Shandong Province, Dongchang Province, Liaocheng County. A group of narrow-sleeved men stood on the embankment of the Grand Canal, which had been restored to navigation, looking at the sea of wheat that was about to ripen and had turned into a golden yellow. The reason why it is a sea of wheat is because this wheat field is not cut into small pieces by the ridges, but I don't know how many acres are connected into a large area!

At first glance, one knew that she was dressed as a man, and there was a tall young woman who was pregnant, and her eyebrows fluttered: "Such a large piece of wheat, the slave family has never seen it when they were outside the gate...... If the slave family is not mistaken, this wheat field should be cultivated by horses, most of it is still crop rotation, and there should be grass fields nearby. ”

Standing next to the young woman was a very imposing and very handsome middle-aged man, who nodded and said, "The dry land is suitable for horse farming, although the yield per mu is small, but it consumes less labor. If the crops can be rotated again, the land can be fattened, and the harvest can be guaranteed. ”

"I didn't expect the ...... to be the emperor," the young woman seemed to be out of her mouth, and hurriedly swallowed the rest of the words back, "The master still knows how to farm!" ”

The two people who are talking are none other than Zhu Cihong, the son of the Great Tomorrow, and Wu Sanmei, the queen. Half of the palace led by the two of them has already arrived in Liaocheng. Although it was said to the outside world that it was a personal expedition, there were not many troops accompanying him - the Pingliao army was not gathered in Yingtianfu first, and then went north with Emperor Zhu. Instead, they drove from all over the country one after another to the designated position where the operation was launched.

And Zhu Cihong only took more than 5,000 palace guards, and the accompanying harem women, as well as some officials from the two governments, and went north slowly.

They first traveled overland to Xuzhou, which is now the starting point of the shortened North-South Grand Canal, which could no longer cross the new Yellow River waterway after the completion of the Huanghuai Transport, so it had to start from Xuzhou and end in Tongzhou, near Beijing. Through this renovated north-south canal, a number of inland rivers in Shandong and Hebei, such as Surabaya, Yishui, Daqing River, Tongji Canal, Shahe, Tuhe, Hutuo River, and Wei River (Haihe), were connected, thus forming a new canal system in the Central Plains (excluding Henan).

In order to inspect the results of the North-South Canal project, Emperor Zhu changed to the waterway after arriving in Xuzhou, slowly went north, and inspected the state capitals on both sides of the canal as he went.

Although Zhu Cihong's imperial court took the four rivers and lakes, Guangzhou, Fujian and Guangdong as its fundamental place, it did not mean that it did not want to build the Central Plains well. On the contrary, in order to develop the Central Plains, which had withered after war, again, they had a lot of brains and made a lot of effort.

The nerve-wracking thing is how to find a suitable development route for the entire Central Plains, especially the North China Plain.

The smallholder economy is certainly not going to work!

Because the four rivers and lakes in the southeast, Guangzhou, Fujian, and Guangdong have already embarked on the fast track of capitalism, the Central Plains will be small peasants, and sooner or later they will be shocked and there will be another peasant uprising.

And capitalism is not only a matter of the cities, nor is it limited to industry and commerce, but can also succeed in the countryside!

In the 17th century, the withered and dilapidated countryside of the small-scale peasant economy could not support a primary stage of capitalism!

Because the initial stage of capitalism requires not only the rural market, but also the rural areas to provide large quantities of food and raw materials - in fact, there are many factors that determine the purchasing power of the countryside, and social equity is of course a very important factor! But the amount of product that the countryside itself can provide is also a very critical factor.

If the countryside itself does not provide enough products to support a high rate of urbanization, then where does the purchasing power of farmers come from? The basis of the rural market is the exchange of agricultural products for handicrafts (industrial products).

If the rural areas cannot provide sufficient products, then no matter what kind of system is implemented, it will not be possible to form a large market...... If there is no product, there will be no money, and where will the market come from without money? It's not okay to let people give it for nothing!

In fact, it is not the same thing to let the rural areas provide enough products and let the rural areas produce enough products, and there is a problem of labor productivity.

Because farmers themselves consume agricultural products, when labor productivity is too low, for example, 100 million agricultural people can feed 10 million urban people. The rural market, then, is at most the majority of the handicrafts produced by the 10 million urban population.

