naturally European countries, which has lowered the international beef price to a certain extent. Of course, the development of livestock industry in Southwest Africa started late, so its current influence is relatively weak.

"As for fishery resources, they are also in a stage of rapid development, especially the existence of the west coast fishing grounds, which has given East Africa a stable source of marine fishery resources. In the past eight years, East Africa's marine fishing industry has quadrupled. With the development of ships, railways and refrigeration technology, it has not only provided a new source of meat for domestic residents, but also brought huge profits through exports to Europe and the United States."

The west coast fishery of East Africa is the fifth largest fishery in the world, and it is also the only one of the world's five largest fisheries that has not been developed on a large scale.

At the same time, on the east coast of East Africa, due to the existence of the Somali Current, seasonal fishing grounds will be formed. East Africa is not a politically unstable country like Somalia in the past, so East Africa basically firmly grasps the resource development rights of the fishing grounds along the coast of Somalia.

In the past, due to civil war in Somalia, the government and local warlords were corrupt and incompetent and were unable to effectively manage the coast of Somalia, so the entire coast of Somalia became a paradise for foreign fishing boats.

The small sampans of Somali fishermen are naturally no match for the advanced and professional foreign fishing boats, so foreign fishing boats have engaged in extensive fishing along the coast of Somalia, causing the depletion of local fishery resources and the fishermen to lose their source of income, thus giving rise to the profession of "pirate" in Somalia.

The original small fishing boats were indeed not capable of fishing, but after being equipped with engines, they could cross the class barrier by robbing passing merchant ships, so the Somali pirate problem is also a kind of cause and effect cycle.

Of course, although the fishing grounds along the coast of Somalia are rich in resources, they cannot be compared with the fishing grounds on the west coast. Although East Africa has obtained the west coast for a short time, judging from the time when the East African government strongly supported the development of the marine fishing industry, the two were carried out almost at the same time, so the growth rate of the marine fishing industry on the west coast far exceeds that of the east coast.

"The above is basically the basic development situation of my country's four major industries of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery. Generally speaking, East African agriculture is in a period of rapid and stable development."

"The driving force behind this rapid development is mainly the government policy push, the increase in the national population, the development of the transportation industry, etc."

In terms of policy, the whole country is working as one, and the role of the East African government cannot be ignored. Population growth is the driving force behind agricultural investment and expansion in East Africa. The development of the transportation industry is also extremely important, especially for the development and utilization of fishery resources.

If the transportation conditions in the west are not in place, it will be impossible for East Africa to vigorously develop the western marine fishing industry unless the products are processed into long-lasting canned goods or semi-finished products in nearby west coast cities and factories.

The application of refrigeration technology on railways has made it possible to eat relatively fresh seafood products in inland East Africa, which has expanded the market scope of the marine fishing industry.

In fact, it was only after the East African railway network was basically formed that the East African marine fishing industry entered a stage of rapid development.

(End of this chapter)