"It's starting to boom a little bit." Walking on the outskirts of Hexi Township, Wang Dazhuang looked at the wheat fields on both sides of the road that were already showing a golden color, as well as the large row of adobe houses behind the fields, and said with a smile.

It was already December (1687), and it was the harvest season for overwintering wheat on the east coast. The closer to the harvest, the more nervous the farmers become, they should pay attention to the weather, hoping not to encounter bad weather during the harvest days; They should also be on the lookout for savage Indians coming to steal their food, so that they will not hesitate to run to the village council and ask the militia chief to open the arsenal and meet the barbarians; They would pay more attention to the Spanish colonial officials in beautiful costumes and boat-shaped hats, who always came in on tall horses, pointed fingers at them, and then retreated after the village chief sent a dozen silver coins, as if they had never been there.

In fact, because of the great convenience of transportation, Hexi Township, which is located on the right bank of the Paraguay River, is actually not short of grain, and can be transported from the nearest river, which has become one of the most important grain-producing areas on the east bank. But the question is these farmers who have crossed the border to farm, what are you doing if you don't let them farm? Do you want to open a factory? Grazing? That's not realistic! The most stable and most able way to absorb the population is actually to cultivate grain in the local area, and to open up a stable piece of land until it is completely occupied, which is the safest way, and it is also the method that has been used by the people of the East Coast for decades and has proved to be very effective.

Similar to the core area of the east bank, the people on the east bank of the Paraguay River who reclaim land on the Chaco plain on the right bank of the Paraguay River also implement a three-crop rotation system, mainly winter wheat, rice, alfalfa, soybeans, corn and other crops, and raise some poultry, white pigs, horses and other livestock to subsidize the family.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture's preliminary plan, the relatively humid eastern half of the Chaco Plain will be operated as an important grain producing area in the future, just like the Hejian and Pampa Plains. As for the old agricultural areas, because of the rapid economic and social development, food production is declining day by day, and the number of people growing food is becoming less and less. Especially in areas close to the cities, farmers have basically switched to planting vegetables, melons and fruits, and horticultural nurseries, but no one grows grain, which has led to an increasingly insufficient grain production in the developed coastal areas in the east, and they have to rely on internal transportation to maintain consumption.

In recent years, there have even been proposals in the Ministry of Agriculture to discuss whether to allow farmers in some developed counties to pay land taxes in the form of money. At present, the land tax is levied uniformly throughout the country, and the tax rate is set at 10 percent in the form of grain, that is, every landed peasant must pay this tax, which is supervised and collected by each township and village separately. In other words, even those farmers in developed areas who no longer grow grain still have to pay a field tax every year, the so-called "public grain". As a result, farmers in these places have to find a way to buy enough grain from the market every year to pay taxes in order to get through.

Based on this consideration, the Ministry of Agriculture has been considering allowing some areas to pay land taxes in monetary terms, so as to reduce unnecessary consumption on the way to procurement and transportation, and reduce the cost of the whole society. In any case, there are large tracts of good land on the east coast and in neighboring Spain, and it is enough to arrange for it to be developed every year, and the reclaimed wasteland can always fill its gap. What's more, because of the large consumption of meat and fish products, the people of the East Coast Republic do not consume a very large amount of grain, so there is a lot of surplus grain every year, and they have to find ways to export it, and there is no need to worry about the problem of insufficient grain production.

Judging from the above-mentioned aspects, the main grain-producing areas of the current East Coast Republic of China are mostly concentrated in the so-called "underdeveloped areas", that is, the inland hinterland of the eastern coastal zone, the Hejian River, which is known as the land of fish and rice, the Pampa Plain east of the Yanbu Railway, and the newly reclaimed areas in China and some places that have crossed the border for reclamation. Their economic strength is weak, their population is not large enough, and technology, capital, and so on do not exist, so they can only rely on agriculture to slowly accumulate capital, and then try to develop in other aspects.

"Pay attention to the weather, pay attention to the maintenance of those rented agricultural machinery, don't wait until you use it and suddenly find that it can't be opened, then I will be furious." Wang Dazhuang, who had just been promoted to the first rank for a few months, breathed in the fresh air of the countryside while admonishing a few subordinates, only to hear him say again: "In addition to our own use, we must also find ways to export the grain produced here to other places in exchange for all kinds of materials needed for development." Now there are more than 6.5 million people in our country, and the economy is developing so fast that farmland in some places has been abandoned, which is really unreasonable. Is there enough food produced in our country? I don't care what happens in the economically developed areas, anyway, we are poor and white here, and the common people still expect to go to the eastern region to exchange for some daily necessities, building materials, and labor tools by selling the surplus. ”

