Mage? Spell Engineer!.

Chapter 491 Summer Harvest of Ten Thousand Seeds

Collecting grain is always a big problem. From the farmer's perspective, he works hard to sow seeds, weed and fertilize the wheat, and sees the wheat sprout and ear, becoming fuller and more golden.

Finally, they painstakingly cut and separated the wheat stalks from the fruits.

This also means that food will be separated from the cultivators. The owners of the land, the farmers' creditors and their lackeys will jump out of the big houses and castles, take the big share, leaving the farmer's family with pitiful surplus food and the uncomfortable feeling of being half-hungry.

Fortunately, the style of the newly reclaimed land is different. At least from sowing to harvesting, there are mechanical structures that look scary but work very quickly to help, especially the combine harvester, a big steel spider with a rolling sickle. After harvesting, the harvest is immediately concentrated by the transmission belt to the destemming machine on its back, and then pulled from the "spider's butt" to the small follower dump truck behind.

Of course, after the harvest, it could not be handed over directly to the farmers. Instead, people from the Zwillinger Agricultural and Commercial Cooperative recorded the rough yield on the spot and then transported it to the steam-powered mill.

There is a "pain-relieving patch" to soothe the pain of losing food, called a land deed.

"Is this really mine?" The farmer from Valois, now a plowman on newly reclaimed land, received the land deed and put the thick piece of paper into his palm, full of disbelief.

"Check again? Joem, plots 337-339 in the South Kempson area, a total of fifteen acres for all households."

"Yes, yes, yes, fifteen acres, not a penny less." The farmer felt relieved immediately. He couldn't believe that he got the land that belonged to him in a foreign country in just half a year.

No, in Valois, he was just a tenant farmer. When the noble lord was in power, he farmed for him and paid as much as he planted, and the lord gave him some rewards to prevent his family from starving to death. But some commissioner drove the noble lord away, and came with a musket and a guillotine to demand that he continue to pay the surplus grain.

Then the Imperials came again, and the commissioner ran back to the city in fear. Joem gritted his teeth and made the most important decision in his life: to run away with his family, the farther the better.

Although he almost died on the road, at least now he has achieved his goal and realized something he could not even dream of when he was living in the straw hut.

He could not recognize the full word "15 acres". He just held the deed tightly and turned to leave: "Hey! 15 acres!" He had an urge to shout all the way from the mill to his new home: "I have land!"

"Hey, hey, hey, wait a minute, don't leave in such a hurry." The staff quickly stopped the overly excited man and said, "This is the remaining food from your family. It's all yours. You can take it away with the ticket, or you can sell some of it at the next window for cash."

Joem represents the general situation of Kempson immigrants. Originally, one laborer could take care of five acres at most, with the assistance of machinery, and they were not required to be responsible for water conservancy. This year, two laborers in a household can take care of thirty to forty acres. When he first arrived and had no harvest, he still had enough energy to do odd jobs to make a living.

He, his wife and one child each, with the addition of fertilizers, the harvest from three acres can support a year's food rations, special zone taxes, land redemption and construction body hire money, seeds and fertilizers. Together, they account for nearly 70%.

The proportion was very high, but for their family, they would rather hand over 70% of the 15 acres than be a tenant farmer for the master, working hard to manage the five or six acres of land for a year, and then living a half-hungry life after half of the land was taken away.

And the land is still his! Hey! Thinking of this, Qiaom also thought that he could continue to do odd jobs during the slack season, that is to say. He took out some of his share of the money and exchanged it for cash, bought a headscarf for his wife, and a can of expensive canned fruit for his children, and finally. The last bit of money was carefully wrapped and put into his inner pocket, and he got on the cart to pull the rough flour and hummed a song to go home. On the bumpy road, the wheat flour stuck to the sack at the mill rose up and turned into flying ash in the sun. Qiaom really wanted to try to take a sip, as if he could taste its sweetness.

