In fact, in addition to the school store, there is also the school canteen. However, when Marin ran a school before, in order to let the children have no worries, the canteen did not charge money. In addition, the grain production of Beihai Country is extremely rich, and Ma Lin has too much food in his hands, so it doesn't matter if he makes money in the canteen. Therefore, the school canteen, a very lucrative project, Marin can only give up.

As for the problem of the school store having competition from outside stores, Marin was never worried. Why? Because those snacks, most of which are not available at the moment, are still in Marin's mind. Even if there were, many of them were produced in the workshops under Marin's name.

When the time comes, the store will open, and even if there is a store outside the school, it will have to be purchased from the snack workshop under Marin's name, and the profit will be indispensable. Moreover, Marin can also use administrative power to close the school during the day and prevent children from leaving the school gate during recess. As for sooner or later, there is no way around it. But anyway, no matter whose shop is to buy from his workshop.

However, after a recent visit to some of the village artisan schools, Marin found that the children's lunch food was too homogeneous. Mainly, there is a great lack of vegetable variety.

At present, in the schools of Beihai State, in addition to the regular schools where the children of the nobility go to the canteens, the school canteens of the craftsmen's schools in the countryside generally only provide black bread and hot water. Only in spring and summer are small quantities of vegetables are served. Because, at that time, vegetables were the cheapest, and at the same time, the amount was sufficient. Only during the festival will some salted fish be served. Therefore, the children of the village craftsman school usually have black bread and hot water for lunch.

Although pure black bread without earth, wood chips and stones was considered high-end in this era, Marin knew that children during the growing period had great nutritional needs. In addition, a variety of vegetables are also indispensable. Otherwise, the nutrition is unbalanced and affects the development.

For meat, Marlin can't offer much, at most some salted fish. After all, the cost of providing meat in large quantities for free in school cafeterias is too high. The cost of salted fish is relatively low, because there are more fishing boats under Marin. In particular, the Newfoundland fishing grounds near the island of Newfoundland have no competition, and you can catch as much as you want. The only trouble is probably the shipping problem. After all, transporting salted fish from Newfoundland's fisheries back home and by land is expensive.

The cost of sea transportation is okay, but the cost of land transportation is high. The puller of the cart, every time he gets out of the car, he has to eat a lot of food, which is expensive. Therefore, the cost of salted fish, which is obviously very low, can not be lowered when it comes to inland areas, including the cost of land transportation. Unless, to improve traffic, all over the country to build smooth cement roads. In this way, the carriage also runs easily and faster.

According to statistics, ordinary horse-drawn carriages can only run forty or fifty kilometers a day when they walk on dirt roads. This is still the European horsepower, and the pulling of the cart is even more powerful. Changing to the dwarf Oriental horse breed, according to the "Nine Chapters of Arithmetic", "the empty car travels 70 miles a day, and the heavy car travels 50 miles a day", that is, 35 kilometers and 25 kilometers. Of course, it's all about single-horse-drawn carts. If it's a multi-horse cart, the speed is different. But the cost of feeding multiple horses, that's also very high.

According to records, in the 17th century, a total of more than 100 kilometers from Paris, France to Rouen, a total of more than 100 kilometers, the carriage had to travel three days, an average of more than 30 kilometers a day. This is a relatively bad situation on the road surface, if the road surface is a little better, like the current situation in Beihai Country, on ordinary smooth roads other than cement roads, a single carriage transporting goods can run forty or fifty kilometers a day.

But if it is replaced by a concrete road, it will be very different......

According to the test, if it is a very smooth cement road, the carriage can run very easily, and can run about 200 kilometers a day. Even if it is not a concrete road, it is just a smooth stone road like the Roman road, and it is recorded that in 1786, the carriage of the Duke of Chloix of France traveled 280 kilometers from 5:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. from Calais to Paris......

Of course, the duke's carriage was not for a single horse, at least three or four horses. An ordinary one-horse carriage, a horse-drawn carriage, also requires a lot more time to rest. Therefore, it is only possible to run at a speed of 200 kilometers per day on an extremely smooth concrete road. Switching to a Roman road or a cobblestone road and running 150 kilometers a day is scary. However, it is also much better than running forty or fifty kilometers a day today. You know, in later generations, forty or fifty kilometers is just less than an hour's drive by car.

