Rebirth of Zhu Di's son

Chapter 415 Si Nong Terrace

From the eighth year of Qianxi onwards, small and medium-sized landowners who owned a large amount of land in the countryside also devoted themselves to the Ming Dynasty's infrastructure construction under the general trend.

They gradually no longer engaged in farmland management, but leased the land to the agricultural office, which hired farmers to manage it.

The Si Nong Suo, that is, the grassroots agricultural official office led by agricultural imperial examination people, like the workers' guild, was the product of Zhu Gaoxu's deliberate layout in order to fight against the giant business class.

Since the eighth year of Emperor Qianxi's reign, as the scale of agricultural production in the Ming Dynasty has continued to expand, more and more agricultural examiners have taken root in villages and towns and served as grassroots agricultural officials. Competition in agricultural product trade has also become increasingly fierce. Some mutual aid and cooperative organizations in rural areas have It was born under the guidance of Zhu Gaoxu.

The first rural grassroots agricultural cooperation and mutual aid organization, namely the Si Nong Office, was established in the countryside, led by the Agricultural Examination Personnel, and then the Si Nong Bureau offices were gradually established in various counties, prefectures, and provinces.

In the end, the Ministry of Rites established the Ming Dynasty Sinong Station under Zhu Gaoxu's imperial decree, which was specifically responsible for managing the Sinong Bureau of all provinces in the world.

Local agricultural institutes were voluntarily participated by farmers, and the highest power of the institute was in the hands of deacons headed by agricultural science scholars.

The chief officials of the local agricultural bureaus at all levels are recommended from the local agricultural examination candidates and appointed by the superior bureau's office. The organization and leadership of the superior agricultural bureau are promoted by the lower-level agricultural officers, or by the chief officials of the lower-level organizations. The official serves temporarily.

The members of the township agricultural office are farmers, and the chief officer is an agricultural examiner. This not only ensures the direct connection between the agricultural office and the interests of farmers, and the farmers' direct supervision of agricultural officers, but also helps reflect and represent the interests of different regions. Different aspects of farmers’ interests and demands play a role in stabilizing rural farmers’ cultivation of crops.

The specific affairs of the Sinong Institute are discussed and decided by several deacons in the institute, which are composed of several local agricultural examiners and several well-known local old farmers.

Usually, there are several professional consulting rooms under the deacon, which are the daily offices under the Department of Agriculture and are usually held concurrently by the agricultural examiners.

The purpose of setting up several professional consulting rooms is to meet the needs of producers of different types of agricultural products, and to coordinate the interests of different parties as much as possible to achieve the integration of interests within the Sinong Institute.

For example, integrating farmers engaged in various agricultural industries such as animal husbandry, breeding, fishery, and fruit industries can not only achieve internal communication among different agricultural industries, but also unify pricing to ensure that interests are not damaged.

In order to coordinate the interests of farmers in different industries and form unified ideas and policies of Sinongtai, the Ministry of Rites of Ming Dynasty set up the Mingnong Deacon Committee in Sinongtai.

The Minnong Deacon Council is composed of consulting deacons from various professions and is responsible for coordinating the opinions of different professional deacon councils and the interests of farmers in different industries.

After reaching a unanimous resolution, the Ming Nong deacons meeting submitted it to the Ming Sinong Taiwan deacons for discussion and making the final decision.

The main sources of funding for the various levels of the Ming Dynasty's agriculture and agriculture bureaus were membership dues, service fees and donations, and some were also funded by the government.

The standard for collecting membership fees is determined by the deacon meeting and varies from high to low.

Generally speaking, the membership fees of plantation industry guilds are relatively low, while the membership fees of trading industry guilds are relatively high. Some guilds charge based on membership categories.

The membership dues of the grassroots agricultural offices come from the members, and the membership dues of the higher-level agricultural bureaus come from the lower-level agricultural bureaus.

This feature determines that the organization does not rely on local governments and has strong autonomy.

In addition to the lower-level Sinong Bureaus, the national and provincial Sinong Bureaus also include some trading firms. The trading firms in some provincial Sinong Bureaus provide more than half of the activity funds for the Sinong Bureaus, and the Sinong Bureaus also serve as Shareholders participate in the operation of the firm.

For example, Heshengyuan (sales of rice), Qizhentang (sales of furniture), and Yurunzhai (sales of pearls) affiliated to the Jiangdong Provincial Sinong Bureau have their own independent financial policies and operational autonomy, but they must respect the Jiangdong Provincial Secretary-General The general policy of the Agricultural Bureau.

In the tenth year of Qianxi's reign, the Ministry of Rites formulated and promulgated the "Concise Regulations of the Sinong Institute":
"The establishment of the Agriculture Department is actually the hub for organizing agriculture. To sum up, there are about three main points: opening up knowledge, improving cultivation, and uniting society. There are also three benefits to it. One is to persuade the leader, and to use wisdom to achieve success. In the process of revitalizing the industry, the gradual spread of education has begun; the second is to study new laws, improve daily affairs, study the subtleties of grassroots people, and learn the actual effects of Jin Rang; the third is to unite as one, work together for the common good, and make progress, Work together as a group to make plans without boundaries. For all matters related to sericulture, textiles, forests, animal husbandry, aquatic products, and fisheries, we must take into account local conditions and set up agricultural offices one by one."

Soon after, Zhu Gaoxu issued another edict, which further clarified the application procedures and activity specifications of craftsmen's guilds, merchants' guilds and other private guilds in the form of laws, as well as detailed rules for binding supervision and management.

The imperial court's support and encouragement to the Sinong Institute was mainly reflected in the fact that it did not restrict the formation of guilds by the common people. Only when these guilds violated legal provisions would they be dealt with in accordance with the law.

