The vast farmland in front of Heifu is composed of thin strips, and those strips are acres.
He stood at the edge of the field, along the small ditch for drainage at the edge of the field, and gently stepped out with his left foot, then his right foot, one left and one right. This is the basic unit of distance in this era: step, one step is equal to six feet.
, equivalent to 1.38 meters in later generations.
In this way, the width of one acre of land is just covered.
Therefore, each mu is 1 step wide and 240 steps long. Because the Qin State has implemented the large-acre system since Shang Yang's reform. It is the same as the 100-step small-acre system of Yan, Chu, and Qi, and the 200-step medium-acre system of Wei.
no the same.
The reason for this is that during the time of Shang Yang's reform, the Qin State was vast and sparsely populated, and the people were asked to allocate more land to grow more crops. It was probably also because the Qin State began to widely use oxen for farming, and even those who did not have oxen could borrow them from the government.
Oxen plow. A cow pulls a plow and has to walk about 240 steps before needing to take a breather. As for a human, after pulling a plow for a hundred steps, you have to get tired and fall down.
As a result, the one hundred acres of land belonging to Heifu seemed extraordinarily large.
After Heifu was shocked, he squatted down and made a calculation with tree branches: one acre in later generations was 666.67 square meters, while one acre in Qin was about 400 square meters, which was a little smaller than that in later generations. But in total, one hundred acres
That’s more than 40,000 square meters…
"With such a large land, I would have been a small landowner in the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China."
Heifu suddenly felt a little funny. You must know that it was normal for farmers and homesteaders in the Qing Dynasty to have more than ten acres of land. The poorer ones even only had a few acres.
But don’t be too happy too soon. Although these lands are allocated to Heifuzhong, they still belong to the country. Dong Zhongshu of the Han Dynasty made baseless speculation that the Qin State “reformed the imperial system, except for well fields, and the people had to sell them.”
"Buy", however, when Hei Fu returned to the Qin State, he had never seen any land purchase and sale transactions, let alone a contract. There was no similar thing found on the Qin slips excavated by later generations.
In the Qin State, land cannot be bought or sold! After all, only on the premise that the land is state-owned, the land grant system and military merit conferment, the two foundations of the Qin State, can be maintained, at least until Qin Shihuang unified the world and declared "the envoy
It was like this before the "Qianshou Zi Shi Tian" program. Farmers had land use rights but no ownership rights.
Thinking about it this way, the national conditions of Da Qin and my Chinese dynasty are quite similar.
And don’t think that big fields mean more harvests. On the contrary, in this era, precisely because the harvests from cultivated land are too small, it is absolutely impossible to feed a family without allocating so much land.
"Brother uncle."
While sitting on the ridge to rest, Heifu asked him by the way: "Last year during our autumn harvest, how much was the harvest per acre?"
Zhong Ye sat on the street. After walking for a while, his leg was a little sore. But unlike Hei Fu, he looked at the land in front of him, his eyes full of longing and expectation. As a farmer, how could he not love the land?
of?
"For millet, it's 2 shi, and rice is more, and the yield per mu is 3 shi. The land in Nanjun is humid and humid, not as good as Guanzhong. When I was serving in the garrison, I heard soldiers from Guanzhong say that there, the yield of millet per mu can be
It’s doubled or tripled!” As the backbone of the family, Zhong has to keep an eye on whether he will receive more or less every year.
The "stone" here refers to volume, not weight. After all, there is no time to do precise weighing these days. When farmers beat millet and pound rice, they put it into buckets with a fixed volume, liters, and distribute it in Xianyang.
The "Shang Yang Sheng" in various counties and counties is the standard measuring instrument of this era. As the saying goes, if a meter is raised, a meter is earned, and a meter is earned, and the same is true when paying crops.
Heifu has been here for so long and has carried rice on his shoulders countless times, so he has a rough idea. So he knows that according to his elder brother, in his own land, the yield of millet is about 50 catties per mu, and the yield of rice is about 50 kilograms per mu.
