"According to the number of Dafeng Agricultural Machinery Factory, the number of various types of agricultural machinery currently in use in the country is as follows." Outside Dingxi Fort in the North Duck Lake area, the secretary of Zheng Bin, vice minister of agriculture, held a stack of materials in his hand and said solemnly: "72 horse-drawn wheat harvesters, 49 horse-drawn alfalfa harvesters, 35 horse-drawn soybean harvesters, 18 horse-drawn corn harvesters, 145 threshers, 60 grain lifting machines, and 11 seeders, of which 95% of the machinery is animal power, 4% is manual, and only about 1% is steam-powered machinery." ”

"How difficult it is to steam power machinery, and how to miniaturize the steam engine is really one of the obstacles to our agricultural modernization." Zheng Bin sighed and said: "The steam tractor trial produced by Dafeng Agricultural Machinery Factory has completely failed, and it has no practical value at all. ”

The steam-powered machinery mentioned in Zheng Bin's mouth mainly refers to steam tractors. Due to the lack of non-ferrous metal smelting, the material of both the boiler and the cylinder in the steam power system of the tractor is not very ideal, so the steam engine cannot be miniaturized and lightweight, so the steam tractor manufactured by using the existing material is not only extremely unreliable in quality, but also stupid and coarse, and has no practical significance at all. It can be said that the so-called steam tractor that the Ministry of Agriculture spent a lot of money to build seems to be a complete failure at present, and the two prototypes have been locked into the warehouse.

In fact, it is not to blame that the Ministry of Agriculture spent a huge amount of money to make such a failed thing. It's really that they don't know the image of the steam tractor in history, and this power machine, which was invented in the mid-to-late 19th century, was a complete failure from the beginning. Negative reviews such as poor quality, poor reliability, bulkiness, and complexity of operation were its labels, and it was not until the late 19th century that it was successfully used on some of the drier farms in North America. But in most parts of North America, however, it has not been favored - because of its great weight, it can only work on arid, hard land; And in Europe. This kind of power machine qì is a complete failure. Europeans refused to use it because of its bulkiness and inflexibility, and many considered it impractical, so it was not used even as much in Europe as it was in sparsely populated North America.

Thus, it can be said that in the early days of the tractor, in the era of the steam tractor, such equipment was a complete failure and had almost no practical use. And by the time the tractor was successful, it was already the era of the internal combustion engine. The invention of the internal combustion engine saved the tractor. It made the tractor weight lower rapidly, so that the machine became more flexible, lighter and easier to use than before, so it opened up the market in Europe and the Americas, and then gradually became popular all over the world.

The Ministry of Agriculture on the East Coast did produce a prototype of a steam tractor before, but it was not available in the rain-rich Steppes and Duck Lake basins on the East Coast. However, wherever the tractor travels, the cultivated land is often destroyed and the loss is greater. In addition, there is also a lack of roads in the countryside for heavy steam tractors to walk, and ordinary dirt roads simply cannot withstand the reimbursement of such big guys after a few walks. In addition, farmers have to constantly use horse-drawn carts to transport large quantities of coal and fresh water to the edge of the fields, and then laboriously transport the coal water to the steam tractor for use. The manpower, material and energy consumed during this period is simply unlimited, and the actual cost of use is particularly high. Nearly everyone who used it rejected it, so the bulky agricultural machinery was quickly thrown into the cold, just as it had historically been treated in much of Europe and the United States.

However, the steam tractor received a cold reception, but another steam plow, which was more primitive than the steam tractor, was unexpectedly successful. The principle of this equipment is very simple: the rope on the guò winch pulls the iron plough through the field, and the rope is constantly changed by the anchored pulley, so that the plough can be carried out for a long time before the steam engine needs to be moved. This greatly avoids the disadvantage of the steam engine being inconvenient to move on soft ground, which makes the practicability of this steam rope traction plough greatly enhanced.

According to the statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture of the East Coast, this steam plough is three to five times more efficient than horses, and even more efficient if it is ploughed, and the cost is almost the same as that of horses, and maybe even less, which undoubtedly attracts many people's attention. At present, several sets of this equipment are used in the large state-owned enterprises of Dingyuan Township, Dongfang County, the capital, and the feedback is very good, because this equipment does not need wheels to drive in the field, and the equipment itself will not crush and destroy the soil, and the efficiency of plowing the ground is also very high, so it has been favored by everyone almost since it came out.

Perhaps the only drawback to this equipment is that it is too expensive for small farmers to afford it, and at present only deep-pocketed units such as state farms can afford it. However, with the in-depth promotion of the Ministry of Agriculture's "agricultural machinery to the countryside" activity, a considerable number of agricultural machinery leasing companies may appear in the near future to purchase this equipment.

