Yuan Shao, the father of Fanghua in the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 446

Yuan Xi sat on the horse, looked at a locust in his palm and remained silent.

At the end of the Han Dynasty, locust plagues often occurred, causing the world to suffer from it, the grain harvest dropped sharply, and local production was seriously damaged.

Last year in front of Yuan Shao, Yuan Xi accurately predicted the locust plague in Jizhou, and with Tian Feng's assistance, minimized the damage of the locust plague, thereby preserving the vitality of Jizhou, and became the confidence and capital for Jizhou to launch troops against Gongsun Zan.

Although the plague of locusts in Jizhou has been extinguished, it is impossible to completely eradicate it. If the loss can be reduced by half, it is tantamount to a great success.

The remaining locusts are ready to move again this year. Although Jizhou has taken some measures in advance, the remaining locust eggs from the previous year still fly to the four directions after hatching, which is hard to guard against.

This naturally includes the direction of Youzhou. Yuan Xi has entered the territory of Youzhou now, but he has found many locusts along the way, which makes him quite worried.

Youzhou has built water conservancy projects in the past two years, and the grain harvest has been bumper. As a side effect, the locust-infested area began to move northward.

Locusts are most common in the lower reaches of the Yellow River, especially in Jizhou, Yanzhou, Yuzhou, and Qingzhou provinces, and gradually decrease in the south of central China, and there are basically no locusts in the southeast coast.

From 700 BC to 1900 AD, during the 2600 years, there were 508 locust plagues recorded in history books, including 436 in the Yellow River Basin, 69 in the Yangtze River Basin, and 3 in Southwest China.

The places where locusts lay eggs are mostly low-lying ponds and places where aquatic plants grow. Unless the grass is mowed and drained, it is extremely difficult to control.

Unlike Youzhou thousands of years later, the Youzhou area in this world is extremely rich in water systems, and most of the terrain is swampy wetlands. Although it will be a good farmland after the water is drained, this process, even if it is artificially accelerated, may take a long time. For decades or decades.

Before this, to open up wasteland, one could only rely on farming in the wetlands and swamps. Invisibly, a breeding ground for locust plagues was formed.

This and Youzhou open up wasteland, vigorously develop water conservancy, and grow food are accompanied by each other. Without food, there will be no locust plague.

But people can’t starve to death. If they want to increase food production, they must face the plight of frequent locust plagues.

There are many methods, including timely discovery of locust breeding sites, driving out newborn gnats for burial, searching for egg-laying sites to turn over the soil, and capturing adults, etc.

These measures are already quite well known, and even without the knowledge of Yuan Xi's later generations, they are recorded in detail in this agricultural book.

It is often human factors that hinder the control of locusts. For example, Dong Zhongshu's theory of induction between heaven and man is a great obstacle to the control of locusts.

It believes that heaven is the king of all gods, and the son of heaven is ordered by heaven to own the world. From this, the "Bianfu theory" came into being. It believes that all disasters in heaven are the will of heaven. Change complex.

Under the advocacy of this theory, it is generally accepted that the ultimate means of controlling locusts is sacrifice.

This kind of thinking is reflected in Bai Juyi's poem on catching locusts, "How beneficial is it to catch locusts? It will only make the hungry people work hard. Although one insect dies, a hundred insects come, how can manpower determine natural disasters."

In particular, it is believed that man-made locust catching cannot overcome natural disasters, and the source of the cure depends on the emperor swallowing locusts for sacrifice, so as to appease the wrath of heaven.

Under the advocacy of this kind of thinking, the method adopted during the locust plague at the end of the Han Dynasty was that the emperor blamed himself, and then waited for the locust plague to disappear.

From the perspective of future generations, of course, this will not have any effect, so the plague of locusts becomes more and more severe day by day.

However, the locust control situation that Yuan Xi is now facing has actually improved. This is not only due to the waste of production caused by the military disaster, but also due to the weakening of imperial power.

The Han Dynasty lost its morality. After the Yellow Turban Uprising, the emperor could not deter the world. The prestige established by the Han Dynasty for 400 years almost collapsed. The method is hands-on management.

This matter has two sides, just like the previous comparison between the locust plague and grain cultivation, it is very ironic, but the good thing is that now Yuan Xi can minimize the negative impact of the theory of interaction between heaven and man, and mobilize the people of Youzhou to control the locusts.

He took the locusts to Guo Jia and discussed with him how to prevent the locust plague. Guo Jia listened and gave some suggestions.

After finishing speaking, the two realized that now Yuan Xi had more than one counselor under him. In Youzhou alone, there were Jushou Chen Gui and others. This kind of matter was originally responsible for Chen Gui, and it no longer belonged to Guo. Jia managed it.

Yuan Xi couldn't help laughing and said: "It's my fault. In the past two years, I relied on my husband for everything. Now that there are suddenly more people, I am not used to it. I always subconsciously come to my husband for advice."

Guo Jia said with a smile: "I am the same. Speaking of people's habits, they can indeed affect people's actions. Fortunately, it is not on the battlefield."

The two looked at each other and laughed.

After Yuan Xi got on the horse, Lu Lingqi leaned over, holding a locust in her hand, and said: "When I was young, locust plagues broke out in Wuyuan of Bingzhou, it was really overwhelming."

"Later, all the food was eaten up, so I had to eat locusts to satisfy my hunger. I was also forced to eat a few times."

