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Chapter 624: African Agricultural Industrialization (Second update, please subscribe)
Import one to two hundred million tons of grain!
It’s not surprising, after all, with economic development, people’s living standards and consumption levels are also improving.

In another time and space, Tangshan and Japan needed to import more than 100 million tons of grain every year. One ranks first in the world in terms of import volume, and the other ranks second in the world in terms of import volume.

And the common feature is that they all want to eat meat...

Ok!

When it comes to the freedom to eat meat, no one is optimistic.

"It is indeed a bit conservative, but what is certain is that, Your Excellency, if this problem is not solved in advance, it will definitely become a major problem restricting the economic development of Nanyang in the future."

Li Jiebai looked at Your Excellency and said.

"So, we should start addressing this immediately."

The reason why he rushed here in a hurry was because this matter was urgent. After all, he started to do this matter from the beginning to reap the rewards. It takes a long time.

If the harvest is finally achieved, it may be five or six years later, or even ten years later, so every day is very stressful now.

Nodding slightly, Li Yian took the report in front of him, looked at it again, then looked at Li Jiebai and said:
"Tell me, do you have any ideas?"

"Your Excellency, due to the high temperature and rainy climate restrictions in Nanyang, it is difficult for us to solve the problem of growing corn and soybeans through independent cultivation. If we import..."

Li Jiebai said in a slow voice,
"We may be able to solve the problem through foreign trade, and it will also help balance trade imports and exports, but the annual expenditure of tens of billions of dollars is not only an economic burden for Nanyang, it is also related to Nanyang's Food supply security, this is also the food security issue that you have always emphasized!”

Food security issue!

Glancing at Li Jiebai, Li Yian nodded. He had indeed emphasized food security many times. Before the mechanized planting technology of rice was solved, the mass planting of cassava in Nanyang was essentially for food security. As for export, it was just a matter of convenience.

Clearing her throat, Li Jiebai said:

"Your Excellency, although we never know what will happen in the future, for a country, if it cannot ensure its own food security, then if an accident occurs, the results will be catastrophic."

Regarding this result, Li Yian is naturally very clear. The empty shelves in Soviet Russia in the late 1980s are the most typical result-because of the drop in oil prices, it did not have enough foreign exchange to solve the food problem, because the import of corn is related to the people's meat consumption. problem, and in order to raise foreign exchange, it had to reduce expenditures in other areas, which further worsened the supply of consumer goods.

The acuteness of the problems caused by the shortage of consumer goods has transformed from a common shortage into a real food supply crisis. The Soviet Union's inability to ensure the fulfillment of its resource allocation responsibilities caused people to lose trust in society and led to its collapse...

In this way, food tripped up Soviet Russia, or in other words, people's need to eat meat tripped up that huge empire.

Will the same problem trip up Nanyang?

This question cannot be ignored.

"So what do we do?"

"colony!"

Li Jiebai said directly. "We need big colonies!"

"colony?"

Li Yian's brows jumped. He did not say that the colonial era was over. After all, there were many forms of colonies, and it did not necessarily require direct occupation to be called a colony.

So he followed Li Jiebai's words and said.

"You mean food growing in the colonies?"

"Yes, Your Excellency,"

Li Jiebai stood up, walked around the desk and walked to the wall with the world map on the side, and said.

"Because we are a member of the Commonwealth, we can completely take advantage of the advantages of being a member of the Commonwealth to carry out agricultural investment and development in the British colonies. Although the British Empire is declining, it still has vast African colonies. Among those colonies, there are many places No large-scale development has been carried out. From an agricultural perspective, only the Rhodesia region has carried out agricultural development. "

The UK’s development of African agriculture is almost non-existent. This is not to say that the UK is unaware of Africa’s potential, but because compared to Africa, the UK has agricultural and animal husbandry products provided by Canada, Australia and New Zealand. , and compared with India’s mature agricultural supply chain, there is no need for the UK to waste time and effort in developing agriculture in Africa. So until the independence of the African colonies, Africa still maintained its original style.

As for Rhodesia, there is an alternative - at the end of the 19th century, when Cecil Rhodes, the founder of Desby, launched a large-scale march into the hinterland of Africa, his mercenaries conquered the vast hinterland of Africa. Rhodesia is named after it. After completing the conquest, mercenaries and South African police obtained large areas of land in Rhodesia, so they established large farms there, making Rhodesia a very rare place in Africa. A big granary. As for the African Spring region, although there are white farms, the scale is far from comparable to Rhodesia.

“Take eastern Africa as an example. The land there is extremely vast, but 80% of the land has not been developed. Although the white people increased their agricultural development efforts in Africa after the war, development efforts were very limited due to funding and official indifference. "

It’s just limited. Until a few decades later, Africa was still a wild land, and the vast majority of Africans lived an unchanging primitive life. There were even frequent famines.

"The climate conditions in eastern Africa are very suitable for growing corn, wheat and soybeans. Although there is a dry season, if there are good irrigation facilities, two crops a year is not a problem, and corn and soybeans have mature mechanical planting and harvesting equipment. Even if The machinery and equipment are mature, and there is sufficient local labor available in the area. Those black people are hardworking and docile, and are extremely suitable labor targets..."

When Li Jiebai mentioned that black people are hard-working and docile, Li Yian simply didn’t know how to describe his feelings, because this was completely opposite to his impression of black people in another world. In fact, the image of black people in this era is really not bad.

In the southern United States, they picked cotton diligently, and in Africa they served their masters docilely. It can be said that under the training of white people, black people today are definitely a symbol of hard work and docility.

What caused their personalities to undergo earth-shaking changes decades later?
Of course, Li Yian doesn't care whether they are really hardworking or fake docile. After all, those people are dispensable.

On the contrary, it was Li Jiebai's suggestion that made him see another opportunity - the opportunity to enter Africa!

Although Li Yian was ambitious for Africa before this, even with "Hydra", to a certain extent, it was for the future layout in Africa, but he has always been limited to ambition. After all, ambition often requires strength and cooperation. Although Li Yi'an intends to get involved in Africa, it does not mean that he will fight for Africa with the United States and the Soviet Union at any cost. During the Cold War, due to the needs of the Cold War, the United States, the Soviet Union and other countries wielded money and weapons to fight for independent African countries. They spent a lot of money. What do you get for that huge amount of money?
Got nothing!

Compared with countries such as the United States and the Soviet Union, Li Yi'an's idea is very simple - profit, which is to take advantage of the wave of African independence and obtain corresponding benefits through local investment and development of mineral resources.

However, there are two prerequisites for such development. One is the industrial scale of Nanyang. Only if the industrial scale is large enough can it absorb Africa's mineral resources. The other prerequisite is that it has no certain influence on the local area and has no certain influence. How is it possible to invest in mineral resources on a large scale?
For now, these two points are not possessed by Nanyang. First, considering the current industrial scale of Nanyang, there is no need for mineral resources from Africa. After all, it takes a lot of money to develop the mineral resources there. , compared to investing a lot of financial resources in Africa's mineral resources, a simpler way is to solve the demand for mineral resources through international trade. Second, Nanyang has zero political influence in the local area. Under such circumstances, investing in Africa... is naturally something that can only be considered.

Now, Li Jiebai's suggestion points to another direction - the agriculturalization of Africa!
Agriculturalization in Africa is certainly not for the development of agriculture in Africa, nor is it for improving the lives of local people. In fact, it is not the agriculturalization of Africa, but the transformation of Africa into Southeast Asian farms!

(End of this chapter)