New Southport in North America is already the empire's largest port city in North America, even surpassing Xinjinshan, which has been developed for many years.
Although Xinjinshan has been developed for many years, the geographical climate of the entire western coast of North America is far inferior to that of the east coast.
The eastern coast of North America has large plains, rich mineral resources, and more importantly, there are many rivers here, which can effectively use inland rivers to penetrate deep into the interior.
Nowadays, the Tang Empire has established many immigrant settlements on the eastern coast, not only in the coastal areas, but also in the inland plains.
Although North America today is restricted by the Import and Export Commission and cannot develop industry, and even many machinery and equipment cannot be used, its agricultural development is quite rapid thanks to the unique natural environment.
In the thirty-fifth year of Xuanping, North America's agricultural production was not only self-sufficient and provided food for new immigrants, but was also able to be exported in large quantities.
A lot of food from the east coast is exported to Europe and North Africa, while food from the west coast can already be shipped back to the mainland.
In the age of sails, due to the small volume of ship transportation, if we engaged in ocean-going grain trade, in fact, because the freight was too high, there would be no profit or even loss if the grain from North America was shipped back to the mainland.
It’s a typical one that can’t even make back the shipping fee!
Even in the current steam age, although freight costs have been greatly reduced compared to the sail era, relatively speaking, the freight costs of ocean trade are still relatively high and are not suitable for transporting cheap bulk materials.
Grain is a relatively cheap bulk material. If it is purely for grain trade, then the shipping company will suffer losses.
However, Datang's foreign trade these days, including the trade between the mainland and overseas territories, is very typical, that is, the export of various industrial products from the mainland, some of the Tang's specialties; such as cloth, soap,
Perfume, weapons, hardware, matches.
Another example is traditional specialty products such as silk, porcelain, and tea.
What overseas imports to China are various industrial raw materials and agricultural products, such as various common ores, precious metals, spices, sucrose, rubber, coffee, cotton, fur, dyes, wood, cocoa, grain, etc.
How should I put it? You can't leave the ship empty when you return home. The cost of a trip between two or three thousand tons of large cargo ships is not low, and you can make a little profit.
Nowadays, the North American region controlled by the Tang Dynasty mainly develops agriculture and various agricultural plantings. In addition to grain, there are also various economic crops.
Therefore, the merchant ships of the Tang Dynasty that arrived in the Americas would naturally bring various products from the Americas with them when they returned, the most valuable of which were precious metals. The production of gold and silver in the Americas was very large.
However, the biggest excess is in grain and other cash crops.
The quantity of these items is huge and the price is not high. There is not much profit in shipping them back to the mainland, but it is better than returning empty.
At the same time, the empire generally adopted a zero-tariff policy for its overseas territories.
In other words, the trade between the mainland and North America is based on the domestic trade system and does not charge any tariffs.
Goods from the Tang Dynasty were transported to North America for sale without tariffs, and agricultural products from North America were transported to the mainland without tariffs. It was precisely because there were no tariffs that we could barely maintain our position without losing money.
Under this situation, the Americas and other overseas territories have begun to gradually supply agricultural products to the mainland, which has greatly enriched the empire's local food supply and alleviated the food pressure caused by rapid population growth.
In the thirty-fifth year of Xuanping, the Ministry of Household Statistics estimated that the per capita annual grain consumption in the empire reached 310 kilograms. At the same time, the Ministry of Household Statistics estimated that the empire's population was approximately 200 million people.
However, the total grain output in the empire is only 60 million tons, and the shortfall of 2 million tons of grain is actually imported from overseas territories, mainly Luzon Province, Banten Province, Malacca State in Southeast Asia, and the west coast of America
As a supplement.
However, the agricultural products imported into the empire were not only grains, but also various economic crops, such as cane sugar and cotton.
If these cash crops are not imported, a large amount of land will be consumed for cultivation in the empire. Now that a large number of cheap overseas cash crops are imported, many local farmers are unable to make a profit, so they simply plant food.
After all, Datang's grain harvest was guaranteed despite droughts and floods, because Datang adopted a grain price stabilization policy, and the Datang Grain Corporation purchased large amounts of grain at a fixed price every year.
The grain prices they set take into account many aspects, and they need to protect the interests of farmers, as well as the interests of workers.
Because one is farming and selling grain, and the other is working to buy grain. If the balance between the two is not good, then one of them will suffer.
Therefore, Datang officials were very sensitive to grain prices and set price limits.