In addition, the imperial court also provided legal protection and necessary facilities for the activities of guilds, and provided preferential tax reduction or exemption policies according to time and place.

Some local governments even allocate a certain amount of funds from their fiscal funds every year to support the activities of local agricultural offices. Of course, the purpose of this is to achieve political achievements in local agricultural construction.

By the 16th year of Qianxi's reign, 26 provincial-level agriculture bureaus and 790 eight prefecture- and county-level agriculture bureaus had been established throughout the Ming Dynasty.

By the 30th year of Qianxi's reign, all provinces in the Ming Dynasty had established provincial-level agricultural bureaus, and more than [-]% of prefectures and counties had established corresponding provincial-level and county-level agricultural bureaus. The same was true for township agricultural offices.At first, the influence of the Si Nong Institute was very limited. In the eyes of local officials and gentry, it was nothing more than a spokesperson for ordinary farmers and a means of restricting local officials.

As time goes by, the so-called head of the agricultural office will collude with the dirty local officials, local tyrants and evil gentry, and become an official who rides on the heads of ordinary farmers and dominates them.

However, facts have proven that except for a few people with bad intentions who tried to enter the officialdom from the agricultural examination candidates, the vast majority of the other agricultural examination candidates really wanted to make achievements in agriculture.

On the one hand, they were disciples of the Emperor, and most of them were born after the 17th year of Yongle.

These people grew up listening to the legendary stories of Prince Zhu Gaoxu, and when they grew up, they studied in the Changke Academy funded and built by Emperor Qianxi Zhu Gaoxu.

If there is a god in this world, then to them, Zhu Gaoxu is the only god in this world.

On the other hand, except for a few outstanding agricultural examination candidates who can pass the Jinshi examination and stay in the Hanlin Academy for further study, the rest have to start from the grassroots level.

After the implementation of the Qianxi New Deal, every township in the Ming Dynasty will have at least three agricultural officials. There are more than 900 township-level administrative districts in the Ming Dynasty, which theoretically requires more than 11 agricultural examination candidates.

However, every year in the Ming Dynasty, the total number of agricultural science candidates trained by the provincial academies in the country was only a few thousand, sometimes less than a thousand.

From the reform of the imperial examination in the first year of Yongle to the 30th year of Qianxi, it took the Ming Dynasty 55 years to cultivate more than 5000 agricultural examination candidates and more than [-] agricultural examination scholars.

Therefore, by the 31st year of Qianxi's reign, more than 4000 towns and villages throughout the Ming Dynasty still lacked agricultural officials.

Without candidates for the agricultural examination, it would naturally be impossible to establish a agricultural institute.

Fortunately, many agricultural examinees who have taken root at the grassroots level have made great contributions to agriculture and have received awards from the court, such as silver rewards, promotions, and titles. Zhu Gaoxu even issued an edict promising to confer the title of local magistrate upon the death of some outstanding performers. The god of the earth or the local city god.

This led more and more young scholars to study agriculture, contributing to the Ming Dynasty's agricultural technological revolution.

In order to prevent the Sinong Institute from being infiltrated by businessmen and eventually becoming a subordinate of the merchant class, Zhu Gaoxu had very strict control over the Sinong Institute in various places.

He tacitly allowed the agricultural examiners to serve as the heads of the guilds as one of his means to control the Sinong Institute. The second method was to send people to randomly visit the Sinong Institute in a certain area. However, he allowed the Sinong Institute to establish subordinate firms to make money but Preventing private firms from controlling the Sinong Institute is the third method.

If the Sinong Bureau of a certain provincial prefecture and county cannot play the role it should play, he will not hesitate to have the person in charge of the guild step down.

In addition to Zhu Gaoxu's intention to use the Sinong Institute to balance the emerging wealthy business class, the original purpose of his order to allow the private sector to establish the Sinong Institute was to play two major roles.

The first is to safeguard the rights and interests of members and carry out industry self-discipline.

For example, it provides relevant policy, legal consultation and economic and technical assistance to members, invites relevant officials to participate in the activities of the Agricultural Institute, and explains and answers policies, laws and questions that farmers are concerned about.

Another example is coordinating product prices in the industry domestically, strengthening supervision of product quality, and protecting the reasonable prices and market shares of Ming Dynasty's local agricultural products in the markets of overseas vassal states and trading countries.

The second is to provide support to the court and local governments in terms of decision-making consultation, policy publicity, policy implementation, and conflict resolution.

Agricultural offices at all levels must communicate and communicate with relevant government officials at all levels on a long-term basis to provide suggestions for the development and prosperity of agriculture.

In particular, it is necessary to curb local government's blind commercial development that encroaches on cultivated land, destroys canals, ponds and other behaviors that harm the interests of farmers.

According to Zhu Gaoxu's plan, under the squeeze and attack of the giant business class, the agricultural offices and craftsmen's guilds must cooperate with the local government, support each other, and cooperate closely with the government if they want to avoid being swallowed up by the other side.

Because of this, the Ming Dynasty is now facing the torment of snow disasters in the constant cold climate, so Zhu Gaoxu and his son dare to implement work-for-relief with confidence.

After all, under the snowstorm, food production was reduced and numerous livestock were killed or injured. The most severely damaged and pitiful people were farmers everywhere.

The local Agricultural Office is a non-governmental organization that seeks for the interests of farmers. It has its own supervision of local yamen. Anyone who dares to take advantage of the work-for-relief period and embezzle the funds earmarked for repairing bridges and paving roads will inevitably arouse public dissatisfaction and eventually fall into the hands of the emperor. Decide to cut off the city's outcome.

(End of this chapter)