Historically, after this equipment was invented in the mid-to-late 18th century, it was immediately popularized in Britain and Germany, two countries that used a large number of agricultural machinery, especially Germany, where there were only 836 steam plows in 1882, and by 1895 there were 1,696 units, and by 1907 the number had skyrocketed to 2,995 units; In France at the same time, there were probably several hundred of them, and a 1902 survey in Austria showed that 383 farms used steam plows. In contrast, the use of steam tractors in these countries was extremely low, and all but a few in Britain had almost completely forgotten about it.

"The steam plow, in its current state of use, is a very cost-effective invention in the ministry." Hearing his boss lament the difficulties in the production and research and development of steam-powered machinery, Zheng Bin's secretary couldn't help but mention the steam plow, only to hear him say: "The applicability of this kind of machine is very wide. A few days ago, I heard that the Ministry of Communications and the State Administration of Railways are also very interested in this new machine, because they found that this equipment is also very 'talented' when digging drainage ditches and clearing debris on the ground. Therefore, they decided to buy some of this equipment for urban construction and railway/highway construction, which must have greatly saved their workload. ”

"Huh." Zheng Bin smiled slightly when he heard this, and said: "Our Ministry of Agriculture finally has the equipment to export to the brother department, it's not easy." Forget it, let's move on to the dock and take a boat to the Northern Botanical Garden on the other side. ”

Zheng Bin came to the north today with his secretary, entourage, and others to inspect the agricultural harvest here. They have just come from Ping'an County, where although it is an important industrial town, but there is still some farmland under cultivation, due to the local fertile land and good irrigation conditions, even in the absence of strict implementation of the three-crop rotation system, the yield of wheat per mu in this area still reached about 100 catties, the shape shì is more gratifying.

After leaving Ping'an County, Zheng Bin and others came to the Dingxi Fort area by the way, and this year the Executive Committee planned several towns here. In addition to planning a large number of villages in the Botanical Garden of the North (San Jerónimo) to form a settlement, they also established a settlement in the towns of General Camara and Taquari on the banks of the Taquari River in Brazil, and Dosratos on the banks of the Dosratos River to the south, which they named Fort Pinci, Fort Taquari, and Fort Ratos (Ratos).

The three new settlements will each have 2,000 new immigrants, and the agricultural conditions will be decent - if not good - and water for irrigation will be readily available. After the people on the east coast have finished cleaning up and taking root in these three places, these new settlements will be connected with the original Dingxi Fort and the Northern Botanical Garden, and the prototype of Dingxi County will come out in the future. When Dingxi County is self-sufficient and has a certain industrial and agricultural foundation, the people of the east bank can use this as a springboard to continue to expand to the Yakuyi River, the Taquali River, and the Rat River basin, and completely control this large area of fertile land in the hands of the people on the east bank.

Zheng Bin and the others soon crossed the river to the Northern Botanical Garden. In the past few years, the Ministry of Agriculture has invested about 5,000 yuan in this area almost every month to maintain its daily scientific research and breeding work. In addition to simulating the cultivation and selection of a large number of plant seeds collected from other places in various artificial environments in the garden, the most effective result of the botanical garden this year is naturally the cultivation of high-yield 48 wheat seeds and high-sugar 48 beet seeds.

Among them, the high-yield 48 seed is a kind of hybrid seed obtained by the garden on the basis of inheriting the research and development of the former capital agricultural technology station for more than ten years. The seed has been cultivated for three consecutive years in the small environment of the botanical garden (simulated according to the three-crop rotation system), with an average yield of more than 180 catties per mu, which is about 15% higher than the traditional wheat seed yield, and almost caused a sensation in the entire agricultural system. Perhaps the only disadvantage of this seed is that the seed degrades very quickly, and it needs to be cultivated every year, and then the seeds are selected before being sold to farmers, so it is not yet time for large-scale promotion, and the first thing the Ministry of Agriculture needs to do is to expand the seed production base in each county and township.

This year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture's estimation based on feedback, the total output of wheat in the country is about 47,000 tons, with an average yield of about 104 catties per mu. If this figure can rise by another 15%, according to the price of wheat sold to the Dutch last year, it will be almost 280,000 yuan of economic benefits, and it is definitely worth the Ministry of Agriculture to spend money to prepare.

As for the other beet seed, which is called High Sugar 48, it is not as eye-catching as the high-yield 48 wheat seed. Because the sugar content of this seed is still extremely limited - although it is already more than ten times higher than that of European sugar beet seeds - breeding work needs to be continued. It took Europeans more than 100 years to select and cultivate beet seeds with a high sugar content (that is to say, the sugar content of beet rhizomes in this era is not high), so if you want to achieve the process of large-scale promotion of sugar beet in China, this seed still needs to be cultivated in depth. (To be continued......)