The news that the Qinji Merchant Store in Chongqing had an unlimited supply of salt quickly spread throughout Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, and even people in the neighboring state capitals of Guangxi, as if it had grown wings.
The supply of salt in the southwestern region is too tight. Because the output is low, no matter how many salt wells there are, it is not enough. There are a large number of smuggling ships every year, and there is a large amount of illicit salt from the Lianghuai Salt Field. Armed illicit salt dealers and officers and soldiers of the Inspection Department
The fighting has been ongoing. This is also an important reason for the chaos in the southwest.
In view of the corruption in the late Ming Dynasty, if the inspection department caught a ship of illicit salt, they would turn the illicit salt into official salt and then sell it for private distribution. Therefore, they were very diligent in inspecting the illicit salt.
Li Haer's family lives in the outer suburbs of Chongqing. The land here is barren, with only three acres of thin fields passed down from ancestors. They grow some millet. Because the harvest of millet is very small, the whole family has to work during the slack time to make money to feed their stomachs.
Every day, Li Haer took his two sons to the dock to find work. They wrapped their heads in white cloth and carried sticks and ropes. They did odd jobs and looked for opportunities. Their main job opportunity was to unload ships.
Due to the lack of salt, people have no strength, and the high temperature makes them very tired and suffering. However, salt is so expensive that it can even be used as a bride price here.
In their poor families, a piece of salt can even be passed down from generation to generation.
They tied a piece of salt with a hemp rope and dropped it on the roof beam. When the family was eating, they would look up and swallow a few mouthfuls of saliva to count themselves as eating salt. This is called eating and looking at salt.
If the conditions are better, tie the salt with a hemp rope, quickly sink it in the pot, and then lift it up immediately. In this way, a little salt will be dissolved in the pot. This is called eating with salt.
Li Ha'er's family has to be a porter and engage in heavy physical labor, so they grit their teeth and must eat salt. This is considered to be the case among Sichuan people who are relatively reluctant to eat salt.
Not only is there a serious shortage of salt, there is also a shortage of food. The three acres of land in Li Haer's family can only produce enough millet for a family of eight, half a year of wild vegetable porridge and half a year of rice bran porridge. The rice grains in the porridge can be counted.
In the Ming Dynasty, the main varieties of food crops in Sichuan Province were rice, wheat and millet. Rice has high requirements on water conservancy, soil, climate and cultivation technology.
So it seems that Bashu is a fertile land thousands of miles away, with sufficient water resources, high accumulated temperature, and mild climate. In fact, rice has long been mainly concentrated in areas with good irrigation conditions, fertile soil, and suitable climate, such as the Chengdu Plain. It accounts for 10% of the entire province.
90% of the mountains, hills, and plateau areas have very few rice fields.
The yields of other crops are incomparable to rice.
This is the case throughout the southwest region. Poor farmers cannot afford high prices for salt. Without salt, not only do people have no strength, but their food is also bland and tasteless. Later, they worked hard on condiments and used spicy instead of salt to fool themselves.
To cover up the blandness of the food.
This is also the reason why chili peppers became so popular as soon as they were introduced to the southwest region. In the same Jianghuai and Jiangnan areas, people don’t like to eat chili peppers because they don’t lack salt for seasoning.
In these vast areas, wheat and millet are the main food crops. Wheat is not drought-tolerant, and its yield is not high, less than one-half of the yield per mu of rice at that time. Although millet is drought-tolerant, it is not suitable as a staple food for a long time. Therefore,
, Sichuan’s land utilization rate was greatly limited at that time.
A large amount of land cannot be effectively cultivated and utilized. Therefore, it is difficult to significantly increase the total food production, which also directly affects the growth of the population.
At this time, the population of Sichuan was not large. Since the Song Dynasty, it has been stable at less than four million for a long time. The land output here can only feed so many people. In the sixth year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty (1578 AD), statistics from the Ministry of Household Affairs
The population of Sichuan Province is 3,102,073.
It was not until the early years of the Qing Dynasty that corn and sweet potatoes were promoted on a large scale in Sichuan, and this situation changed rapidly. In the 48th year of Qianlong's reign (1724 AD), the province's population had reached 8,142,487. By the 20th year of Guangxu's reign in the Qing Dynasty (1894 AD)
year), the total population of Sichuan actually reached 79,493,058 people, exceeding the total population of all previous dynasties.
While giving Qin Liangyu agency rights and quotas, Yang Fan also asked her to promote corn and sweet potatoes in the southwest. Every customer who comes to buy salt, cloth, and ironware must also buy sweet potatoes, corn, and potato seeds. These things are included with the purchase.
The whole ship was shipped to Qin Liangyu.
In fact, you can afford to give it away for free. There are 20,000 acres of land in Yang Fan's territory for breeding. However, if it comes without money, people will not cherish it. Maybe they feed the horses, throw them away, or eat them along the way.
It's possible. Therefore, such overlord clauses must be adopted to force Sichuan people to buy.
The widespread planting of corn and sweet potatoes will greatly increase grain output. It will provide a relatively sufficient food foundation for the prosperous development of all industries, allowing more manpower and land to be invested in other sideline production and the cultivation of cash crops.
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Yang Fan believes that as long as it is vigorously promoted, Sichuan will see a situation in which rural side industries flourish, cash crops are widely planted, handicraft factories continue to appear, and the commodity economy is active.
In the market, the live pigs, wine and other commodities traded are also closely related to corn and sweet potato, and can be said to be their by-products.
Therefore, corn and sweet potato have a non-negligible impact on the prosperity of agriculture in the three provinces of Southwest China and the activity of the commodity economy. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is a "green revolution" for Southwest China.
This "revolution" enabled the development and utilization of vast and barren mountains and hills with poor climate and unfavorable irrigation, thereby expanding the food production base on a large scale, improving land utilization, and mitigating the threat of natural disasters to population growth.
, allowing the population to develop in waves on an ever-expanding base.
The world is so big now that hundreds of millions of people are needed to fill the occupied areas. Yang Fan needs to move the population of the Ming Dynasty out to the Eurasian steppe belt, to Eastern Europe, to the Americas, Australia, and Africa. Now the population of the Ming Dynasty is 20 million.
Even if it is too much, it is actually not enough.
People in this era will have more children without supervision, because in order to be prosperous in an agricultural society, one must have land, and the other is labor force. As long as Yang Fan allocates land to them, they will work hard to have children. In this kind of economy
Under the model, having children makes money.
This is very different from modern times. Nowadays, children are consumers, not producers of the family. When the children grow up, they fly solo. Parents are purely trying to lose money. In this era, it is forbidden to separate families and live together in groups.
.Producing and living together. Children act as producers and avoid consumers. Therefore, they are particularly motivated to increase the population.
For Chinese farmers, as long as we can cultivate crops, we can take root. Our descendants will multiply in this new land. As long as we can keep cultivating, we will firmly occupy the land.
Within a few generations, Yang Fan's new territory will become the same as the eighteen provinces of the Ming Dynasty, without any difference.
Because of their relationship at the dock, Li Ha'er and his two sons got the news right away about the opening of the newly opened Qinji Store in Chaotianmen. I heard that it was auspicious to open today, and salt was sold at half price in unlimited quantities.
This news immediately shocked the whole city of Chongqing. Before Qinji opened the door, the whole street was already crowded with people.
The people were talking excitedly. They all said that General Qin was a kind man and a good official. He was willing to sell you salt at half price. What a kindness. Many people planned to buy more and save it to give to their sons as betrothal gifts in the future.
