"The people's power is enough...... Chen Duzhong said: "More than 10,000 people are planting thin fields, the harvest is limited, and people's minds have changed. Fishing and farming are just starving to death, and they are also looking forward to the development of industry and commerce, but what can I do? There are some clans over there, but their strength is not strong, because most of the people who are displaced in the Eastern Domain have no clan power, and only those who can't survive in the local area go to the Eastern Domain to survive. Under a hundred years, it will multiply, and even if there is a clan, it is not big. There is no local government system, and I, the defense envoy, have the final say on everything, even if I go to open up cotton fields in the name of mobilizing conscripts, the people can only obey orders. As for the water source, several large rivers have enough water to open some diversion canals, and the cotton fields do not need much water for irrigation. The light, the climate, it's really suitable......"

Xu Zixian suddenly remembered that he asked about the water source according to the standard of farmland, but it was actually a big mistake.

Cotton this crop, drought tolerance does not like stains is its characteristics, high requirements for light, which is suitable for Taiwan, but Taiwan is more humid and warm, not conducive to the growth of cotton, the cotton field of Dawei is mainly in Jiangnan and Shandong, these two places only Shandong in the later generations or cotton production area, Jiangnan cotton field in the later generations is very few, only a small amount of remaining, there is no large area of cotton field base.

Because the northern region is drier, with sufficient sunlight and dry water, it is more suitable for cotton growth, so the largest production base in later generations is in Xinjiang, where the geographical conditions are relatively superior, and the cotton fields there are large, good varieties and high yields.

However, this does not mean that places like Fujian and the Eastern Domain cannot produce cotton, but that when the conditions for industrialization in later generations allow, it can achieve collectivization and large-scale industrialized output, which is more cost-effective.

At that time, there was not so much attention, and even if there was a loss in yield and quality, it was still quite worth doing.

Chen Duzhong felt like this, he pondered for a moment, and finally smiled, and said: "Mingda is really a genius, we didn't even think of it?" Plant cotton from March, then gather ridges, divide plants, spit into flowers in three months, harvest cotton in July, one acre of land can harvest 400 catties of seed cotton, out of 100 catties of lint ......"

"Uncle Nine, I don't think it's appropriate to order the people to plant cotton fields with defense." Xu Zixian interrupted Chen Duzhong's imagination and said: "People are always afraid of change, afraid of losing their money. If the bean fields are forcibly changed to cotton fields, or if new fields are forcibly opened, the people will be resentful. The defense envoy is not a pro-people official, supervising the people's farming, does the Eastern Domain have any officials? ”

"Not really." Chen Duzhong calmed down and said: "But this matter is really not my duty, Mingda is right to remind me, once the people are provoked, or the people are sued, I will be in big trouble." ”

The defense envoy is only a military position, and has no responsibility to manage the locality.

At that time, Xu Yingbin had been the defense envoy of Qizhou, and his main responsibility was to command the upper, middle and lower three villages of Qizhou to defend and conquer the Qishan bandits, and manage the local Xiang army, which was the responsibility of the defense envoy.

If a forbidden army is ordered to be transferred to a certain place, the forbidden army is mainly under the command of the capital control and control envoys, and the defense envoys are not qualified to command the forbidden army.

Only the envoy of the system, or the temporary envoy of the system, can not only command the forbidden army, but also dispatch the command box army, and the defense envoy can only cooperate.

As for civil affairs, the defense envoys have always been forbidden to intervene, and can only cooperate with local commanders, restrain the army, and strictly enforce military discipline.

On the side of the Eastern Domain, the land is vast and sparsely populated, with a population of more than 10,000 people, and the Dingkou of two or three thousand people is not as large as the Dingkou of Zhao Wangguanzhuang, and it is lonely overseas, if it were not for Taizu's insistence on taking the Eastern Domain and Penghu to set up a county, I am afraid that not many people are willing to take that big island.

In fact, according to the history of Xu Zixian's memory, Penghu was set up in the Yuan to Yuan period, and the Ming Dynasty has not set up a county, and Penghu is the inspection department until the Ming Dynasty died, but it is a formal land, and the Dutch want to take Penghu, and the Ming Fujian Navy Division will fight with it, and not give up an inch of land.

However, although the Eastern Domain, that is, Taiwan, had fleets, personnel, and fishermen arriving, it had never formed a scale and had never been included in the territorial scope. After the Ming Dynasty fought with the Dutch, it was clearly agreed that the Dutch would anchor and set up a stronghold in the Eastern Domain, which was also the reason why the Dutch withdrew from Penghu and began to build the city of Gerancha in Dayuan.

At that time, the Spaniards also set up colonies in Keelung, Taipei, unlike their situation in South America, the Spaniards were quite embarrassed in Taipei, subject to the natives, and it was not a lively trade point, Tuntian was not easy, at the beginning the Spaniards actually starved to death a lot of people, and later befriended the local association and natives, which barely stood firm, but also built a small earthen fort, only a few hundred people stayed in Taipei for many years, and when the Dutch later drove away the Spaniards, the other party did not do fierce resistance, it was really chicken ribs, and the food was tasteless.

The Dutch want Taiwan, also because the trade volume in the coastal areas of Fujian is huge, and the entrepot trade needs a support point, and they are more interested in Penghu, but they can only retreat to the second best thing if they can't get it.

Taiwan is also a strong support point for the entrepot trade of the Japanese state.

