The 16th year of the flood season in Xuanping came as scheduled, but according to the weather report of the Royal Institute of Technology, the rainfall across the country this year is relatively normal, and there is no extreme weather like last year.

Last year, in Henan, Jiangbei and northern Anhui, the annual rainfall was also normal, but the problem is that most of the rainfall was concentrated in May, which led to flooding.

This year, the total rainfall was the same as last year, but it was scattered, with light rain starting in April, May and June, and still rain until July.

Although the weather was not good for several months, there was no short period of intensive heavy rain, which greatly reduced the pressure on flood control.

The embankment of the Kaifeng section of the Yellow River and the embankment of Hongze Lake under emergency construction have withstood the test and there has been no embankment breaking!

The rest of the river sections that have not been carried out large-scale construction, although there have been several small dangers, but the scale is not large, it is a controllable situation, all the affected areas, that is, a few counties, and the number of people involved in the disaster is about 100,000, and the casualties will not exceed 100.

This situation is already a huge victory for the Yellow River and Huai River basins, which have burst their banks almost every year.

When the time enters September, it can basically be announced that the empire has successfully passed this year's flood season!

This also made Li Xuan breathe a sigh of relief.

In fact, although from last year to this year, the construction of many water conservancy facilities has been carried out in various places, but only a few projects have been completed, and most of the flood control still depends on the original old facilities.

Luckily, God is still more face-saving!

Nationally, other parts of the country have not been hit by large-scale floods and droughts.

In this way, the empire will have a bumper harvest this year, and this will also greatly relieve the pressure on the empire's grain reserves.

You must know that because of the floods last year, the reason why there was no large-scale displacement and riot among the tens of millions of people affected by the disaster was inseparable from the Empire's all-out disaster relief.

If there is food, the affected people can be stabilized, and without food, there will be a big mess.

In order to provide disaster relief, the empire, through the Datang Grain Corporation, transported a large amount of grain from grain reserve warehouses across the country and transported it to the affected areas.

And this move also led to the decline of the empire's grain reserves in many regions to a very dangerous situation.

The Empire's food reserves were all hard-won, but they were collected and stored one by one.

Because every year's grain, the people must first be fed, and the excess grain can be stored through the Datang Grain Company, because the empire has a large population and the grain production is relatively limited, so the empire's grain reserves have not been much.

Among them, the largest granary in the whole empire, that is, the grain warehouse set up in Jinling City, the grain stored in it is only enough for 500,000 people to eat for a year.

In other regions, grain storage warehouses are even less stocked.

Last year, in order to provide disaster relief, many grain warehouses were emptied, and if there is any large-scale natural disaster this year, there is really no way at all, this is not a question of whether Li Xuan is willing to provide disaster relief, but a problem of not having enough food for disaster relief.

This year's bumper harvest will greatly alleviate the problem of grain reserves.

At the same time, because of the Datang Grain Corporation, there is no need to worry about a bumper harvest, and the sharp drop in grain prices hurts farmers.

The Tang Empire, through the Grain Corporation, implemented very strict price control over the price of grain, a vital strategic material, which stipulated the price range, and if the price was too high due to the reduction of grain production, the Datang Grain Corporation would sell the grain reserves to stabilize the grain price.

When the price of grain falls due to a bumper harvest, the Datang Grain Corporation will purchase grain on a large scale to raise the price of grain.

In short, the Tang Empire wanted to stabilize the price of grain in a fixed range and not allow it to fluctuate too much.

If some grain traders want to break this grain price system, in addition to the response measures of the Datang Grain Corporation, they will also get into huge trouble.

Once it is discovered that profiteers are manipulating food prices, they will be unceremoniously arrested on various charges.

It is precisely because of such tough measures that it has ensured that within the Tang Empire, grain prices have been maintained at a relatively balanced level for many years, and there have been no major ups and downs.

If the stability of grain prices is broken, farmers can obtain a stable income from farming, and urban residents can also buy grain at market prices to support themselves.

This year, the wind and rain are smooth, but in Li Xuan's opinion, it is still not enough!

The current grain production is still too low, and it is too difficult to feed the more than 150 million people, let alone have surplus grain for strategic reserves.

