The first thousand two hundred and ninety-seven chapters give face to God
The flood season of Xuanping 16 has arrived as scheduled, but according to the weather report from the Royal Institute of Technology, the rainfall across the country this year is relatively normal, and there is no extreme weather like last year.
Last year, in Henan, Jiangbei and Wanbei, the rainfall throughout the year was actually at normal levels. The problem was that most of the rainfall was concentrated in May, which led to floods.
This year, the total rainfall is actually the same as last year, but it is scattered, with light rain starting in April, rain in May, June, and all the way to July.
Although the weather has been bad for several months, the absence of short-term intensive rainstorms has greatly reduced the pressure on flood control.
The levees in the Kaifeng section of the Yellow River and the Hongze Lake levee that were under emergency construction have withstood the test and did not break!
Although there have been several minor dangers in the remaining sections of the river where large-scale construction has not been carried out, the scale is small and controllable. The entire disaster-stricken area is only a few counties, and the number of victims involved is
There are about 100,000 people, and the casualties will not exceed 100 people.
This situation is already a huge victory for the Yellow River and Huaihe River basins, which have burst their banks almost every year in the past.
When the time enters September, it can basically be declared that the empire has successfully passed this year's flood season!
This also made Li Xuan breathe a sigh of relief.
In fact, although from last year to this year, many water conservancy project facilities were constructed in various places, only a few projects were completed. Most of the flood control still relies on the original old facilities. If God does not provide for it,
If there is another big flood like last year, it is 100% impossible to withstand it.
Fortunately, God is still more generous!
However, other parts of the country have not suffered from large-scale floods or droughts.
In this way, the empire will have a good harvest this year, and this will also greatly ease the pressure on the empire's food reserves.
You must know that due to the floods last year, the reason why tens of millions of people were affected by the disaster without large-scale displacement and riots is inseparable from the empire's full-scale disaster relief. In order to provide disaster relief, the empire invested countless materials, and the most important of them was food.
.
If you have food, you can stabilize the people affected by the disaster. Without food, there will be big chaos.
In order to provide disaster relief, the empire moved a large amount of grain from grain storage warehouses across the country through the Datang Grain Corporation and transported it to the disaster-stricken areas.
This move also caused the empire's food reserves in many areas to drop to a very dangerous situation.
The empire's food reserves are all hard-earned, but collected and stored grain by grain.
Because each year's grain must first feed the people, the excess grain can be stored through the Datang Grain Company. Because the empire has a large population and the grain output is relatively limited, this also causes the empire's grain reserves to always be insignificant.
many.
Among them, the largest granary in the entire empire, the grain warehouse established in Jinling City, only has enough food to feed 500,000 people for a year.
Grain storage warehouses in other regions have even less grain.
Last year, many grain warehouses were evacuated for disaster relief. If there is another large-scale natural disaster this year, there will really be no solution. This is not a question of whether Li Xuan is willing to provide disaster relief, but
There is no problem of not having enough food even if you want to provide disaster relief.
This year's bumper harvest will greatly alleviate the problem of food reserves.
At the same time, because Datang Grain Corporation is here, there is no need to worry about a bumper harvest. The sharp drop in grain prices has hurt farmers.
Through the Grain Corporation, the Tang Empire implemented very strict price controls on the price of grain, a vital strategic material. It stipulated the price range. The reduction in grain production caused the price to be too high, so the Datang Grain Corporation
Reserved grains will be sold off to stabilize grain prices.
When a bumper grain harvest causes prices to fall, Datang Grain Corporation will purchase grain on a large scale to drive up grain prices.
In short, the Tang Empire wanted to stabilize the price of grain within a fixed range and not allow it to fluctuate too much.
If some grain merchants want to break this grain price system, they will not only encounter countermeasures from Datang Grain Corporation, but they will also get into huge trouble.
Once it is discovered that profiteers are manipulating food prices, they will be arrested without mercy on various charges.
It is precisely because of this tough measure that it ensured that food prices within the Tang Empire were maintained at a relatively balanced level for many years without major ups and downs.
When food prices are stable, farmers can earn a stable income from farming, and urban residents can also buy food at market prices to maintain their lives. If the stability of food prices is broken, then there will be big troubles.
Things have gone smoothly this year, but in Li Xuan’s opinion it’s still not enough!