Later, it was found that the island of Taiwan was suitable for growing tea, and there were also a large number of deer herds that could be profitable, so the Dutch managed on the island attentively, and by the time Zheng Chenggong attacked Taiwan, the Dutch had already reached the scale of several thousand immigrants on the island, and if it was delayed, Taiwan would always be owned by it.

From this point of view, although Zheng Chenggong was extremely poor, under the Manchu Qing Dynasty sea ban order, he ran into many walls, and in desperation, he remembered that his father had run Taiwan in his early years, and the original intention of the battle to attack Taiwan was only to obtain a stable rear, but his attack on Taiwan, and after the attack on Taiwan, he moved a large number of Han people to the island, set up a state and built a government, which was the first step to truly enable China to have Taiwan, and its title of national hero was well deserved.

At this moment, the strength of the Great Wei Dynasty is weakened, and Taiwan is also regarded as a burden, and the naval division has shrunk to the embarrassing situation that can only defend Penghu to Fuzhou, Quanzhou and other places that cannot be supported.

This is also the origin of Chen Duzhong's embarrassment in the defense of the Eastern Domain, there is no economy, no manpower, and no commercial trade.

Like Xu Zixian can collect group practice donations, who will Chen Duzhong ask to collect? Xu Zi killed the thieves first, and praised the people on the Fujian Road, and the two governments had to pay for their merits, who would Chen Duzhong kill? If he led his troops to the mountains to suppress the barbarians, no matter how many beheadings he was, he would be impeached for provoking without permission, and the more he killed, the more he would be scolded.

There are more than 100,000 people, scattered in the mountains thousands of miles deep, what do you have to do to provoke them? These Shengbo have their own rules, some of them will take the initiative to go down the mountain to cut off the heads of the Han people, as a symbol of the tribal warriors' bravery, this kind of behavior is a minority after all, more than 1,000 soldiers and horses in Sanzhai, what is the big deal to prevent a few heads from being cut off by Shengfan? In recent years, there have been fewer such things, and about Shengfan also knew that the Han people were not easy to provoke, so they would cut off other tribes if they cut off people's heads, and they would no longer have nothing to provoke the Han people, and the Han army garrisoning the Eastern Domain would not have much to do to care about their own tribes.

Even if the mountain barbarian tribes attacked each other, as long as it did not involve the immigrants of the Great Wei army, the attitude of the imperial court was up to them.

If it weren't for the Taizu system, there were still more than 10,000 residents on the island, I am afraid that the two governments would have considered giving up the Eastern Domain, but they were only concerned about the perception of the people of the world, and the emperor was unwilling to bear the charge of abandoning the land, so it has been so perfunctory.

"This matter will be handed over to the Changwen Hou Mansion to do, and our Nan'an Hou Mansion can also join forces." Xu Zixian said: "The two families made up the share capital to buy a large number of high-quality farm tools, cotton seeds, the cost of land reclamation, the people worked, we paid money, burned wasteland and fertile soil, opened up new fields, and planned it, to be connected into a Qianmo, so that it is easy to water conservancy and daily disease prevention, insect control and other things." ”

"You're going to keep hiring strong men to grow cotton?" Chen Zhengbin said: "Those who get paid may not do their best. ”

"Of course not." Xu Zixian knew that it was not feasible to build a large farm in this era, mainly because the big farms in later generations used not much manpower, aircraft drying pesticides, various equipment harvesting, manpower is relatively limited, according to the price of agricultural products and labor costs, to determine a more reasonable wage level, and through a variety of advanced electronic products, can effectively supervise the work effectiveness of workers. At present, if we build a large farm, employ tens of thousands of workers, and supervise hundreds or thousands of officials, the cost-effectiveness ratio is too low, and the fine management is not in place, and the large-scale farm will definitely lose money.

He said with a smile: "Of course, it is divided, one hundred catties of lint has always been money, four hundred catties of four runs, we collect cotton from the people at the current price, he has a lot of money, sells more, earns more, and we will bear all kinds of expenses in the early stage of land reclamation, even if they owe it first, and slowly use cotton to pay back." In the future, we will pay a portion of the cotton according to the tenant farmer's portion, and we will collect the rest at the current price. Since we want to do it, we should be more generous, so that the people of the Eastern Domain will not be angry, even if they think that they will mess up, they will take the money while scolding us behind our backs. ”

"That's right." Chen Zhengbin is a pro-people official, and the people's virtue is very clear, and there is no actual benefit, looking ahead and backward, hesitating, and once something goes wrong, he is eager to tear the person in charge to pieces. gave benefits, but things didn't work out, but they were ridiculed for being whimsical, and if it really became a thing, they would smash their mouths and follow up quietly.

In the early days of the Eastern Domain, the matter of planting cotton fields was absolutely not supported by the people, you must know that the people were the most conservative and timid, as long as they could survive, they were a flock of sheep, and they did not dare to make any changes easily.

This is also the norm in agrarian societies, where the people's ability to resist risks is too small to take risks unless there are successful examples in front of them.

Take crops as an example, corn and sweet potatoes entered China at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and were not planted in China on a large scale until the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, which contributed to the explosion of population growth, which in turn confirmed the prosperity of the Kangqian era, in fact, in terms of the real living standard, the Kangxi period was far less than the Wanli period, and the widespread promotion of new crops was the most important reason.

This kind of promotion still has nothing to do with the imperial government, but in the past hundred years, some people have planted it one after another, and gained a lot of experience, which has made corn and other foreign crops widely accepted.

Chen Duzhong is quite enthusiastic about this matter, if this matter is successful, the Eastern Domain will usher in a very good opportunity, the place will become richer, and it will also be valued, and his defense will be tasteful.