Regarding the strategic value of horses, this actually involves the strategic layout of the entire crossing group and the deduction of future social development.

In general, in the current situation of extreme demand for imported supplies, the upper echelons of the empire will not invest much in the horse breed - are the horses useful? Yes! Is it a necessity? No!

Huo Xiong's control of the policy is very accurate, so he clearly told Huang Xu that the Animal Husbandry Corporation will not get involved in this troubled water...... The expansion of horse breeds is not the most urgent undertaking of the empire at the moment, so if the army insists on doing so, then ask them to squeeze out internal resources, as for public resources, this will definitely not work.

Huang Xu understood what Huo Xiong meant. But a project like a horse breed that requires long-term blood transfusion is too cost-effective to use internal resources, so Huang Xu still tried hard to try to convince Huo Xiong.

So the two started a round of discussion while sitting on the motorcycle.

......

Regarding the use of livestock, it is usually divided into two directions: forced labor and food.

Forced labor includes ploughing and riding.

In later generations, the world of science and technology was developed little by little, including horse farming with a history of thousands of years.

Horse farming was the most efficient form of ploughing, used by continental farmers and early North American pioneers, and the efficiency of heavy-duty horses was the highest before the advent of tractors.

However, horse farming is not so much in the eastern continent – the Han region is a mountainous country, with mountains, hills and plateaus accounting for 69% of the country's total land area. In other words, the Han people have never been a suitable nation for raising horses and using horses.

This data also needs to cut down the grasslands in the north that are suitable for raising horses: before the Qing Dynasty, Mongolia has always been a base for nomads to attack the Central Plains, so it has to be merged into the data of mountainous areas where horses cannot be raised.

The ancient Han people, who had only about 20 percent of the plains to use, were unable to raise their horses to the level of daily ploughing like Europeans or North Americans...... The plains are full of people, and only the dwarf Dian horses can survive in the rolling mountains, the northerners use hoes and cows, and the southerners use buffaloes.

Therefore, for thousands of years, the main way of cultivating land in the Eastern Continent was hoes and cattle, so for thousands of years, people could only use salt, iron and tea to exchange horses from Mongolia and Qinghai-Tibet.

As for those cool cavalry stories in history, including Huo Qubing and Zhao Yun...... In fact, from the destruction of the Six Kingdoms by Qin to the crossing of the Yangtze River by a million Red Army, in countless internal and external wars, the main way for the Han nation to solve its opponents has always been a large number of infantry, and a small number of elite cavalry cannot hide the lack of war horses in their bones.

......

It's specific to the new plane's traversal here.

As mentioned above, after the army arrives in the north, it is completely possible to buy Mongolian horses and all kinds of inferior horses, including donkeys and mules, to form mounted infantry to kill the enemy, and there is no need to spend a huge amount of money to breed a population.

In this way, the riding function of the horse is not urgently needed at the moment. You know, the war in this plane is not like World War I and World War II in later generations, the industrial countries fought in the dark, and the mortality rate of war horses was in the millions - this plane is Ultraman fighting weak chickens, the advantage of the imperial army is too great, and the war is usually one-sided, not so cruel at all, and it will not use a million horses.

After removing the riding function, the rest is the ploughing function...... However, in this new era of drastic social changes, it is difficult to say that the ploughing horse can catch up.

The countries that have been established by the people will go through the millennium of development of the old world in just a few years or more than a decade.

The newly baked nobles of the empire are, in a sense, prophets - they know what is going on for three days, and they will be rich for thousands of years, so the prophets will not choose backward production methods.

In the whole of East Asia, where is the most suitable place to explode food? In addition to the Tainan Plain, there is no doubt that it belongs to the Chao Phraya River Plain in Thailand. Whether it is the climate, water and soil, the plains along the Chao Phraya River are a godsend for rice production, and the first in East Asia.

In later generations, Thailand's rice production was 21 million tonnes per year. The vast majority of this figure comes from the above-mentioned land. In addition, the huge amount of pineapples, bananas, lychees, and these fruits occupy land that has not been counted.

In the planning of the crossing, once the country's comprehensive industrial capacity reaches the minimum output requirements - gunboats, tractors, fertilizers, pesticides, then the migrant fleet escorted by the fleet will be ready to land in the Gulf of Siam.

Mechanized cropland and rice in Thailand and the Tainan Plain were the most efficient mode of grain production in the late Ming Dynasty.

The above two pieces of heaven-sent land, plus gas tractors, soil fertilizers, pesticides, and other big killers, even if they are harvested twice a year, the output of these two places is enough to feed all the victims of the Ming Kingdom, and by the way, support the early colonial actions of the empire.

After the so-called fight against local tyrants to divide the land, a nest of peasants with hoes crowded into the village and happily shouted the emperor's grace...... The new plane does not allow for such inefficient scenarios.

All the peasants had to go to the New World...... Instead of tens of millions of people being starved to death, sick to death, and killed in the Xiaoice era, it is better to send them out to colonize.

