Nine hundred and seventieth chapter of the footsteps of war (1)
After bidding farewell to the officials heading to the southeastern region, Liu Che and the entire Han Dynasty focused their attention on transferring military rations.
In today's China, there are mainly three food surplus producing areas.
The first and largest granary is the Kingdom of Abundance in Shu County and Hanzhong County.
Through four years of water conservancy excavation, agricultural tool promotion and technology improvement.
The grain output in Shu County and Hanzhong County has increased significantly, and the yields of millet and corn per mu can be found everywhere.
However, the local population has also entered a period of explosive growth.
The increase in grain yield per acre has enabled people to raise more children, and the country also encourages childbirth.
Giving birth to and raising three children, regardless of gender, can exempt the family from military service for one year!
Four will save you two years!
Five years and three years!
How many sticks will be given to ten!
Today, it is very difficult for ordinary families to have and raise more than five children.
However, three or four words are common!
In recent years, the people of Shu County and Hanzhong have worked hard to reproduce.
The birth rate and survival rate of young children have doubled.
In the past, various cases of not raising young children or drowning girls due to economic or religious reasons have plummeted.
In just three years, in Shu County and Hanzhong areas, rural pavilions were filled with groups of naked children playing.
In order to feed these children, local food consumption naturally increased.
Moreover, it will continue to increase in the foreseeable future.
To be honest, with the existing technical and land conditions, it is almost impossible for the land in Shu County and Hanzhong to produce more than five dan per mu.
Therefore, the local food supply potential is actually not large.
It is impossible for Liu Che to continue to transfer large amounts of grain from Shu County and Hanzhong County as before.
Of course, the more important reason is that the food from Shu County and Hanzhong is relatively cheap when transported down the river to the south.
However, I want to transport the food from Shu County to the north.
The cost would be prohibitively high.
The second granary of the Han Dynasty was the Sanhe area.
The Sanhe area is also China's largest grain-producing area and largest grain supplier since the Spring and Autumn Period.
During the Warring States Period, the Qin State acquired the Hexi region of the Wei State, and then began to rise and become the bug that could defeat the six eastern kingdoms.
Today's Sanhe area has become the most important power engine of the war machine of the Han Dynasty.
More than 40% of the military rations for the Great Wall garrison come from the food produced by the people in the Sanhe area.
Moreover, Aocang, the largest strategic grain reserve base of the Han Dynasty, was established at a key location in the Sanhe area.
Since the Qin Dynasty, being able to eat Aocang's grain has become a hero and the key to whether heroes can dominate the world!
However, the current situation in the Sanhe area is similar to that in Shu County.
It has also entered a period of population explosion.
Although from the household registration statistics, no obvious population growth phenomenon can be seen yet.
However, it can be clearly seen from the local corvee service rate.
In Three Rivers (Henan, Hexi, and Hedong), the corvee service rate has plummeted for three years.
If we make a table, we can easily find that the corvee service rate in this area has plummeted.
Every year, a large number of people are exempted from corvee service because they meet the standards set by Liu Che.
Although it is only a short year or two years.
However, three consecutive years of diving illustrates the rapid growth of the local population.
Almost every couple has given birth to and raised a child in each of the past three years.
In the past sixty years, the world's population growth rate has been approximately 9% per year.
Over the past sixty years, China's population growth has more than doubled.
However, since Liu Che came to power and encouraged childbirth materially, economically and spiritually.
In areas with more developed societies and cultures, the population has shown explosive growth.
The fertility rate and dependency rate are doubling and increasing every year.
In the past, an average Han woman would give birth to an average of five children during her childbearing years.
However, due to backward medical technology and even more backward feudal superstitions and traditions, only half of the children can survive to adulthood.
Now, as people's willingness to have children and raise children increases.
Not only is the average fertility rate of women rising, but also the survival rate of young children.
The Yushi Dafu Yamen estimates that in the Sanhe area, the net annual population increase has been approximately 15% in the past three years.
This allowed the Han Dynasty to actually mobilize and use less grain from the Sanhe area.
Even because of the advancement of technology and tools, the local grain yield has increased by more than one stone per mu, reaching an average level of about four and a half stones.
However, the abundance of food is not as good as before.
Especially Hedong County.
Four years ago, Hedong County was rich in food every year, with more than three million dan of corn alone.
But now, it is less than three million stones.