For the new farmers whose crops were harvested smoothly and whose lands were landed and whose crops were harvested successfully, Jom was overjoyed to receive his land and surplus grain. However, some were not so lucky.

Luo Xia sat on the construct, walking along the ridge of the field while listening to the report of the agricultural and commercial cooperative employees. According to preliminary statistics, about 30% of the new immigrants were unable to make ends meet for various reasons and could not meet the production requirements for redeeming the land.

Some of them applied fertilizer improperly, some were unlucky and did not get good land, or some had health problems and were unable to farm.
And two kinds of people who abandon their land:

One type is those who find that working is more profitable than farming. Why bother to work the land and carry buckets into the factory?

Others are former city residents or even old Kempson city folk who feel that the SAR policy is to give away land, claim it speculatively, and not cultivate it honestly.

Originally, the speculators planned to hire people to farm for them, but because the SAR did not impose any identity restrictions on claiming newly reclaimed land, after understanding the policy, the hired farmers all contracted the land and worked on their own, leaving the "small bosses" dumbfounded and unable to find professional players.

"How should we deal with the above situation?" According to the internal data of the agricultural and commercial cooperative, grain production has increased unprecedentedly this year, but at the same time, "Zwillinger" itself has suffered staggering losses, because in fact, the construction of water conservancy projects, leasing and selling agricultural machinery, and selling seeds and fertilizers, each item either has no money calculated or is sold at "super low prices."

The Special District was frightened by the economic accounts, thinking that this was not land repair, but digging a financial hole. But Rorschach insisted that the magic industry subsidize agriculture: "You only know how to count money, money, money, and don't you see how many non-agricultural population we have now? No one is farming, what will we eat?
"Nowadays, factories often have tens of thousands of people gathered together. Who can feed us except for us subsidizing farmers to continue planting? If we rely solely on imports, then a small loss will turn into a big loss sooner or later!"

Now Luo Xia's attitude has not changed. The land cannot be left idle and can only be reclaimed. Waste is not allowed: "For those who fail to meet the standards, we need to look at each case individually. If it is not their fault, we will allow them to apply for an extension for one season and get their own food back. After planting winter wheat this year, they can still get the land after paying off their debts next year. We must explain this clearly to them.

“As for speculators, they should give up when faced with difficulties. If they have their own income, they can take back the land and use the crops to offset the cost of machinery, fertilizers and seeds. If it is not enough, they will have to ask them to pay.

"It would be best if all abandoned and reclaimed plots of land could be exchanged and brought together. Good land could be exchanged for poor land in the hands of farmers." Rorschach recalled the current scope of work of United Agricultural Machinery and gave an estimate:
"It would be best to organize a collective production farm with about 500 households as a unit, and hire those farmers who didn't get the land and train them as employees. Each member of the farm will get 40% of the shares, and they are not allowed to resell them. For the remaining 60%, half of the shares will be subscribed by the agricultural and commercial cooperatives or steel mills, and the other half will be put on the market. Don't those city dwellers have spare money and like to invest? Let them return the money to the agricultural and commercial cooperatives.

"Collective farms should be well managed, water conservancy should be planned well, fertilizers should be supplied first, and when there is a shortage of manpower, we should apply to the special zone for the transfer of machinery. The most important thing is to keep up with the training of the people who operate them. We should compete with farms and small farmers and set an example. The new round of reclamation will also be done by collective farms and adoption.

"We also need to provide more support to cooperatives. In short, whether in industry or agriculture, the more they work together to produce, the more they have division of labor and cooperation, the more we should support them."

As for the small farmers who have obtained land now, they can either continue to accumulate land, gradually becoming wealthy from small to medium-sized to become local tycoons, or lose their land due to natural disasters, man-made disasters, and market fluctuations.

Rorschach chose to resolutely suppress the first situation, and at the same time avoid the second situation which would cause them to become tenant farmers from small farmers. Instead, they were protected by cooperatives and collective farms, and became agricultural workers or were guided into factories.

(End of this chapter)