So he's looking in other directions!

In order to solve the problem of grain output, one is to increase the area of arable land in the country, then to increase the amount of imports, and the third is to increase the grain output per mu.

It is not easy to increase the area of cultivated land, and it is also something that the empire has been doing, and the development of Huguang, the Pearl River Delta and other regions is to increase the area of arable land.

To this end, the empire was carried out through various methods such as domestic immigration and cantonment orders, and the effect is not bad so far, and the grain production in the Huguang area has increased significantly, and it is expected to become the new granary of the empire.

However, the area of arable land in the country is limited, and there are areas such as Huguang that are being developed, but the population is also growing, and in the absence of large-scale wars, and the empire does not control fertility, a large increase in population is inevitable.

At present, the growth rate of population is still exceeding the growth rate of arable land, so the solution to the food problem by relying solely on development and land reclamation can only be solved in a short period of time, not for a long time.

The second is to increase the amount of grain imports, which the empire is also doing, and has implemented some targeted policies, such as the adoption of tariff-free food imports, and the second is to encourage domestic people to emigrate overseas, engage in agriculture, and cultivate plantations.

Finally, there is a predatory grain import in some areas, especially in the Nanyang region, from which the state-controlled Nanyang Trading Company imports a large amount of grain every year.

In fact, there are many indigenous people in the Nanyang region, and the local people also have to eat, and after the Tang Empire imports a large amount of grain, they themselves will also suffer from a food crisis, but this is not the business of the empire, sometimes in order to import food, the empire will specify that only grain can be exchanged for ordnance and other industrial products.

In addition to the above two ways, under Li Xuan's instructions, a third way was also carried out to solve the grain problem, that is, to increase the yield per mu through technical means.

For example, the use of chemical fertilizers, for example, the use of hybrid rice, for example, the introduction of high-yielding crops such as sweet potatoes and corn.

It's just that the chemical fertilizer can't be solved for a while, because the basis of this thing is the chemical industry, although the chemistry experts of the Royal Institute of Technology have made urea and phosphate fertilizer in the laboratory, but if you want to produce it on a large scale, you need a lot of chemical raw materials such as sulfuric acid.

With the current technical capabilities of the Tang Empire, the output of basic chemical raw materials such as sulfuric acid is still relatively limited, and it is not enough for key industrial production and national defense production.

The large-scale popularization and application of chemical fertilizers cannot be realized due to the limitations of the industrial base, so the Imperial Ministry of Agriculture can only encourage farmers to use farm fertilizer as much as possible, but farm fertilizer is something that farmers in China have already started to use, without the guidance of the imperial government.

Chemical fertilizers are not good, Li Xuan is setting his sights on hybrid rice and new crops.

Hybrid rice, this thing has actually been working on all the time, the Royal Institute of Technology has a special research team in charge of this matter, they have established a large hybrid rice experimental base on Qiongzhou Island, trying to cross-breed all kinds of rice.

The most obvious effect is that the rice introduced from the Nanyang region has been improved and cultivated, so that the rice in the Nanyang can be suitable for cultivation in the southern provinces of the empire.

Today, the Liangguang region has taken the lead in planting this rice on a large scale.

What are the characteristics of this rice?

That is two crops of rice, and the unit yield is maintained under the premise of two crops of rice.

Of course, the requirements for this two-cropping rice are also very high, requiring sufficient sunlight, suitable temperatures, rainfall, and fertilizers, so there are still not many paddy fields that can grow these two-cropping rice.

Li Xuan's goal is not just to improve these two-crop rice, but to improve rice that is more adaptable and has higher yields.

However, in Li Xuan's view, this goal is difficult to achieve in a short period of time, at least not in a few decades, because it requires the cultivation of hybrid rice from generation to generation, and it takes a long time.

In fact, the introduction of new crops also has the problem of adaptability, many new crops from the Americas, in fact, the Tang Empire has long been obtained through the Portuguese and Spain, among which the key sweet potatoes and corn have long been available.

But the problem is that these crops from the Americas are still a little unadaptable, even if they can be planted in some areas, but the yield is not as high as Li Xuan expected, so these crops still need to be specially adapted to cultivate, and they can't be counted on in a short time.

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