At the end of Qin, I became a son of the plane

Chapter 438: New Countryside and Cruel Industrialization

Wu Yue's words made the head of the village fall into deep thought. It was a big deal that the farmers came to Shangjun. Even the farmers in Baixuan knew that the head of the farmers' family was once the prime minister of the Han Dynasty, a high-ranking official that the county magistrate had to please.

But now such a high-ranking official said that he wanted to help poor people like him become rich. Although he did not want to make malicious speculations about others, he always felt that such a good thing would not happen to them.

Wu Yue said: "We farmers provide the technology and poultry seedlings, and you provide the land and manpower. The poultry we raise will be shared equally between our two families. You don't have to pay for it, and the poultry is still on your land, so you won't suffer any loss."

Bai Xuan said: "Then it's settled."

Wu Yue visited the village several times and established initial trust with the villagers. The village head also believed that Wu Yue was an honest person and would not deceive them.

After dinner, the farmers got on the carriage and started back to the county town.

Jia Yi, a farmer's scholar, said, "Teacher, didn't I say I was going to teach these farmers skills? Why did you start eating and drinking?"

Wu Yue smiled and said, "We need to build trust with the farmers first. The development of Guanzhong has surprised even us, let alone the farmers. They have never left their hometown for most of their lives. How can they believe it if you tell them that a farm in Guanzhong can raise tens of thousands of poultry?"

"But now we have taken out dozens of poultry and treated them to a big meal, and they have a sense of trust in us. Didn't you notice the envious and eager eyes of the villagers when I took out the food? As long as they are eager to change their current lives, our trip will not be in vain."

"The emperor said that poverty alleviation starts with motivation. We must first let the villagers have the belief to change their lives, and then we will be able to do things better later."

Jia Yi was puzzled and asked, "Why is it so troublesome to help farmers? Can't we just hand over the technology to them?"

Wu Yue shook his head and said, "The emperor set up a drama troupe and asked the troupe to go to various villages in the Han Dynasty to promote health knowledge and production knowledge, but you have also seen the situation in Baiyang Village. These villagers just treat it as a story and have not changed their living habits for thousands of years at all."

"According to the situation of my family helping farmers in Guanzhong, if we don't let them think about changing their lives first, the materials we provide to help farmers will be quickly sold by them or put into their mouths."

Jia Yi said disdainfully: "These farmers are too stupid. They can't make more money by raising poultry than by selling the young poultry."

Wu Yue said: "Farmers in the world are too poor. Such a life forces farmers to live well in the present. They don't have the energy to think about long-term things. Only when they have enough food and have time to think, will they think about long-term things."

Wu Yue taught very seriously and he was very optimistic about his apprentice.

When Shang Nong resigned from his position as prime minister and came to Yulin to help farmers, he gained great reputation. Thousands of students in Chang'an City were willing to follow their farming family to this barren land of Yulin.

But the passion of young people comes and goes quickly. They have adapted to life in Chang'an City and find it difficult to endure the poor life in Yulin.

However, life in Yulin was not as passionate about changing the world as they had imagined. They had to find ways to make bricks and build kilns, use farm tools to reclaim the land, and cut wood to build houses. The heavy work made these students regret it within a few days. They never expected that the farmers would really use them as farmers.

In response to this situation, Shangnong said that labor is the philosophy of farmers, and staying in Yulin means doing this all the time. He also said that farmers are free to come and go, and there is no restriction on them leaving.

He also said: "Even if you leave, it's not because you are incompetent and can't endure hardship, it's just that your philosophy doesn't fit with my farming family."

Shang Nong's words made all the students who followed him breathe a sigh of relief. The Han people valued reputation, and reputation was their other face, and it was a face that had to be maintained.

If they join the farming family and leave because they can't stand the hardship, their reputation will be ruined, and if this is exposed later, they will be regarded as inferior to others.

But if you leave the agricultural school because of differences in ideas, that is an academic matter, and this kind of thing is very common among the various schools of thought. Back then, Mozi pulled a group of students from Confucianism to establish the Mohist school, and no one would say that the Mohists were traitors to Confucianism.

Xu Xing, the founder of the Agricultural School, also recruited a group of students from the Confucian School to establish the Agricultural School. So the separation and combination due to different ideas is the business of scholars.