This is the most direct evidence that food consumption increases as population increases.
This reduced the amount of grain Liu Che could procure from the local area.
After deducting the necessary grain reserves, the Han Dynasty can only mobilize about three million shi of corn in the entire Sanhe area.
Based on the current technical conditions, these three million stones will consume at least 750,000 stones during transportation!
In other words, only about 2.2 million shi of food can be transported to the front line to supply the army.
Now, under peaceful conditions, the annual food supply standard for a soldier (infantry) is twenty dan, which is slightly higher than that of a farmer, and is only enough to fill his stomach.
As for the cavalry, a man and a horse, based on the standard of one person and two horses, the annual food consumption is at least forty dan, which does not include meat and fodder for the war horses.
In other words, the two million shi of food in the Sanhe area could only meet the needs of 50,000 cavalry for a year.
However, the logistics consumption and youth consumption of this army have not been included in the calculation.
As for the remaining grain-producing areas.
It is the vast Guanzhong area centered on Chang'an.
only……
If you are familiar with Guanzhong and have enough knowledge in the world, it is already a thing of the past.
Since Taizong, Guanzhong has changed from a grain exporting place to a grain importing place.
Before Liu Che came to the throne, Guanzhong already needed to transfer about 500,000 shi of grain from Guandong every year to meet the needs of the nobles in Guanzhong and the citizens of Chang'an.
Fortunately, after Liu Che came to the throne, he advocated and encouraged people to switch to winter wheat.
Moreover, Meiwa has promoted a variety of wheat-based processed foods including pasta, steamed buns and steamed buns.
This greatly increased Guanzhong's food self-sufficiency rate.
The new wheat cultivation technology and the application of a large number of various fertilizers (human and animal manure, soil fertilizers and some fertilizers made from whale bone meal and salmon bone meal), as well as the all-round popularization of a large number of water conservancy facilities and waterwheels.
This greatly increased the yield per mu in Guanzhong.
In particular, wheat production has doubled.
The yield of four kilos of corn per mu is almost the limit.
But the wheat yield of four or five stones per mu is just the starting point.
In Shanglin Garden, the experimental field in charge of the Shaofu's agricultural officer, last year even produced a miracle of ten stones per mu!
In this way, the food security in Guanzhong finally bid farewell to the history of relying on transshipment from Guandong.
In the past three years, Guanzhong's grain surplus has increased every year.
Moreover, because of the existence of the food price protection policy, people are willing to sell their surplus food.
As of last year, the amount of grain stored by the Shaofu in Guanzhong reached a record high of four million shi.
Although, three million stones of them are wheat.
In addition, reserves of soybeans and other legumes are also increasing.
Because the state purchases beans and encourages people to interplant soybeans.
Therefore, now in Shaofu, there are more than 500,000 shi of various beans in stock.
In addition, there are hundreds of thousands of stones of bean dregs and bean cakes, by-products of soybean oil extraction.
These bean dregs and bean cakes can be used as feed, thus reducing the food demand of the army, especially the cavalry.
At present, Guanzhong can transfer at least three million shi of grain (including bean dregs and bean cakes) to the front lines of Yunzhong, Yanmen and Daibei.
After receiving the food supply from Guanzhong, Liu Che finally managed to collect the basic food needed for the Hetao battle.
At least, there is no shortage of food for the Gaoque Battle.
only……
One battle in the Hetao emptied the entire country's food reserves.
This left Liu Che speechless.
"We must speed up the promotion and planting area of wheat!" Liu Che said to himself in his heart.
Wheat replaced millet and became the main crop in the north. Historically, it took a thousand years.
This is a huge traditional inertia at work.
If he wants to increase this process, Liu Che can only use a trick to increase the price!
Now, the purchase price of wheat in Shaofu is about 40 yuan per stone of wheat, sometimes even 35 yuan.
Compared with the price of corn, it is more than ten yuan lower!
For farmers, growing wheat and growing corn are actually the same economically.
In fact, growing corn is more profitable than growing wheat.
Moreover, wheat requires more manpower and material resources to take care of than corn.
Therefore, even in Guanzhong, except for Shanglinyuan, where the Shaofu strongly required the planting of wheat, in other places, people generally use the upper fields to grow corn for family food, and use the lower fields to grow wheat to pay taxes and sell
To the young master.
The common people are very smart.
Of course you have to eat the best food at home!