Yuan Xi said in surprise: "When the locusts gather too much, they will turn from green to yellow. At this time, they are poisonous. Did you eat them all right?"

Lu Lingqi scratched her head and said, "What else? Now that I think about it, I did have diarrhea several times, and some people died from it."

"But I'm going to starve to death. If I have a full meal, there will always be more chances to survive, right?"

Yuan Xi was silent, Lu Lingqi was right, just like what was said in the poem, famine still eats people, how could it not eat locusts?
Sometimes people are about to starve to death, and they will drink the poison even if they know it is poison.

For most people in this world, there are not many choices to survive.

Yuan Xi and Lu Lingqi rode side by side on horseback. Now the passage back to Beicheng has been leveled several times, and the road condition is much better than before.

In ancient paving, compared with its low production capacity, in fact, in some cases, trees were cut down, weeds were leveled, and a dirt road was made. If the road surface can be rammed, it will be very good.

As for the leveling of the roadbed, the road surface filled with some kind of compound soil, gravel or stone slabs on it cannot be generally used in big cities, let alone in the wild.

Therefore, the roads between various places rely on people and animals to walk a lot, and the road surface can be stepped on evenly. The top layers are mixed with livestock manure, which slowly piles up and becomes part of the road.

If there is a flood and heavy rain, this kind of loess road will be washed away and become potholed and muddy. At this time, driving will be extremely difficult.

In the past two years, Yuan Xi had also considered these problems when he mobilized the people to build roads. Although he did not have a solution, he faced the same problem in the end.

economic cost.

Repairing a road with better quality and adding hardened materials requires astronomical manpower and material resources for the small peasant economy, especially after this kind of road is repaired, it needs frequent maintenance!

The cost of road maintenance in later generations sometimes exceeds the cost of construction, not to mention in ancient times, people couldn't eat enough, where did they get the money to do this?

Therefore, in the construction of large-scale projects in ancient times, all large-scale labors were imposed, and countless civilians died to succeed, and the negative effects were great, which often led to social turmoil.

Yuan Xi considered cement, lime, and asphalt, but then gave up all of them. Especially asphalt, the problem of fuel for heating alone cannot be solved.

You know, Yuan Xi vigorously promoted drinking boiled water in Beixin City for three years, and distributed some firewood from time to time, but even so, more than half of the people were often short of firewood for cooking, let alone boiling water.

In an era when farming is not enough to eat enough, blindly engaging in laborious and labor-intensive projects is tantamount to death. All new technologies must not be separated from productivity, otherwise it can only be a fantasy.

This is the helplessness of the times. The productivity in ancient times was so low. The two major problems restricting development, food and energy, if there is not sufficient supply of these two, any other means are empty talk.

Yuan Xi sighed in his heart, in the world of great strife, if you don't hoard guns, you will be robbed and killed. It is just a beautiful vision to bury your head in farming.

Now the princes all over the world are resorting to war. Under such circumstances, Youzhou has a good environment. At least it is blocked by Jizhou in the south, which reduces a lot of worries.

But Yuan Xi also knew clearly that relying purely on farming could only maintain food and clothing. If he wanted to obtain more land and wealth, the most effective way out was to go to sea.

He has already thought up a blueprint in his mind, and the western part of Youzhou will enter a period of stable development in the next step, but the east and west of Youzhou are still a barren land, and there are many places to start.

The first is the establishment of ports, the development of shipping and fishing.

Youzhou has a very long coastline. From Yuyang to Youbeiping, and then to Liaodong in western Liaoning, Liaodong County, Lelang County, this series of coastal counties have extremely convenient port addresses.

Youzhou has well-developed salt and iron, lush trees, and has the conditions to develop the shipbuilding industry.

In the past few years, relying on the Zhen family's shipping business route, Youzhou has established many ports. As long as Yuan Xi finally occupies Liaodong Lelang, he can go south to the Koryo Peninsula, build a springboard, and shorten the nautical distance with the Wonu Islands.

Yuan Xi's ultimate goal is to completely digest and deal with these mustard ringworm diseases of later generations in this era of prosperous martial arts, and bring them into the Chinese territory.

Since these two places in later generations want to steal Chinese culture so much, it is better to turn them into the shape of Chinese culture now.

Of course, the Gongsundu family that now occupies the Liaodong Peninsula is not an easy generation, and its power is extremely stubborn. If you want to deal with it, you still have to come up with something that can tempt the other party.

Yuan Xi felt quite complicated when he thought that his future self would die at the hands of this family, but there is no enmity between the two sides in this life, and it would be great if they could resolve it peacefully.

After all, in Yuan Xi's view, Gongsun Du is a Chinese citizen after all, and no matter how the two sides fight, it is also an internal conflict.

Later Sima Yi killed the Gongsun family and moved the above people to the inland, Yuan Xi disagreed very much.

This move was tantamount to giving up the Goryeo Peninsula. As a result, Goguryeo, which had been suppressed by the Gongsun family, took advantage of the situation and occupied the territory that belonged to China.

Thinking of this, Yuan Xi sneered in his heart, it is impossible to give up, it is absolutely impossible to hand over these places to others.

Now that I have come to this era, there is absolutely no reason for China to cede land to the land. From now on, whether it is sea or land, China's road will only go outward!

(End of this chapter)