After the merchants and farmers solved their worries, most of the students endured for a month, but could not stand the hardship in the countryside and left one after another. Even those who persisted later only left after a few months because they could not stand the hardship.

Out of thousands of students, less than a hundred actually stayed. Shangnong accepted these people as farmers' children and assigned them to various junior and senior brothers to teach them farming skills and knowledge.

Wu Yue and his group walked slowly to Yulin Township. The road near Yulin Township was obviously much smoother than other places. It was repaired by farmers who led local people. The farmers also wrote slogans on the walls of their houses: "If you want to get rich, build roads first."

If you want to avoid getting sick, drink more water and wash your hands frequently.

If you want to be rich, have more children, plant more trees, etc.

The closer you get to Yulin Township, the more slogans you see. They all rely on simple slogans to tell villagers some common sense about daily life, hygiene, etc.

Moreover, along the way they could see many flocks of poultry and villagers raising poultry. When they saw Wu Yue and his friends, they all waved and greeted them.

When the farmers had been in Yulin for half a year, Shangnong regarded Yulin as their base camp. They bought several acres of wasteland in Yulin, built houses, earthworm fields, and poultry hatcheries, and sent students from the farming family to guide local farmers in farming.

The villagers of Yulin Township originally watched these city people doing farm work with curiosity, and even mocked those who did a bad job. This actually brought a lot of fun to these farmers, comparable to a large reality show.

But as if they suddenly appeared, these city people suddenly had flocks of chickens and ducklings, and then these chickens and ducklings were sold to them at one-third of the price.

The villagers of Yulin Township went to the farm to buy poultry seedlings, expanding the number of their own breeding families. Compared with the poor Baiyang Village, Yulin is near the railway, so every household has the habit of raising poultry, and selling them to passing caravans is also a considerable income.

But soon the villagers discovered that the poultry they raised were all skinny and weak, while those raised by farmers expanded quickly like balloons. They only took three months to start laying eggs, followed by duck eggs, goose eggs, chicken eggs, and duck meat. The most important thing was that they raised so many poultry not to sell them, but to eat them themselves.

Farmers in Yulin watched these city people eating steamed bread and wild vegetables every day, but in less than half a year, they started to eat meat and fish every day, which made farmers around Yulin envious.

When these people asked about the farmers' unique skills, the merchants and farmers told them that the poultry grew so fast because they used earthworms as feed.

It was then that the villagers in Yulin realized that feeding poultry with earthworms really makes them grow faster.

As the saying goes, seeing is believing, hearing is false. Even though the Han opera troupe performed more than a dozen times, it was not as effective as the real fish and meat and feasting that the merchants and farmers enjoyed.

With this real example, Yulin villagers began to accept the farmers, and under their guidance, they built earthworm fields, made homemade poultry feed, taught them how to make preserved eggs and salted duck eggs, piled farmyard manure, and guided them to increase production and harvest. Now there are farmers in all 22 villages in Yulin to guide farmers' production, and the influence of farmers is slowly spreading, transforming the impoverished Shangjun bit by bit.

When they returned to the farm base in Yulin Township, the farmers' children from all around greeted them and then went about their own business.

The farmers have been in Yulin Township for half a year. After gaining recognition from local villagers, they first used the poultry industry to help the villagers accumulate some savings. They led the villagers to build kiln factories and cement factories, demolished dilapidated thatched houses, built new brick kiln houses, leveled the land and dug ditches. Now Yulin Township has become somewhat like a new town. Local people can eat chicken, duck, fish and meat for three meals a day. Rich farmers have also started to build brick houses, and their lives have generally improved.

Wu Yue and his companions arrived at the farmyard, settled the horses, and walked into the yard.

This compound is somewhat resembling a courtyard house in later times. It was built bit by bit by merchants and farmers leading farmers' children. It has more than a dozen rooms, including the farmers' archives room, incubation room, lounge, and children from Yulin go to school here. It can be considered a comprehensive production base integrating production, education and research.

"Is senior brother here?" Wu Yue asked.

"The master is not here. He went to the county to discuss the order. If we don't find a way to sell them, we won't be able to eat all the chicken and duck meat." A young boy replied.

Xu Fan's influence on farmers has been enormous over the years. Farmers in the Warring States Period focused on growing their own food, even to the point of an extreme small peasant economy. They wished that one farmer would do everything from farming to weaving to ironwork.