The yield is more than 70 pounds.
What is this concept?
Heifu’s previous life was in a rural area, and he was knowledgeable about grains. He knew that a modern hybrid rice field could produce up to 2,000 catties per acre! If millet was planted in a large area, one acre could produce eight to nine hundred catties!
In other words, the grain output per mu in this era is only about a few tenths of what it was in the 21st century.
Productivity, which was just a dry word in textbooks in the previous life, now seems so deadly. If people want to fill their stomachs and the yield per mu cannot be increased, they can only expand the planting area. It is no wonder that the average land occupied by each person at this time is so
big.
Therefore, Heifu can especially understand the difficulties of farming in this era. Without the help of mechanization, the work that each farmer has to do is ten times or even dozens of times that of later generations! A family of five to eight people must have no work during the busy farming season.
Only by working in the fields day and night can we cultivate so much land.
Farmers in the Qin State, under the guidance of field officials appointed by the government, have moved away from the stage of sowing seeds all over the sky with slash-and-burn cultivation, and have begun to cultivate intensively. The "Cang Rules" even teaches farmers step by step, saying that when sowing seeds, rice and hemp should be used with two grains per acre.
And two-thirds of a bushel of millet and wheat, one bushel of millet and two-thirds of a bushel of beans...
But even so, the output of millet was only a little higher than the "1.5 shi per mu" produced by the Wei state 200 years ago. With the addition of rent and heavy taxes, the output was at best half-starved.
After all, there are no chemical fertilizers and pesticides these days, which brings not ecology but low yields. Farm tools are a mixture of wood, stone, bone, copper, and iron, and farming techniques need to be improved. If you want to have a good harvest, you can only use water to force it.
Upgrading, Guanzhong with the Zhengguo Canal, and the CD Plain with Dujiangyan built became the largest granary of the Qin State, supporting the King of Qin in launching wars one after another.
Now Mr. Hei has been allocated a hundred acres of land alone. Although it looks beautiful at first glance, when he thinks about it carefully, he has no desire to cultivate it at all.
"Brother... As you said, we should find someone to farm this land." Hei Fu felt his scalp numb when he thought of so much farm work.
Zhong nodded and said: "This matter is not urgent. In the past two months, I have been asking in the countryside if there are any mediocre farmers who are willing to farm."
Although the land grant system was implemented, not everyone in the Qin State had land. There were always some wanderers, and those who had committed crimes had their fields confiscated. Because Qin's law treats land, it is not allowed to occupy a manhole without shitting.
Are you not active in farming? Okay, stop farming, take it back to the state and give it to others to farm!
The most typical one is Dongmen Bao's family. Because his father drowned while drunk, which was considered a violation of the law, the land was taken away. There was no space for him to steal seeds near the county seat. Dongmen Bao had to rely on other ways to make a living. The same goes for Xiao Tao's family.
, the father and son are working as sharecroppers for others and may become servants at any time.
The eldest brother pointed to the edge of the field and said: "I called you to see the field today because I want to discuss it and recruit some manpower to build the field first."
Although Heifu's land is large, it also has boundaries. A square mound of earth was piled at the four corners of the field, called a "feng". Other people's fields were built with four earthen walls along the feng, which is called Qi.
, used to mark land boundaries.
When the two brothers pointed to the fields, several people happened to pass by behind them. One of them had a bun on his head and a wooden crown. He looked like a tall, thin old farmer with his hands behind his back. He looked at them from a distance and said, "These are not Zhong brothers." Two people?"
This man was in the sunset, and he went down to work with a few subordinates. Zhonghe Heifu had no choice but to stand up and give him his hand.
"I've seen Li Zheng."
