Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 594 Winter ([-])

The weather in mid-June is getting colder.

Zheng Bin, Vice Minister of Agriculture, hurried into his office and sat down on a large chair decorated with a bearskin mattress. The secretary brought him a cup of freshly brewed tea.The tea is brought back from the Far East by the Navy, and it costs almost nothing, but if you ask the Dutch or Portuguese to buy it, the price will be gone.Because of this, Europeans at that time basically did not have the habit of drinking tea. For example, in London, tea was classified as medicine for sale, and the price per pound ranged from 6 pounds to 10 pounds. , obviously too extravagant.

Zheng Bin first lit a pipe for himself, and the gas produced by the burning of the best shredded tobacco produced in Virginia well infiltrated his lungs, clearing his drowsy head immediately.

"The failure of planting tea in the north of Xinhua Port, the failure of introducing tea in Ping'an County, and the unsatisfactory results of the trial planting of cinchona trees are all asking for additional special funds for agricultural projects. The whole thing needs money, so we can't fight for it. Let us save snacks What..." Zheng Bin crossed his legs and flipped through the documents presented by the secretary page by page.He now has four full-time secretaries. Except for one secretary in charge of agricultural technology who was born as a farmer and later studied in the county agricultural cadre training school, the other three are all graduates from the Capital Agricultural College run by the Ministry of Agriculture. The best among them are respectively responsible for the arrangement of documents and materials in one aspect.

"Onuma Township and Heyang Fort request an additional [-] head of cattle, as well as ten horse-drawn pasture harvesters and twenty horse-drawn wheat harvesters? When our Ministry of Agriculture is a cash machine..." Zheng Bin muttered After finishing a sentence, he took a pen and wrote a sentence on the document: "It is advisable to allocate [-] Andalusian black cattle seized from La Plata, and the number of harvesting machines of various types should also be halved. Coordinate the time and stagger the use. Now Dafeng Agricultural Machinery Factory has limited output, and I hope that the local agricultural committees will try their best to overcome the difficulties."

"The New China Pioneering Team requested to set up a botanical garden on St. Mary's Island, and to exchange and introduce various tropical economic crops with the colonies of Portuguese East Africa and West Africa. This looks quite decent, isn't it just a species cultivation base? What, it requires a special fund of 3 yuan ?” Zheng Bin tapped the ash in his pipe into the wooden ashtray vigorously, then picked up a pen and wrote cursingly: “The requested 2000 yuan is not allowed. The Ministry is short of funds, and temporarily allocates silver dollars for the construction of the botanical garden. 8000 yuan, bank acceptance draft [-] yuan, and the remaining deficiencies should be paid by the New China Development Team at its discretion."

Naturally, bank acceptance bills cannot be used for transactions with the Portuguese. Therefore, the Ministry of Agriculture actually only allocated 2000 yuan for the purchase of plants in New China. As for how the other 8000 yuan can be used, it depends on New China. The overall digestive capacity of the colony is gone.

The so-called construction of a botanical garden mainly refers to opening up a piece of land on St. Mary's Island with beautiful scenery and suitable climate, and then introducing many plants from America, Africa and Asia-generally crops with important economic value, such as: tobacco ( Orinoceae, Florida) - this is what was introduced in Virginia; Capsicum, vanilla, and sweet pepper (Peruvian) - all three are seasonings; pepper (Indian), cloves, and nutmeg (Molucca species) - At this time, the latter two spices are controlled by the Dutch, and it is more difficult to obtain the seeds.

In addition, there is sugar cane-this needs to send an expedition to the Pacific Ocean, because at this time, whether it is the sugar cane planted by the Portuguese in Madeira, Sao Tome, Brazil, or the Spanish in the West Indies and Canary Islands- Creole varieties are low-sugar, low-yield varieties.Europeans had to wait until Bougainville sailed around the world in 1768 to bring Tahitian sugar cane to Mauritius to have high-sugar and high-yield varieties. Later, this sugar cane was quickly introduced to Bourbon Island, Martinique, and Jamaica. And eventually swept the entire tropics.

As for coffee and cocoa, coffee (the predecessor of Robusta coffee beans, West African species) has been trial-planted in the three strongholds of the New China colony for almost two years, and it will take time to observe the effect.As for cocoa, it has not been introduced yet. Unlike the huge demand for coffee in the world, the current demand for cocoa in the East Coast and Europe is relatively limited, so for the time being, we only plan to introduce a few reserved species , and are not ready for large-scale industrial planting.

Calculated in this way, it may take a lot of money just to purchase seeds, saplings, and land reclamation, not to mention the later planting, maintenance, and cultivation of new species, etc., in short, it is an extremely expensive and time-consuming task , Strenuous work.The two thousand silver dollars allocated by the Ministry of Agriculture is probably really only enough to buy some plant seeds in the early stage. As for the massive expenses needed in the later stage, we can only wait for the next year. After all, the country is in financial difficulties now.