"But the country's policies need to be fine-tuned, right? The direct impact is that the funds flowing into agriculture have been greatly reduced, and the average price of grain that has been stable for 20 years has also fallen below the integer mark, reaching a historical status of 19.9 yuan. Wang Dazhuang continued to complain: "Now our country mainly relies on reclamation and farming, and now the market price of grain is sluggish. How can there be so many jobs! When owning 30 acres of land is no longer a privilege, but gradually becomes a burden, I think the original well-implemented reclamation policy will not be able to be implemented, right? What are the people of the State Development Administration doing to eat, and in this case, they are not even fiercely writing to the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Finance to restart the minimum purchase price of grain, alas! ”

It is said that by August 1687, the total population of the Republic of China on the east coast of China was estimated to have reached more than 6.55 million. Among them, about 28% are Ming people, about 59.2% are second- and third-generation nationals born in the country, about 6.8% are white men, and about 6.1% are white women. In addition, there are a total of about 208,000 non-national workers, of which 9.4% are blacks and 9.4% are whites, and the rest are Indians of various ethnic groups.

A total population of six or seven million people consumes a lot of food every year, not to mention that the people on the east coast as a whole prefer to drink alcohol and consume a lot of grains to make wine every year, so agricultural security is still very necessary. But on the other hand, the climatic conditions on the east coast are really good, the soil has become very suitable for cultivation after many years of reclamation, coupled with the popularization of some simple fertilizers and the cultivation of improved seeds, so the grain production has been very high, resulting in very strong downward pressure on prices. However, in order to maintain the so-called real border policy of immigration, the East Coast government has been purchasing grain and grain at a protective price (a quota of one million tons), which has forced a large amount of financial funds to subsidize this, and almost two or three million yuan of funds are posted on it every year, which has almost become a big hole in the finances.

Even if the government buys back the grain and puts it on the market for deep processing, or tries to export it to Brazil, the Caribbean, or other places, and recovers a considerable amount of losses, the annual subsidy for agriculture is still more than 1 million yuan. This money may not be much in the past, but since a few years ago, the government invested heavily in the navy, resulting in a sharp rise in military spending, this is a bit of a hard feeling, so the policy was finally canceled after some debate, and the price of grain also fell to 19.9 yuan/ton last year, and this is still in some areas last year when the grain harvest was a little poor, otherwise I am afraid that it will be cheaper.

Wang Dazhuang is now a government official in the Hexi region (although it is still legally part of the Kingdom of Spain), so he is very sensitive to this issue. He feared that if this situation continued, it would become unprofitable to go to the frontier to farm, so would anyone else be so active in coming here? Wouldn't they go to be sailors, to go on expeditions to the Brazilian highlands, to the southern cone in search of bison, to Chile in search of silver mines? The benefits are likely to be much higher, although the risks are also much higher.

He asked himself if he was in charge, he would like to destroy all the grain cultivation in the developed areas of the eastern seaboard and replace them with cash crops, or simply drive these people into the factories to create more wealth. What the? The market is limited, and the production can't digest so many goods? Grandma's, the east coast is too few people, too much land, too rich resources, too fertile soil, to make it look like this. If you let the densely populated India or Chinese see it, I don't know how they will feel! Especially at this time, the peasants in Chinese mainland did not know how they would feel after seeing that the model of 30 mu per person on the east coast was almost unsustainable (not a lack of grain, but too much grain produced).

"Township Chief Wang, there are really not many people who are willing to buy more than ten acres of land now. They prefer to spend their time doing odd jobs or crafts, which seems to make a lot more money. Or even if someone buys 20 or 30 acres of land, they will try to grow some tobacco, hops, sunflowers, peanuts, sesame and other cash crops after harvesting a season's staple grains, which is also more profitable than simply growing grains. If you want me to say, it is nothing for the state to give up the purchase price of the protection of staple grains, and the more than 6 million people do not need so much grain in the first place, and the number of peasants in our country is too large, which is not right in the first place. And, in fact, I would like to say that in the past, only one million tons of food were protected and purchased each year, and the support for food prices was not as great as we imagined. An accompanying official said: "It has been a well-known fact that the peasants are lagging behind the workers in their incomes, and it has been for many years. The peasants have long been no longer an honorable middle class, I prefer to call them the lower-middle-income group, and the appeal of immigrants to the rural children is becoming less and less. Many were even more willing to go to sea in search of more opportunities, which made the Nanhai group almost smile crookedly, and they finally stopped worrying about the lack of enough sailors, and the country's seafaring industry was surprisingly more prosperous as a result. ”

This made everyone a little embarrassed, and the expansion of the peasant class seems to be in the end, but how will this policy of immigration be carried out in the future?