The ideal blueprint designed by the farmers for the world is that the world does not need merchants or aristocrats. Everyone grows their own crops and supports themselves. The chickens and dogs of the chickens and dogs of the chickens and dogs of the chickens can hear each other, but they will not interact with each other until they die. In this way, the world can be united.

Obviously, such a proposition would not be recognized by the monarchs of the Warring States Period, so the influence of the agricultural family has always been small.

When it came to the Han Dynasty, Xu Fan clearly told the farmers' sons, such as Shangnong, that the development of the entire society was to improve productivity on the basis of continuous division of labor, and that a self-sufficient small peasant economy like this had no future.

The development of the Han Dynasty also verified what Xu Fan said. From the very beginning of the rapid development of the textile industry, the agricultural society where men farmed and women weaved was destroyed. Now the salary of female workers in the Han Dynasty working in workshops is much higher than that of weaving themselves.

Nowadays, among the people of the Han Dynasty, we can no longer see the kind of life where men farm and women weave. Originally, this change should have been extremely tragic. In the era of self-cultivating farmers, women weaving accounted for a small half of a family's income. If a farmer lost half of his income, it would have caused a huge wave at the end of the dynasty. However, the Han Dynasty was in its founding period and had enough land to accommodate farmers. Even 100 acres of land would allow them to bear this loss.

Although the Han Dynasty still had a huge system of self-cultivating farmers, the previous self-sufficient model was slowly disintegrating. In addition to eating the food grown by farmers themselves, most of the food had to be traded.

However, what had the greatest impact on the thinking of businessmen and farmers was what happened in Hu County.

With the help of Xu Fan, Shitou built an advanced breeding farm and led the farmers in Taohuali to become rich.

Under the leadership of Shitou, the villagers in Taohuali have achieved freedom to own chickens, ducks, fish and meat. Every farmer has built his own brick house, and everyone's living standard is higher than that of the small landlords in Dahan.

If all this only stops at this step, merchants and farmers will feel very satisfied. Isn't this the small peasant society advocated by their farmers? As long as someone takes the lead and brings advanced breeding technology, their farmers can also achieve a perfect world of great harmony.

But this is not a small-scale peasant economy model in Taohua, but a breeding industry under the industrialization model. Industrialization is never gentle and affectionate. It will reshape the world with its own power, and anyone who can't keep up with it will be crushed.

After Shangnong visited Hu County, he understood for the first time what "industrialized production" meant, and also realized for the first time the horror of this model.

Taohuali's breeding model is mainly used for trading, and the large-scale industrial production model has greatly reduced their production costs, which gives Taohuali's poultry an overwhelming advantage over others.

Farmers in other places in Hu County still raise poultry in a small-scale manner. Each household only raises a dozen poultry, using their own grains to raise them. They use chicken eggs and duck eggs to exchange for daily expenses. If they encounter difficulties and lack money, they will sell one or two to relieve the pressure on the family. The breeding cost under this model is extremely high.

When the villagers of Taohuali started selling chicken eggs and duck eggs, the price of local chicken eggs and duck eggs suddenly dropped by half. The eggs from other villagers in Hu County soon became unsalable because the chicken eggs and duck eggs from Taohuali were not only large in size and nutritious, but also cheaper than theirs.

Ordinary villagers are reluctant to eat the eggs, duck eggs and poultry they raise themselves, but it is difficult to sell them. Even if the price drops to about the same as in Taohuali, it is not cost-effective for the villagers.

Moreover, poultry is alive. As long as you raise it, it will consume grain. As you are reluctant to eat it but cannot sell it, the villagers in Hu County are in a very miserable situation under the impact of this wave of industrialization, and they are wailing all the time.

What happened in Hu County almost broke Shang Nong's heart. It was difficult for Shang Nong to accept that his knowledge was wrong.

But the villagers of Hu County were not as sentimental as the merchants and farmers. They joined the breeding farm in Taohuali based on the principle of "if you can't beat them, join them" and spread this breeding model throughout the county. In addition, Hu County was located next to the railway, so the poultry in the county could enter Chang'an City and Neishi County's consumer market of two million people at a very fast speed, so they didn't have to worry about market saturation. In less than five years, Hu County became the poultry supply base for the entire Guanzhong area.

Merchants and farmers also realize that if farmers want to develop in the future, they must adapt to industrialized production.

(End of this chapter)