500 acres of experimental fields, this is not a small effort.

In order to get this 500 acres of experimental fields, Lin Quan spent nearly 2 million yuan to enter.

Although the cost of the technology that Professor Yi's team has come up with has been reduced a lot, because there is no large-scale production yet, the production uses laboratory equipment, because the quantity cannot be increased, so the price is very outrageous.

On average, the cost of each mu of basic mountain needs more than 1,200 yuan, which is close to 600,000 yuan.

And these lands need to be equipped with water diversion and irrigation, and it takes manpower to go into these sandy lands and turn them into land, and then irrigate, fertilize, and then buy high-quality seeds from other places, and these seeds must be very tenacious and able to adapt to the climate of the place.

Calculated labor costs, material costs and other costs add up, it takes nearly 2 million, with an average of 4,000 yuan per mu.

Even if an acre of land produces 700 kilograms of rice a year, according to the current price of rice at 125 yuan per 50 kilograms, it can only be sold for more than 1,800 yuan, which is more than half of the cost, and the later management also needs to spend a lot of money, pesticides, irrigation, weeding, harvesting, storage, drying, selling and so on.

Once these costs are taken into account, it is absolutely impossible to count on farming to support oneself, and if you don't do well, you will lose money, so it is not unreasonable for the rural population to have a large number of coats and the land to gradually become barren.

When Lin Quan's hometown used to farm, a family only had less than 6 acres of land, and these lands were very scattered, not in one place, and many of them were relatively short of water, and in years when there was no rain, the land could not even grow rice.

At that time, the purchase price of grain was very low, Lin Quan remembered that 100 catties was only about 20 yuan, the original harvest of one acre of land was only 1,000 catties, only 200 yuan, and the harvest of five acres of rice planted in a year could only be sold for 1,000 yuan, and the yield of wheat was much lower, even if it was calculated according to the same income, it was only 2,000 yuan.

A family of seven can only earn 2,000 yuan a year from farming, which is still not deducting the cost of pesticides, fertilizers, seeds and taxes.

And if you deduct these things, in fact, there will be almost no income from farming, and you will even lose money.

This kind of thing has lasted for many years, even after 2004, the agricultural tax was abolished, and the purchase price of grain has risen some, for farmers, the income gap between them and the urban population is still rapidly widened, the food protection price in 2014 is only about 125 yuan, and the protection price is basically the purchase price, if their family is still farming, then the annual income is only about 12,000, deducting the cost of about 8,000, and the average annual income is about 2,000.

This income is lower than the poverty line set by the state, and it can be seen that the income from farming is indeed too low.

However, agriculture is not completely unable to support itself, as long as it can be mechanized, then farming actually still has income, but farming cannot be regarded as the main business, otherwise it will really starve to death.

The plains in the north can be mechanized on a large scale, so as to greatly improve the efficiency of operations, and the area of cultivated land managed by one person can be greatly increased, if one person cultivates one acre of land, it is absolutely starving to death, and if one person manages fifty acres of land, then the output is considerable.

It's just that mechanization is not suitable for every place, and the southern hilly areas are barely okay, but the mountains, especially in many places like Hunan, Jiangxi and Guizhou, are too harsh and difficult to carry out machinery, so their mechanization is also unrealistic.

Because mechanization cannot enter, farming can only be done in the traditional way, so the per capita income in these mountainous areas cannot rise, and the deep mountains are poor, because there are too many people in the primary industry and cannot improve the industrial structure, and the proportion of the population in the secondary and tertiary industries is too small, thus reducing their income levels.

Agriculture can never make money, but it can't be abandoned.

In a country like an island country, they are also a country with a lot of mountains and few plains, so the measures they take to agriculture are to vigorously subsidize it, and the government has taken out a lot of funds for agricultural subsidies, and the country's deficit is used to subsidize the natural shortage of agriculture, speaking of which, a lot of their land is not suitable for mechanization, but because the price of agricultural products is relatively high, the price of neon rice is more than ten times the international price, and it is very common to buy more than 12 yuan for a pound of rice, which is even the cheapest price, 15 yuan a catty, 18 yuan is not uncommon even more than 20 yuan a catty.

The domestic rice price in this area is about 2.5, which is a better rice, and there are cheaper 1.6-1.9, which is slightly more expensive than the international rice price, but not much.

The population of the island country is very old, and young people are reluctant to engage in agriculture, so the current situation in agriculture is very difficult as in China, with 40% of the agricultural population being over 60 years old, of which 33.5% are over 65 years old!

Most of this group of people were born around 1950, they are old and can't keep up with the modern era, so they can't find too good jobs in the city, and they don't want to go out, plus the government subsidies are not bad, so they are willing to farm.

But the situation in China is more serious, the rural farmers are also the elderly, but because the protection and subsidies of agriculture are too small, so for young people, they even clearly ask the old people not to farm, no income, not to mention, but also tired and tired, if you are tired of a disease, go to the hospital to see a doctor to spend more money than at home farming!

As a result, the elderly in China's rural areas are also at home, but there are fewer and fewer people farming, which is much more serious than in Japan, and if it were not for the fact that several large grain-producing provinces in the plains were struggling to support it, the agricultural situation of the whole country would be very worrying.

However, people born after the 1980s are in public, and there are almost no people who are still willing to farm, and those who are still farming are basically people born in the sixties and seventies of the last century.

And at this time, with this problem in mind, look at the endless desert in front of you.

Lin Quan felt that the burden on his body was very heavy.

If the desert land can be successfully improved, it will be equivalent to building several large plains on top of the original desert that can grow food, and the significance of this for the country is undoubtedly to continue the life of agriculture.

The plain zone is of great significance to a country, the world's major civilizations have developed in the plain zone with water sources, without the plain, there will be no large amount of food output, and the development of civilization cannot be supported.

PS: This book is finished, and the last chapter will be announced at 8 pm on December 30th, and I have finished writing it and set up a regular update.