Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 595 Winter (Part [-])

On June 1647, 6, in Dafeng Township, it was sunny and the temperature was 20 degrees Celsius.

It was already past ten o'clock in the morning, and the warm sun shone on the person, making him feel very comfortable.Accompanied by the deputy mayor of Dafeng Township, Zheng Bin, the vice minister of the Ministry of Agriculture who came to inspect the Duck Lake Basin in the north, entered the newly built grain deep processing base.This base has several production lines, all invested exclusively by the Ministry of Agriculture, for further processing of locally harvested grains (mainly wheat).

Before coming here, Zheng Bin already knew what the so-called processing companies here were, so he was not at all surprised by some "horrible" strange machines that appeared in front of him.The first production line he visited was the wheat flour production line. The difference from the modern automated flour production line in later generations is that Zheng Bin looked at the flour milling line in front of him for a long time, but he really couldn't find that it was different from the traditional hydraulic and wind mills. Compared with how much technological innovation there is.

The so-called wheat flour milling is actually to use the various characteristics differences between the wheat endosperm and the cortex after soaking in water to separate the wheat bran, germ and flour through grinding, sieving, winnowing and other processes. Then process them separately.The production principle adopted by this production line is still the ancient milling process that has been passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years, but some innovations have been made in the details.

Cai De, the director of this wheat deep processing base and the general manager of Dafeng Food Company, blushed, coughed twice, and then stepped forward to explain: "Actually, our wheat milling line still makes a lot of The technology is innovative. For example, we will pre-process the harvested wheat. Look here, this is a flat rotary sieve. After the wheat falls into the sieve, it will be screened first, and some large particles such as stones and other foreign objects will be screened out. Today Some farmers who sell grain are very dishonest, and will deliberately mix some stones, clods of soil, etc. in the wheat, and these will affect the quality of flour if they are not cleared in advance."

Cai De has always been a soy sauce traveler before, and his education is only a junior high school diploma.After working in various departments for more than ten years, he took the initiative to ask Ying to help in the Ministry of Agriculture.He has contributed a lot to the successful research and development of the wheat flour production line this time. At least he was the first to bring up this project, and he also recruited the R&D personnel from everywhere. Therefore, the Government Council appointed him as the general manager of the state-owned Dafeng Food Company this time. Manager, as a reward.

"After the initial screening, we also designed a winnowing system consisting of a blower and an exhaust fan. This winnowing system can operate cyclically to remove some denser substances in the wheat. After winnowing The wheat is soaked with water - this is done manually, and then it goes into the barn to be milled."

Zheng Bin stepped forward to take a look, and sure enough there were some pre-treatment procedures that Cai De mentioned.After these tools, there is the core milling equipment.And this so-called core equipment, in Zheng Bin's view, is nothing more than a few pairs of cast iron rollers.These iron rollers rotate towards each other at a certain speed, and grind the passing wheat into powder.Sometimes, according to different processing requirements, a pair of grinding rollers, three grinding rollers, four or more grinding rollers can be used respectively (the linear speed of different grinding rollers can be different).

The ground powdery material is then sieved through a square sieve, the material remaining on the sieve is bran residue, and the material falling from the sieve is flour.Generally, there are still a lot of unground wheat in the bran residue, so it can be collected and poured between the grinding rollers for grinding. Generally, it needs to be repeated three or five times, so as to increase the flour extraction rate as much as possible and reduce waste.

"The flour extraction rate of this wheat flour milling production line is between 50% and 60%. Well, it is a bit low, but we are also continuing to improve the equipment. The power of the whole production line is a steam boiler system with a power of 25 horsepower Provided, the coal consumption per hour is 60 kg (standard Tacheng clean coal). It can process [-] tons of wheat per day. If the annual production time is calculated as [-] days, then it can process about [-] tons of wheat a year. More than [-] tons of refined flour." Cai De looked at Zheng Bin's face, saw that the other party was listening carefully, and continued with a little reassurance: "The entire production line, including equipment, workshops, and worker training, costs a total of More than [-] yuan in cash. The main reason for the high cost is that most of the equipment is specially customized, but this is also good, there is no tolerance problem in the customized equipment, and the requirements for the processing accuracy of the parts are low, which means that it will be troublesome to maintain in the future It’s a little more expensive, and the cost is a little bit higher, but these are minor problems.”

