In the next week, according to the plan, Xiao Yifei will inspect the agriculture, rural areas, and peasants in Germany, so as to facilitate the choice of roads in the future.

Xiao Yifei drove to an ordinary town in Stuttgart, followed the farmers to see their work during the day, bragged and chatted with the farmers in the bar at night, and what he learned from the Internet and the town's government department, although this kind of investigation is very superficial, but it is also very revealing.

The town is made up entirely of nearby farmers who usually live in the town and go to work on their own farms near the town. The homes in these small towns are very clean, the flowers are blooming, and it is clear that they have a high quality of life. However, the work on the farm is very hard after all, and the family farm is not very large and not very profitable, and even if you want to hire Eastern Europeans to work, you can only hire a few temporary workers when the farm is busy. The new generation of young people has largely gone to the cities to find work, and even the few remaining young people have hardly taken up agricultural work.

It is even harder for a few scattered peasant households, whose arable land is not large, the degree of mechanization is not high, and many things still rely on manpower.

Although the expedition in the past few days was only scratching, he came to the conclusion that Germany, and even Europe, were not suitable for his farming requirements.

First of all, agriculture in Germany is still dominated by family farms, and there are few large farms. In these family farms, the area is not large, 80% of them are less than 100 hectares, that is, just over 200 acres, 1,200 acres of land.

About half of the farming households are well below this figure, and according to Xiao Yifei, most families in this town only cultivate more than 10 acres, and the largest family only has 200 acres. Of course, it may have something to do with the fact that the place Xiao Yifei visited was southern Germany, and they said that the farms in the north were generally larger than those in the south. It seems that there are regional differences in every country.

Family farming, which means that very few workers are employed, and most of the work is done by the farmer's family. For Xiao Yifei, such a farm is not suitable for him to exert the power of space.

Secondly, land prices in Germany and even in Europe are too expensive. casually checked on the Internet, on the German-Dutch border, one of the farms covers an area of about 50,000 square meters, with farmhouses, horse sheds, chicken and duck sheds and other facilities, priced at 350,000 euros; 50,000 square meters sounds like a lot of land, but in reality, it's only 75 acres of land, or 12 acres. That's 30,000 euros per acre, which is just the price of ordinary agricultural land, and even more so if it is a vineyard or orchard. Xiao Yifei felt that the high price of the land was out of the question.

Even more outrageous is another villa-style house with a usable area of about 10,000 square meters, with 4,000 square meters of glass conservatories and operating equipment, and a villa-style house with a usable area of more than 300 square meters, priced at 440,000 euros.

This is not only the case in Germany, but also in Europe because of the early development, the large population, and the permanent ownership of land, and the high land price is understandable, but the high land price means that the land area that Xiao Yifei can buy is small, and the cost of future development and growth is also high.

Third, such farms do not mean that they cannot be hired, but that they cannot afford to hire them. This question involves an interesting thing, which is that in Germany, being a farmer has to be a research. Going to an agricultural university and becoming a farmer is the third most desirable job for young people in Germany. Agricultural universities are generally 5 years, after 2 years of study in school, the remaining 3 years are internships, and the salary of these interns is more than 1,000 euros a month, and even more than 3,000 euros a month after graduation.

How many hired workers can a farm of thousands of acres afford? Therefore, many things on the farm have to be done by the farmer himself. Xiao Yifei hopes to be the kind of farmer who usually works as a shopkeeper and occasionally helps out with some things, he doesn't want to bury himself in the field all day long, in that case, he might as well sell a few paintings as rice worms.

The fourth and biggest downside is Europe's high welfare policy. Some people may think that high welfare is a good thing. In the past, Xiao Yifei also held this view. But there is a saying that the ass decides the head, and now Xiao Yifei has space, he is not a working boy anymore, he is going to the rentier class. How does the welfare come about, it's very simple, kill the rich and help the poor. And with space, Xiao Yifei must naturally go to the upper level of the pyramid, and killing the rich and helping the poor is not to take more money from his bag. High welfare means high taxes, that is, more money from his pocket, then Xiao Yifei will definitely not do it.

Fifth, although there are subsidies for farming in Europe, it is a pity that the subsidies for large farms are discounted, to as low as half of the level of family farms, and even now some politicians are still demanding that the subsidies for large farms continue to be reduced, to only 4 percent of the subsidies for small and medium-sized family farms. This made Xiao Yifei, who went to the big farm, embarrassed.

The final downside is Europe's animal welfare policy. This thing is so damn. The policy first divides animals into 6 categories, namely: farm animals, laboratory animals, companion animals, working animals, recreational animals and wild animals. The various stages of the animal are then regulated.