However, things like botanical gardens are of great importance and cannot be sloppy. It is inevitable to invest huge sums of money every year in the future.For example, there is currently the only botanical garden in the local area - the Northern Botanical Garden (later San Jerome, Brazil) built on the other side of the Dingxibao River. Now, cassava, sorghum, corn, cowpea, tomato, and Bambara peanut (West African species) have been introduced into it. , red rice and other varieties of plants, technicians are studying plant habits and cultivating improved varieties.This botanical garden now has more than 200 technicians and workers, covering an area of ​​more than 5000 mu. The Ministry of Agriculture invests more than [-] yuan in it every month on average to maintain various production and scientific research activities.

In addition to these two botanical gardens, it is said that the Heishui area in the Far East also wants to build a botanical garden, which is mainly used to cultivate cold-resistant crops, such as: oats, rye, potatoes and other foods.Potatoes in particular, because potatoes grown in alpine regions have the characteristics of low toxicity and non-toxicity, and the varieties are not easy to degenerate and are not easy to be infected with diseases, so they are especially suitable for cultivating improved potato varieties. The cultivated improved varieties can be sold to farmers for large-scale production. The economic benefits of planting are undoubtedly huge.

After approving these documents, Zheng Bin changed himself into a more comfortable position, then grabbed another stack of documents and read them.This stack of documents mainly talks about the sown area, yield per unit area and total output of various crops planted this year. Zheng Bin roughly scanned the sown area of ​​grain in the southern region (Yihe area, the capital area, and Xiling area) to further expand last year. , During the autumn sowing last month, the sown area of ​​wheat reached 20 mu, of which Dongfang County, the capital, took the lead. The county had a total of [-] mu of autumn wheat, accounting for half of it. In addition, there were [-] mu of miscellaneous grain fields.

The sown area of ​​grain in the northern region is a bit scary. The four townships in Guanghu West (Xihu Town, Dafeng Township, Mocaoling Township, and Dibunbao) have sown more than 30 mu of wheat fields. Compared with Pingan County and Zhenhai County, each district The [-] mu of grain planted area in the district has been confirmed to be officially integrated into Xihu County next year. The four townships in the west of the lake are worthy of being the big granary of the East Coast Republic, and almost feed the entire [-] township-level settlements in the north with the power of one county ( Both Ping'an County and Zhenhai County are not self-sufficient in food), which can be called against the sky.

At present, there are about 300 cattle, 23 goats, [-] pigs, and more than [-] horses in the county. The per capita arable land is [-] mu.The Government Administration Council and the Ministry of Agriculture organize a large number of people to build a large number of reservoirs, water pumping stations and irrigation canals in the territory of Xihu County every winter. The agricultural machinery produced by Dafeng Agricultural Machinery Factory is also given priority here, even the ones that were snatched from La Plata Cattle are given priority to be sold to the people here at a low price—this time the Ministry of Agriculture is planning to distribute the newly collected [-] Andalusian black cattle here—which can almost make up for one-third of the county’s livestock shortage. It will make Xihu County the first county in the country to complete the reform of the three-crop rotation system.

"The data of the agricultural area in the west of the lake is still very comfortable." Zheng Bin paused for a long time on the report on the west of the lake, and then whispered contentedly: "In the autumn harvest, we harvested [-] tons of soybeans, which is really a treasure land. It’s not in vain that the country has invested huge sums of money in construction year after year. And most of the next county magistrate will be from our Ministry of Agriculture. Well, it’s worth allocating more money. Well, it’s winter now, and it’s estimated that the river is being dug over there again. I have to go and see the construction of water conservancy. It's a pity that many people from all over the country have been dispatched to fight in La Plata, and the already scarce labor force is further strained.

Now the battle in La Plata is entering the mid-game decisive stage. Although the Spaniard's decline is as usual, the people on the east coast are far from the point where they can win and withdraw their troops.As a result, a large number of troops and manpower are dragged into this quagmire, not only spending a lot of materials and money every day-these will lead to rising public grievances, but also the ability to create new wealth in the country is also declining-because a large number of Peasants and workers were drawn to the front.

The available human resources have decreased, and in order to maintain the original productivity, it is inevitable to increase production efficiency.As far as agriculture is concerned, the only way to improve the efficiency of agricultural production is to build water conservancy, promote advanced agricultural production technology, cultivate more varieties of animals and plants, and improve soil fertility.

Now is the dry season in winter. According to the usual practice, all counties across the country have to organize a large number of manpower to build water conservancy projects-this practice has been going on for more than ten years on the east coast.These farmers go to the river to dig ditches with no income at all, which is regarded as a kind of corvee, but the water conservancy system that has been built is also for their own use, so no one complains too much.However, the Ministry of Agriculture still has to allocate a large amount of funds every winter to purchase materials such as river digging tools, winter coats, raincoats and rain shoes, livestock bean feed, and rations for river workers. It is the responsibility to go to the scene to see the use of funds by the Ministry of Agriculture.

(End of this chapter)