This also means that as long as farmers are willing to work hard, they will not have to worry about a bumper harvest that will harm farmers when they grow food, let alone not being able to sell it.
You won’t make much, but you can definitely make money!
Therefore, most local farmers are still very motivated to grow food.
Not to mention, when the empire was engaged in land reform, it still adopted the method of limiting the use of land. The land was restricted and stipulated that it could only be used to grow food, so only food could be grown, and no cash crops could be grown.
Therefore, the empire's local food production is still guaranteed.
But if you want to increase the empire's per capita food level to 350 kilograms or even 400 kilograms, you can't rely solely on traditional Chinese agricultural areas.
We have to add other newly developed areas in the empire, such as western Liaoning, eastern Liaoning, and Central Asia.
In addition, it is necessary to increase imports. The Southeast Asian region and the Americas are already the empire's food import areas. In the later period, India and Africa are also possible.
From the fact that it can provide a large amount of agricultural products and precious metals to the empire, it can be seen that North America is still developing quite well today.
As the most developed city in North America, New Nangang is naturally extraordinary.
Although there are less than 10,000 urban residents in Xinnan Port today, in fact most of these urban residents are officials, their families and garrison troops. In fact, the immigrants in Xinnan County do not live in the city, or they are
Live on your own farm.
Or live in an immigrant town!
Within hundreds of kilometers of Xinnan County, there are about 20 relatively large immigrant towns and more than 100 immigrant villages, with a total of about 200,000 imperial immigrants living there.
Surrounding these immigrant towns and villages are farms that are almost endless as far as the eye can see.
In fact, these days, many people don't like to live in the city, but those who have some conditions prefer to live in the countryside.
In particular, the rich and powerful like to build large-scale mansions, which are usually built in the suburbs of cities. For example, there are many mansions of rich and powerful people in the suburbs of Jinling City.
In some inconspicuous small ravines, there are often mansions built by local dignitaries.
People in the Tang Dynasty these days will only live in the city unless they have no choice but to work in the city. Otherwise, they will not live in the city under certain conditions.
So in this era, when you see a town with not many people, don't think that the town is very poor or has very few people. In fact, rich people live in mansions in the suburbs.
The same is true for Xinnangang. There are not many people in the entire Xinnangang city area. The total number of people is only ten thousand, and a large number of them are garrison troops, businessmen, government officials and their families.
As for ordinary immigrants, they are actually very few.
But this does not affect the prosperity of New Southport, because it is the largest port city on the entire eastern coast of North America, and it can also extend to the inland areas through the New South River.
After many new immigrants arrived on the east coast of North America, New Southport was where they disembarked.
Ge Ziqiang is such an immigrant!
He came to Xinnanport on an immigration ship five days ago, not only him, but also his family.
He is a family of twelve who immigrated directly to North America. According to the current North American immigration policy, as long as you sign up for immigration and obey the arrangements, you will be given free land, reimbursement of boat tickets, and necessary farm tools and supplies.
Seeds and even draft horses for farming, of course, cost money for this part, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t have money, you can apply for a special immigration loan.
When he went to the immigration office under the county government in Xinnangang, Ge Ziqiang got the land documents assigned to his family. There was a lot of land, and he also checked that the situation was very good.
It is far away from the port.
With the help of government personnel, they settled down initially. As soon as they settled down, Ge Ziqiang came to the county again, preparing to apply for an immigration loan.
The land allocated to their family was quite a lot, a total of 360 acres, which was based on an average of 20 acres per person.
This is actually still in Xinnan County. If Ge Ziqiang is willing to choose to go to a more inland and remote place, then more land can be allocated for free. For example, a new immigrant who is about two hundred kilometers away from Xinnan County
If the town is willing to go, everyone can be allocated fifty acres of land.
It's free!
If you still have money in your pocket, you can buy more land at a very cheap price.
If we look at it according to traditional Chinese standards, in fact, the land owned by every immigrant family in overseas territories belongs to the standard of small landlords. Each family can have as little as dozens of acres, as many as hundreds or even thousands of acres.
The number depends on the location and the number of people.
However, no matter how much land they have, they can only cultivate it themselves. They cannot directly let the indigenous people cultivate the land like the European colonists.
The Tang Empire did not run any indigenous plantations or anything like that.
Ge Ziqiang's family has a large population, but it is very difficult to open more than 300 acres of land purely through labor.
So he just wanted to buy draft horses to open up wasteland and grow food.