For example, in the feeding stage, pigs are used as an example to illustrate the welfare standards of EU pigs: piglets are born with at least 13 days of breast milk, sleep on dry straw, and have the right to eat soil. In order to take care of the emotions of pigs, the EU also stipulates that by 2013, EU member states must stop raising pigs in captivity and adopt free-range pig breeding. In this regard, in addition to the comprehensive ban on fully enclosed pigsty feeding as early as 1999, the United Kingdom also issued a special "Pig Welfare Regulations", which made detailed provisions on the pigsty environment and feeding methods for farmers to raise pigs, and added provisions for pigs "toys" to avoid pigs feeling bored, and stipulated that farmers who do not comply with the regulations will be fined 2,500 pounds.

During the animal transportation stage, it is stipulated that it cannot be transported continuously for 8 hours, and the animals must be let down every 8 hours to "let the wind out".

At the stage of slaughter, welfare is even more perverted. The way of killing pigs in our rural areas is illegal, because the animal must be stunned before slaughter, and a veterinarian must be present, and the veterinarian can only perform bloodletting and dissection before the animal is completely unconscious. And slaughtered in isolation so that other live pigs are not stimulated and frightened.

Not only that, but they also set a cap on the size of the farm, for example, 3 million chickens or 10,000 pigs.

After learning about such a strict welfare policy, Xiao Yifei completely dispelled the idea of developing in Europe, especially the pig must have the right to arch the land and have toys, whether this is a pig or a man. It is no wonder that some domestic engineering companies did not consider animal factors when undertaking the construction of European highways, resulting in modification of design and delay of construction period.

However, during this visit, Xiao Yifei had a very good impression of the German countryside. Germany is doing very well with urbanization, and the urbanization rate in Germany is 97%. However, their urbanization is not as large as that of the huge cities in China, many cities have only a few hundred thousand people like small counties or third-tier cities in China, and they are really vigorously developing small towns, and 70% of them live in small towns.

Berlin, the capital of Germany, has a population of just over 3 million, the second-largest city, Hamburg, has a population of 1.7 million, which is only half that of Berlin, and the third-largest city, Munich, has a population of 1.2 million. These three cities are the only cities in Germany with a population of more than one million. Other cities, such as Cologne, Dortmund, Bremen, Stuttgart, Hanover, etc., have only 500 to 900,000 people. However, he has more than 1,500 towns with more than 10,000 people, which shows the rationality of his urban planning.

In China, there are more than 160 cities with a population of more than one million, and 6 cities with a population of more than 10 million. From the satellite photos, it can be seen that the huge cement cities look extremely dazzling on the green plains, just like the normal skin with leprosy sores, and they are getting bigger and bigger.

I have to say that Germany is really worth learning from at home in this regard.

However, there is a problem in Germany and Europe, that is, xenophobia. You know this from one side. As we all know, we Chinese like to live together when we go to foreign countries, so we have formed Chinatowns one by one. But if you're in Europe, you'll find that Chinatowns here are so small that they can't compare to the size of Chinatowns in the United States.

Now that it was determined that Europe was not suitable, Xiao Yifei excluded them from the list of farming.

In fact, compared with Europe, the traditional immigration countries of the United States and Canada have always been hot spots for Chinese immigration, while Australia and New Zealand are new hot spots that have emerged in recent years.

Xiao Yifei consulted a large number of materials and learned about the advantages and disadvantages of farming in various countries.

For example, he has learned that some provinces in Canada have clearly legislated to restrict foreigners from owning farms in their provinces, and some provinces allow foreigners to own land, but limit the area to 5 to 40 acres. Although some provinces did not have any restrictions, in the end, Xiao Yifei completely excluded Canada from the farming list on the grounds that it was too cold.

Because he heard that Australia has plans to restrict foreign investment in agriculture, which is not conducive to Xiao Yifei's expansion of farming scale in the future, Australia was also excluded.

In addition, New Zealand is too small. New Zealand has a New Zealand Overseas Investment Office (oIo). Under oIo's rules, agricultural land involving more than 5 hectares will be considered "sensitive land" and will be subject to oIo's approval, just like transactions with a transaction amount of more than $100 million.

That's not all, the real little family is still to come.

Russian steel tycoon Alexander Abramov received approval from the oIo last year to buy a 120-hectare farm in the Northland region for the construction of a private villa of "considerable size". According to oIo's filings, he plans to upgrade the cattle ranch in Helena Bay to carry out "livestock engineering and environmental and historic preservation work." The Russian tycoon also dealt with the environmental protection department to build a pond for the ducks on the farm.

Seriously, the expansion of the cattle farm can only be carried out under the banner of "animal husbandry and environmental and historical preservation work", and digging a pond for the ducks requires dealing with the environmental protection department.

With such a powerful department, Xiao Yifei directly gave up New Zealand.

In the end, Xiao Yifei chose to go to the United States to farm.

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