Therefore, to reduce transportation costs, we still have to build roads!

There is no need for a top-quality concrete road, even a concrete pavement of the same grade as the stone road and the Roman road. Today's horse-drawn carriages can travel less than 50 kilometers a day on dirt roads with full loads. If you change to a cement pavement, you can walk 120 kilometers a day without any problem, which is more than twice as much. If you use the bearing technology of the cage ball on the carriage, the resistance is less, and you can run 150 kilometers a day.

Moreover, the weight of horse-drawn trucks is low, and they generally pull more than a ton of cargo. Although the cement board is relatively thin, it cannot withstand the crushing of later trucks. However, a carriage with a load of just over a ton will certainly not be able to crush the cement slab pavement. Besides, even if a few cement slabs are crushed, they can be easily replaced, which is more convenient.

Previously, Marin had only set a plan to build cement roads between dozens of cities in Beihai to facilitate transportation, and only planned to levy peasants to build roads during the slack time. However, farmers only have time during the slack season, and when the farming season is busy, road construction is suspended.

Therefore, Marin did not think about building township-level roads. Because, he doesn't have enough manpower.

But now, because of the intention to bring in Italian migrant workers on a large scale, the North Sea Kingdom can build roads all year round. Not to mention inter-city roads, there are also conditions for the construction of township roads.

Of course, it is better to repair the cement slab roads between the cities first. Cities are the core of each region, and connecting each city with roads is equivalent to building an aorta. Then, the construction of roads to the towns and villages under the cities of various cities was considered.

In fact, the repair of the main roads between dozens of cities in China can greatly reduce transportation costs. Why is that? Because these dozens of cities can be used as the "wholesale center" of the region. As for the roads leading to the towns and villages, there are still solid roads and gravel roads. Moreover, the distance between the following towns and villages is generally not more than 50 kilometers from the main cities in the region. Even if the horse-drawn carriage could not travel on a smooth cement road, and could only run 50 kilometers a day, it would be enough to transport the goods to the towns and villages under the city.

For example, the transportation cost of salted fish will drop sharply immediately, so that ordinary people can afford to eat it. It's just that the transportation of vegetables is a little more troublesome.

Because, unlike salted fish. Salted fish is brought in from overseas, stopping in various cities before being dispersed to surrounding towns. Salted fish is resistant to preservation, not afraid of a long time, and does not care about the long time it takes to be transported to the township. In the same way, those snacks packaged in oily paper bags are also very resistant to shelf, and they have also spread from cities to towns.

Vegetables, on the other hand, are reversed. Vegetables are mainly produced in the countryside and then shipped to the cities in a dispersed manner. The more convenient the road, the more and fresher the vegetables will be transported to the city. Moreover, the price will also be greatly reduced.

Therefore, in order to ensure that the people of Beihai and the children in schools can eat sufficient and cheap vegetables, Marin not only needs to encourage local estates to open up vegetable planting areas. In addition, there is a need to build township-level cement roads to facilitate farmers to transport vegetables to the cities.

As for the policy of connecting villages and villages with highways in later generations in China, Ma Lin did not dare to play. Why? It's too material and manpower intensive. The later generations of Huaxia dared to do this, which was based on the fact that Huaxia had a lot of construction machinery in the 21st century. For example, digging a river, directly using a large number of excavators, no manpower is needed. Road construction is also mechanical, and the efficiency is also very high.

And now Marin doesn't have those construction machinery, and it is already very expensive to build a township-level cement road. It's just that Marin has a lot of money and food, and he has the capital to play like this. If you were a European monarch of the same era, you would not even be able to build a township road.

As for the problem that it is difficult to transport vegetables in the village to the town road, Marin also has a solution - directly build the vegetable base on the edge of the town or on the side of the road. In this way, it will not be hindered from quickly transporting fresh vegetables to the city through township roads.

In order to make it easier for his subordinates to advocate for himself to have a name, Ma Lin thought about it and decided to name the plan to promote vegetable cultivation around various towns and towns and along the township roads as the "vegetable basket project......