Even though now there are pasta and various kinds of steamed buns, the emergence of steamed buns has made wheat taste better than corn.
However, grinding wheat flour requires time and manpower.
Who else but the landlords would have that kind of free time?
Naturally, people will vote with their feet and still adhere to the tradition of using corn as the staple food.
To change this dilemma, the country needs to assume greater responsibility.
Even, suffer certain losses.
The people must be able to benefit more from growing wheat than corn, so they will choose a variety of wheat.
"This year's wheat purchase price will be raised to the same level as that of corn!" Liu Che told Ji An.
The latter was slightly stunned.
I don’t understand what Liu Che means.
You must know that raising the price of wheat will inevitably lead to an increase in the Shaofu's expenditure.
One million stone means an increase of ten million yuan!
Guanzhong's wheat output last year was close to four million shi.
In other words, the emperor would throw at least 40 million yuan into the water in the blink of an eye.
It's just that the young man's money is the emperor's money.
The emperor will spend as much as he likes.
Even if he had to spend hundreds of millions to build a palace as a playground for himself, the ministers could only stare.
What's more, this kind of thing that benefits the people?
Ji An could only choose to nod and accept the order.
Liu Che looked at Ji An and explained: "Every bustle in the world is for benefit, and all the hustle and bustle in the world is for benefit. Therefore, Laozi said: The best is like water, water benefits all things without fighting! If you want to guide the people's customs, you must use it to benefit, and the people will get it.
Interests will naturally follow the will of the country, but not vice versa!"
This is natural. In China, no matter what period of time, as long as there is money to be made and it is profitable, everyone will rush to do it.
When Tai Shigong of later generations wrote historical records and biographies of merchants, it can be clearly seen that almost all big businessmen will drive the orientation of merchants in a place.
Someone in a certain place makes a fortune by smelting iron, and there will be a large number of iron smelting workshops in that place.
As people get rich through selling, the number of traffickers and lackeys increases.
If you get rich by raising livestock, everyone will compete to raise it.
This national character even lasted for more than two thousand years and remained so in later generations.
When mentioning Wenzhou, the first thing everyone thinks of is leather shoes and leather bags.
Yiwu is a small commodity market.
Guangzhou is a place where trading companies gather together.
Even illegal industries are like this.
Walking under the telephone poles in the streets and alleys, the old military doctors, most of whom are from Putian, apply for certificates no matter where they live, and they speak with a Hunan accent. Even if they are committing fraud, they can basically tell who they are after just one phone call.
local.
For the Chinese, as long as they can make money and support their wives and children, they don't care what kind of business they do.
This principle holds true both in ancient and modern times.
Ji An listened blankly for a while, thinking about it carefully, it was really like that.
So Ji An said: "Your Majesty Fu Wei can clearly see thousands of miles away, but none of my ministers can reach it!"
This is both flattery and admiration and reverence.
Can you not admire and revere me?
If you look through the history books, you will find a lot of kings who burdened the people for their own enjoyment.
But in order for the people to be obedient and follow their own wishes to grow food or change their habits, there are very few people who would rather bleed themselves.
In Ji An's understanding, it was probably only the Chen family's policy of using small fights to advance and big fights to exit when he was on behalf of the Qi Dynasty.
But Liu Che smiled bitterly and shook his head.
This strategy of using money and interests to guide the people is naturally useful.
However, Liu Che still doesn't know how useful it will be.
After all, the power of tradition and inertia is extremely powerful.
Especially when it comes to this kind of eating habits.
In later generations, there may be many northerners who like to eat rice, and there may be many southerners who like to eat steamed buns for breakfast.
However, its staple food is still pasta and rice.
This is just like if you throw a Hunanese into Guangdong, Guangxi, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and there is no chili to eat, I guess that Hunanese won't be able to stand it for half a month.
Within a few generations, the habit of using corn as the staple food in the north cannot be reversed or changed.
However, Liu Che knew very well.
The yield of corn per acre is too small, and its nutrition is not as rich and comprehensive as that of wheat.
The replacement of corn by wheat is a historical necessity and an inevitable development.
Want to feed the growing population in the world.
Liu Che not only wanted to give them more arable land, but also provided them with more advanced technology, better farm tools, and higher yields of grain per mu.
"The future is bright, but the road is tortuous..." There is no other way, Liu Che can only comfort himself like this. (To be continued.) 8