Therefore, the equal division of land does not necessarily create a large rural market – it is actually a policy of "nurturing the population", which will cause the population to grow too fast, thus depleting the agricultural products that could be supplied to the cities......

Therefore, from the beginning, Zhu Cihong was unwilling to divide the land equally, nor was he willing to restore the military household system or establish the government military system, which was essentially divided into small plots to raise people (raise soldiers).

The first generation of military households and government soldiers occupied a relatively large living space, and they were tied to the land, and they had nothing to do, so they must have more children and more support. After a few generations, the originally loose land will inevitably become very tight, and the government and military households will lose their "surplus agricultural products" to support military service.

Of course, the encroachment of the upper echelons of military households and military scholars and doctors on military land has exacerbated the process of the collapse of the military household system, but even without these moths, the "surplus agricultural products" used by military households to support military service will inevitably be eaten by too many descendants.

In the original history, the military household system had lost most of its combat effectiveness by the Yingzong Dynasty at the latest, so it could not be maintained in the Chongzhen period anyway......

Although the land grant system played a great role in the early days of Zhu Cihong's establishment of the New Army, after the Northern Expedition recovered the Central Plains, the land grant became a negotiable land voucher. At the same time, Zhu Cihong tried his best to concentrate the meritorious heroes and military officers who had received more land in Yingtianfu, and provided better education and more upward channels for their descendants.

This was not only to gather a group of military nobles to defend the imperial court, but also to promote the proper concentration of land in North China, which was suitable for the development of large-scale agriculture.

......

"Zhu Xiangli, Zhang Guanghui will be in the future."

In Anping Town, near Liaocheng, in the name of Zhu, the head of the Royal Chamber of Commerce, Zhu Cihong met Guanghui, the largest farm in Liaocheng.

This is a middle-aged man in his thirties, tall and strong, and his waist is straight after sitting down, which looks very sharp.

"Zhang Yuanwai was born in the army?" Zhu Cihong tasted the green tea served by the servant of the Zhang family, and then asked with a smile.

"I did serve in the army," Zhang Guanghui said with a smile, "I have followed Gao Futai and Zuo Futai, and there is also a hero who has overcome difficulties." It's just that my father is the only son of mine, and there is no one to take care of him when he is old, so after the Northern Expedition, he went home to farm as a deputy thousand households. ”

"Oh, you're still a filial son! Your family's 10,000 acres of fertile land are all supported by your 1,000 households? Wu Sanmei asked curiously.

"How can a deputy thousand households have so much oil and water?" Zhang Guanghui said with a smile, "This is all the family business that my father saved...... My father was already in business, and after the chaos, he went to Dengzhou and followed Shen Shangshu, so he had some savings. Later, when the land vouchers began to be bought and sold, he was quite discerning and ate tens of thousands of acres of lows, so he had this family business now. ”

It turned out to be a rich second generation......

Zhu Cihong said with a smile: "There are so many fields, you grow them yourself, and you still rent them out?" ”

"It's not cost-effective to rent it out," Mr. Zhang said, "and I can't grow it myself, so I hire someone to farm." 5,000 acres of wheat and 5,000 acres of grass to raise horses and mules, come in turns. ”

"Horses and mules?"

"It is an animal born of a mare and a male donkey, which is more powerful than a horse, and bears hardships and stands hard work, and has a long lifespan, which is most suitable for plowing the field." Zhang Guanghui said with a smile, "Almost all the big farmers here in Shandong raise horses and mules, and horses and mules can not only plow the fields, but also sell them, and the price is not low. If Zhu Xiangli wants to run a farm in Liaodong, he is also indispensable for horses and mules...... Why don't you order a few dozen horses from me? ”

"Can you make money running a farm?" Wu Sanmei asked.

"Madame's question, I don't know how to answer it, the matter of camping, of course, there are losses and gains......

Zhang Guanghui glanced at Wu Sanmei, he had already seen that Wu Sanmei was a woman, and he also saw that she was a woman from Jiangmen in Liaodong - tall, white, and stupid, she must be the eldest lady from Jiangmen's family. That's why he thought that Zhu Cihong must want to buy the newly issued land vouchers and then go to Yingtian in Liaodong.

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