These people need to carve out tropical plantations for their children and grandchildren, as well as farms in North America and New Zealand, at the cost of high mortality rates. In the mountainous land of the Ming Continent, except for the habitable plains, the rest of the population has to migrate under the planning of the people.

Under this strategic deduction of the future, horse farming was relegated to a very low position - concentrating resources on mechanized agriculture on two plains was the established strategy of the cabinet, and if horses were needed one day, it would be the story of immigrants to North America.

......

Since the two most important functions of the horse, riding and ploughing, have been unloaded and postponed, the remaining horses for food have not even touched the edges.

It was also deprived of its service function, but the cow was still the first domestic animal: steak, milk and potato stewed brisket was the best food that could really change the national constitution.

When Huo Xiong broke up and explained the question about cattle and horses, Huang Xu had nothing to say...... After all, the times are different, and the internal and external environments faced by countries are also different, so the attitude towards cattle and horses cannot be based on the experience of the old world.

After clarifying the stakes, Huo Xiong finally gave Huang Xu a few ideas to save the country as a "technical consultant".

Considering the current situation in the racecourse, in fact, Huang Xu and Zhang Luo's embryo transfer are redundant. Because in addition to those Arabian horses, the horse farm does not even have a high-quality surrogate mare, how can we talk about embryo transfer? So Huo Xiong suggested that Huang Xu calm down first and collect the mares.

When it comes to mares, the dwarf southern horse is certainly not good: the difference in size is too great, and even if an embryo transfer is done in the future, the height of the foal will be affected by the mare's pelvic bones.

In this regard, Huo Xiong pointed out: The army actually has room for maneuver. Because the cabinet is concerned about import quotas, and as for the army buying horses from the natives with money, the cabinet will not take care of such a thing.

So where to buy a horse from? Huo Xiong spoke of two places: Hangzhou and India.

Since Hangzhou is the terminus of the Grand Canal, cattle and horse dealers from the north will transport goods to the port every year. It is not new for the wealthy people in Jiangnan to use horse-drawn carts well, so the army can entrust the comrades of the Hangzhou station to buy some high-quality mares, of course, the price will not be cheap.

As for the Indian side, the Europeans can be entrusted with organizing the supply of mares.

Regarding the breed of horses, the army is actually not very demanding, because the ultimate goal of the military is very simple, which is to cultivate warm-blooded riding horses that can travel long distances at a uniform speed.

This requirement is much lower than raising a hot-blooded horse that can sprint, and in fact, most warm-blooded crossbreeds can meet the requirements of the army.

Therefore, Huo Xiong revealed the information here: India not only has its own excellent breeds of Mawari horses and Katiawa horses, but also for the needs of war and sacrificial ceremonies, and the climate of South India is not suitable for the growth of horses, so the upper class often imports horses from Arabia and West Asia, and there are a large number of Arabian horses.

Hearing this, Huang Xu basically agreed with the routine pointed out by Huo Xiong.

In the end, Huo Xiong also made a promise: as long as the horse farm has enough basic mare population, then the animal husbandry company will provide technical support free of charge in the establishment of archives, cross-breeding, and embryo transfer.

Of course, the frozen horse embryos that need the emperor's hand are still up to the army to figure it out.

"It's a big deal to use the private quota rewarded by the emperor, anyway, the embryo tank is not large, and you like horses so much." Huo Xiong said this with a wicked smile as he was leaving.

"Let's go!" After Huang Xu threw another cigar to Huo Xiong, he scolded and waved his hand to let him go.

As for everyone's private goods...... The private quota of one cubic meter per person has long been hyped up to sky-high prices. It is necessary to let the military leaders of the army contribute a little bit of private volume to serve the great cause of horse breeding in the public family...... Huang Xu feels very mysterious when he thinks about it.

As long as he likes to smoke cigars, that bit of personal space will be used up sooner or later, and no one can let him contribute, not even send beautiful women.

"There is a long way to go...... Huang Xu stood on the green grass, looked at the motorcycle in the distance, and sighed long.

And Comrade Huo Xiong, who was far away, was in a good mood at the moment. After saying something, everyone found the crux of the problem. This also allows the animal husbandry company, which has been caught in the middle, to get out: technology belongs to technology, and politics belongs to politics, which is the correct attitude to do things.

...... After coming out of the racecourse, Huo Xiong ran wildly all the way, and it didn't take long for him to return to the lively Chihkan Avenue, and then plunged headlong into the Chihkan District Government Compound.

The Chihkan District Government is a three-storey brick and concrete building in the shape of a "gate". After Huo Xiong parked his motorcycle in the compound, he went up from the podium to the familiar way.

When he reached the third floor, he wiped his face with his hands and replaced it with the vicious face of his eldest brother who came to collect the money, and then he strode to the door of an office, and shouted while pushing the door open, "Call your boss out!" And turned against him? Dare to hide from Lao Tzu! ”