The current grain output is still too low. It is too difficult to feed more than 150 million people, let alone have excess grain for strategic reserves.
So he set his sights in other directions!
In order to solve the problem of grain production, one is to increase the domestic arable land area, then to increase imports, and thirdly to increase the grain output per mu.
It is not easy to increase the area of arable land, and it is also what the empire has been doing. The development of Huguang, the Pearl River Delta and other regions is to increase the area of arable land.
To this end, the empire has implemented various methods such as domestic immigration and settlement orders. The results are currently quite good. The grain output in the Huguang area has increased significantly, and it is expected to become the new granary of the empire.
However, the area of arable land in the country is limited. Now there are areas such as Huguang for development, but the population continues to grow. In the absence of large-scale wars and the empire does not control births, the large population
Growth has become inevitable.
At present, the population growth rate exceeds the growth rate of arable land area. Therefore, relying solely on development and reclamation to solve the food problem can only be a short-term solution, not a long-term one.
The second is to increase the import of grain, which the empire is also doing, and has implemented some targeted policies, such as exempting grain imports from tariffs. The second is to encourage domestic people to immigrate overseas and engage in agriculture, reclamation and planting.
garden.
Finally, there is the predatory import of grain from some regions, especially the Nanyang region. The officially controlled Nanyang Trading Company imports a large amount of grain from the Nanyang region every year.
In fact, the indigenous population in Nanyang is also large, and the locals also need to eat. After the Tang Empire imported a large amount of food, they themselves would also suffer from a food crisis. However, this is none of the empire's business. Sometimes in order to import food,
The empire will specify that food can only be exchanged for ordnance and other industrial products.
In addition to the above two methods, under Li Xuan's instructions, a third method was also carried out to solve the food problem, which was to increase the yield per mu through technical means.
For example, using chemical fertilizers, using hybrid rice, or introducing high-yielding crops such as sweet potatoes and corn.
It's just that chemical fertilizers won't be solved for a while, because the foundation of this thing is the chemical industry. Although chemical experts from the Royal Institute of Technology have already produced urea and phosphate fertilizers in the laboratory, large-scale industrial production requires
A large amount of chemical raw materials such as sulfuric acid.
Unfortunately, with the current technical capabilities of the Tang Empire, the output of basic chemical raw materials such as sulfuric acid is still relatively limited. It is not enough for key industrial production and national defense production. Large quantities of chemical raw materials can be produced there to synthesize fertilizers, and then
Used for agricultural production.
The large-scale popularization and application of chemical fertilizers is limited by the industrial base, so the Imperial Ministry of Agriculture can only encourage farmers to use farmyard manure as much as possible, but farmers in China have already started using farmyard manure.
, without official guidance from the empire.
Chemical fertilizers were not enough, so Li Xuan turned his attention to hybrid rice and new crops.
Hybrid rice has actually been in the works for a long time. The Royal Institute of Technology has a special research team in charge of this matter. They established a large-scale hybrid rice experimental base on Qiongzhou Island, trying to hybridize various rice varieties.
The effect is not without it, just not great. The most obvious effect is that the rice introduced from Nanyang has been improved and cultivated in a targeted manner, making the rice from Nanyang suitable for planting in the southern provinces of the empire.
Now Guangdong and Guangxi have taken the lead in planting this kind of rice on a large scale.
What are the characteristics of this kind of rice?
That is two crops of rice, and the unit output can be maintained on the premise of two crops of rice.
Of course, this kind of two-season rice also has very high requirements for rice fields. It needs sufficient sunshine, suitable temperature, rainfall and fertilizer. Therefore, there are still not many paddy fields that can grow these two-season rice.
Li Xuan's goal is not just these two-crop rice, but hopes to improve rice with greater adaptability and higher yield.
However, in Li Xuan's view, this goal is difficult to achieve in a short time, at least not within decades, because it requires breeding of hybrid rice generation after generation, which takes a long time.
In fact, the introduction of new crops also has problems with adaptability. In fact, the Tang Empire had already obtained many new crops from the Americas through the Portuguese and Spain, and the key sweet potatoes and corns had been available for a long time.
But the problem is that these crops from the Americas are still not adapted to the soil and water. Even if they can be planted in some areas, the yields are not as high as Li Xuan expected. Therefore, these crops still need to be specially adapted to cultivate, and they cannot be expected in a short time.