The Tang Empire now has a population of more than 300 million. The food consumed by so many people is a huge amount. Although the current level of agricultural production in the Tang Dynasty is much better than before, it also begins to use less machinery.
Equipment increases production efficiency, water conservancy facilities, bird droppings and other measures increase production, but per capita grain production is still at a relatively low level.
The per capita grain output of the Tang Dynasty was actually not as good as most of the Tang's overseas territories, such as Luzon, Bandan and other overseas provinces. The land in these places was fertile and the grain output was very high.
Not to mention places like South Africa and the Americas, which have a lot of fertile farmland and a small population. Many immigrant families own hundreds of acres of land, and they do not use cattle as the main method of farming like the natives.
In the deep plowing mode, draft horses are used for shallow plowing. Even though the yield per acre is less, there is still a lot of land that cannot be cultivated by others.
For most families who immigrated to North America, a few people used horses to cultivate hundreds of acres of land, and the per capita grain yield was very high.
The huge agricultural production capacity of overseas territories is now gradually beginning to feed back to the mainland. However, the cost of ocean transportation is still relatively high, and direct transportation of cheaper grains is relatively loss-making. Therefore, overseas territories generally import cash crops with relatively high unit prices to the mainland, and
It is not a direct input of grain.
But this also allows the local area to temporarily not use too much arable land to grow cotton and other cash crops, but to switch to growing food.
But even so, it is not so easy to feed the more than 300 million people in the country.
Once the empire's overall economic policy changes and large-scale urbanization begins, leading the peasant population to flow into the cities, it will inevitably lead to a large amount of land being abandoned and reducing food production.
No one is farming anymore, so there is nothing we can do to keep this land from being abandoned.
There is no way to do this, which is to improve the efficiency of agricultural production.
For example, in the past, it took two people to cultivate one acre of land to obtain 300 kilograms of grain. Now, using mechanical equipment, chemical fertilizers, and water conservancy facilities, one person can cultivate one acre of land and obtain 300 kilograms of grain.
This will free up part of the rural labor force and guide them into the industrial and commercial sectors, thereby increasing the income of farmers' families.
Improving the technical level of agricultural production is the best solution.
How to improve?
This is the problem facing Chen Lifu and others.
"We need to increase the intensity of mining and importing guano from South America and other regions. The current amount is far less than the local consumption!"
"South America, especially the Principality of Chile, is rich in guano resources, and the difficulty of mining is very low. It only requires a small amount of labor cost to mine. We can definitely increase our support to mine more guano resources!"
"Not only guano, but also saltpeter must be imported more. Previously, we imported saltpeter only for the defense industry, but the Royal Institute of Technology has successfully synthesized nitrogen fertilizer through saltpeter mines, and the Principality of Chile has abundant nitrogen fertilizers.
Saltpeter resources!”
"As long as we can get enough guano and saltpeter, it will be enough to raise the local agricultural production to another level!"
"But it's not enough to just rely on natural fertilizers. After all, the quantity is limited, and South America is too far away from the mainland, so the freight is not low. Even if we exempt all tariffs or even provide freight subsidies, the price will still be relatively expensive."
"We still have to consider the aspect of artificial synthesis. I have seen relevant research from the Royal Institute of Technology before. They are looking for ways to reduce the cost of artificial synthesis of some fertilizers. We can directly give them more funds for research.
, let them do it as soon as possible!"
"In addition, investment must be increased in the cultivation of hybrid rice and other high-yielding food crops. This is a project personally designated by Emperor Sheng in the early years. Although the investment in these years is not low, in my opinion, it is still far from enough.
, a lot of their breeding work is based on trial and error. As long as the funds are sufficient, the time can be shortened. It takes a person a hundred years to cultivate rice, because he may need to do multiple breeding experiments, but if we invest enough,
It is completely possible to organize one hundred or even ten thousand people to conduct cultivation experiments at different stages at the same time, greatly shortening this time."
"We also need to increase investment in water conservancy facilities. In the past, we only focused more on flood and drought prevention, but now, in addition to basic flood and drought prevention, we also need to pay more attention to irrigation. Water conservancy projects are not only used for prevention.
It is used for irrigation and to increase food production!"
"In terms of production tools, agricultural production equipment in vast rural areas is still insufficient. Many families still use the most basic agricultural tools. However, many higher-performance and more sophisticated agricultural tools are inaccessible because of their high prices.
In the vast rural areas, not to mention steam tractors, they can only be used in large farm areas and are completely unsuitable for most of our rural areas!"
The empire has more people but less land. Each family has a limited amount of farmland. They can't even use horses for plowing, let alone large machinery like steam tractors. Nowadays, they are most suitable for production on small family farms like the empire.
The mode is still to cultivate intensively and carefully, using cattle and even manpower to cultivate, so as to ensure that a small area of land can produce enough food.
If we follow the example of horse farming in North America, the yield per acre will not be enough.
Although a cabinet meeting initially talked about changing the demographic structure and increasing the proportion of middle-income groups.
But halfway through, it became a matter of how to increase farmers' income, because farmers accounted for too many of the empire's population.
And in the end, it became about how to increase food production.
But in the final analysis, it is still to increase the income of low-income groups in the empire, especially the majority of peasant families.
This matter is not simple, it involves many departments, and the cabinet has been discussing it repeatedly for several months.
It was not until February of the 39th year of Xuanping that the detailed charter was officially submitted.
This charter integrates the opinions of various cabinet ministries and formulates a unified plan to "revitalize the rural economy".
Of course, the core is still to increase food production.
Although there is a lot of content in the booklet, it can be summed up as the main four aspects: chemical fertilizers, grain seed improvement, water conservancy facilities, and agricultural equipment.
From the perspective of the cabinet, the easiest way to see results in the short term is the construction of rural water conservancy facilities.
The construction of rural water conservancy facilities does not refer to those large projects, but to the construction of small water conservancy facilities that go deep into rural areas. Although this aspect has been done before, the level of attention has not been enough. Now, we are prepared to invest heavily.