But Li Zheng said with a bad expression: "Zhong, Heifu, what are you doing wandering around this seal? The law states that if you destroy the seal, whether intentionally or unintentionally, it will be regarded as a 'stealing seal', and you must You are sentenced to long term imprisonment. If you dare to shovel them secretly and expand your own field a few steps further, that would be 'land theft' and the punishment would be even heavier! Humph, don't blame me for not warning you!"
How could anyone mistake someone for a thief at the first word? Hei Fu felt unhappy in his heart.
The enmity between Zheng Zheng and his family originated from eight years ago. Zheng Zheng's son also fell in love with his eldest sister-in-law Aoi and wanted to be his concubine. But Aoi wanted to marry her eldest brother. In the end, due to their eldest aunt's sweet words... No, After some persuasion, the Kui family agreed to the marriage.
From then on, the Li Zheng family began to frequently make things difficult for the Zhong brothers: when they borrowed cattle for spring plowing, they were only given to the weakest old cattle, and when they borrowed iron farm tools, they were all tattered.
This is why the first thing Heifu did after he got the money was to ask his eldest brother to buy a complete set of iron farm tools, because he didn't want to look at other people's faces anymore.
Heifu also thought that he was assigned to serve as a regular soldier during the Chinese New Year, and he might have been hindered by this.
He looked at Li Zheng with a somewhat unkind look, but the eldest brother just bowed and smiled and said: "Thank you Li Zheng for reminding me, we will never break the law knowingly, but there is something I want to ask Li Zheng."
Zhong said: "I inherited the title of Duke from my deceased father. Every year, there is a bastard (servant) to help with the farming, but there was none last year. Not to mention, my younger brother has newly obtained the title of Duke, and he can take care of it by himself. If you don't have a hundred acres of land, Li Zheng, it's time to give it to him as a bastard this year, right?"
Li Zheng still had a straight face: "So what if you are a minister? You are a great minister? I am still a superior! There are only a few concubines, but there are seven or eight households with nobles. How can we get a share? According to the law, concubines should be given priority. It will be distributed to those with official positions, and then distributed to each family according to their household registration number. Sooner or later it will be your family's turn, so just wait and see!"
After saying that, he sneered and left.
At this time, Heifu finally couldn't bear it anymore and asked loudly: "I would like to ask Li Zheng, if I also become an official, will the concubine be assigned to my family first?"
"Is it up to you to be an official?"
Li Zheng turned around, glanced at Hei Fu with disdain, and said contemptuously: "When your family was in Chu, they were common people like ministers and concubines, serving my family for generations. After entering Qin, you were lucky enough to get a public official. Now you still want to be an official? It will take a few more generations!"
After saying that, he raised his head and left with his ministers.
When the Zheng family ruled in the Chu Kingdom, they were a small clan in this area with a prosperous population. After entering the Qin Dynasty, they were also promoted to Li Zheng. From the bottom of their hearts, they looked down on Zhong and Heifu, who had been poor for generations.
"Zhima is a big and upright person, but he is arrogant and dares to secretly use small means to retaliate against my family. Bah."
Li Zheng was gone, and Hei Fu felt as if he had eaten a fly. His good mood these days was ruined. But think about it, aren't there many village chiefs and village party secretaries in later generations who were like this? They were corrupt and perverted the law. , collude with each other, and become a local hegemon.
"After all, you are an official, Heifu. The family is counting on you as an official to help him restrain himself." Zhong smiled wryly and shook his head. Life at home has become increasingly difficult in the past few years, and it has nothing to do with Li Zheng's revenge.
, but they can only dare to be angry but dare not speak.
The people should not fight with the officials. This is the same in every era.
But Hei Fu looked at Li Zheng's peacock-like steps and smiled instead of getting angry.
"Brother, just wait. One day, I will make it impossible for his family to be upright!"
…
PS: The data in this chapter comes from "Research on Grain Yield per Mu in Qin and Han Dynasties". Because the records used are mainly from the Han Dynasty, they have been slightly reduced.