"The entire production line only needs more than 40 workers and a small number of managers, and the annual salary expenditure is only 4000 yuan. Tacheng clean coal is sold to us at an agreed price of [-] cents per ton by Xinhua Island, which only costs [-] yuan a year. Two hundred yuan. Counting other miscellaneous expenses, such as maintenance, shipping costs, etc., the production cost of refined flour per ton will not exceed one yuan." Cai De counted with his fingers, "If we really want to go to the market If there is competition, some wind and water mills all over the country may go out of business. Their production cost per unit time is higher than ours, but their production efficiency is far inferior to ours, and the quality is not as good as our innovative production process. The products that come out are strong, and being eliminated is a natural choice."

"Well, with such a low production cost, it is very competitive even if it is transported to inland areas by steamboat or train for sale. It is inevitable that a large number of rural hydraulic and animal mills will close down." Zheng Bin also nodded at this time, Said: "This is a good thing. We can free up a lot of people to do other jobs. On the east coast where manpower is scarce, a higher level of productivity is our eternal pursuit."

"Although this kind of equipment looks 'backward' and ugly, it is still a great technological revolution in this era." Seeing that his secretaries were still far away, Zheng Bin also joked with Cai De, "But you won't just make such a thing, right? Well, I know, the first one to show me must be something that I'm sure of, and the next thing to see is probably not a good thing."

"It really made you guess." Cai De's old face turned red again, and he only heard him say: "Our grain deep processing base has also completed several production lines, mainly for the refined flour produced by the milling line. Deep processing. For example, a noodle production line is currently installed next door. It looked decent when it was designed, but a lot of problems were found when the equipment was actually manufactured and debugged. It is still undergoing intense rectification. Qian Thousands of dollars have already been spent, but I really can't guarantee when the results will be released.

"In addition, we are still doing research on instant noodles and biscuit production lines, but it is still in the stage of theoretical research, and there are very few results. There are still many crops planted in the agricultural area in the west of Huxi, such as soybeans—well, the output is very large, but we are currently I haven't started the project of the machine oil extraction plant, but I may do it later; sometimes local farmers will also grow some potatoes, sweet potatoes and other miscellaneous grains—of course, there are very few now, because they cannot be harvested by machines, and it is too laborious—— Potatoes and sweet potatoes can be used to make vermicelli; in addition, the local corn planting area is often not low, and of course the yield is not small, which can be used to make wine.”

"Corn is poor in nutrition. If it is eaten as a staple food, people may get pellagra, but it is also a very good feed. Whether it is corn stalks or corn cobs, it can be used as feed. Maybe we In the future, we will build a corn feed processing factory. We will use corn, soybean meal, bran and other residues to produce feed, and supply it to farmers to raise chickens and ducks, and there should be a lot of sales.”

Zheng Bin listened to Cai De talking about many projects, and just smiled: "Don't draw so many big cakes to fool me, you are not cheating the project funds like you are. You first clean up the flour milling production line for me The Dafeng Machinery Flour Factory will be officially established before the end of the year, and the cheap flour produced can be supplied to the whole country. In addition, those bran and other substances can be exported to Brazil, and those farmers in Brazil are happy to buy some cheap bran for Make black bread and supply it to indentured slaves or black slaves."

"As for the noodle production line, biscuit production line, instant noodle production line you mentioned..." Zheng Bin felt a little helpless at this point, "Please do a market research first to see if there is any demand. Biscuits and instant noodles may be purchased by the Navy. , but the quantity is really hard to say. You can’t go to a production line, only to find that you only need to produce one month out of twelve months to complete the annual task, and the remaining eleven months are idle, right? How decent!"

"It's not so exaggerated..." The little trick of defrauding the project funds was seen through at a glance, and Cai De was also a little embarrassed, but he quickly adjusted his mood and said seriously: "Actually, the next project we want to start is the soybean deep processing project , whether it is making soybean products (tofu, bean curd, etc.), pressing oil, or making feed (by-products of oil pressing), you can do it. Now more and more people choose to plant soybeans after the summer harvest in West Lake. The crops are not only fertile, but also easy to harvest and threshing. They are also rich in nutrients and have a wide range of uses. Didn’t the four townships in the west of the lake harvest [-] tons of soybeans this autumn? It seems that the soybean deep processing project is inevitable.”

"That's about the same." Zheng Bin then agreed, "The soybean oil project is actually very promising. Our production cost is low, even if it is shipped by sea to Brazil, La Plata, New Spain, Peru, South Africa, and even the old continent. , why not do it? The Dutch import a large amount of olive oil from the Ottoman Empire every year, and then distribute it throughout Europe. The quality of our soybean oil is so good, and the production cost is also low. We can talk to the Dutch and enter foreign markets Shouldn't be a problem."

(End of this chapter)