The weather is getting colder in mid-June.

Zheng Bin, vice minister of agriculture, hurriedly walked into his office, sat on a large chair decorated with a bearskin mattress, and the secretary brought him a cup of freshly brewed tea. Tea was brought back from the Far East by the navy at almost no cost, and if you ask the Dutch or the Portuguese to buy it, the price is sea. For example, in London, tea was sold as medicine, with prices ranging from £6 to £1o per pound, a price that was obviously too extravagant on the East Coast, where thrift prevailed.

Zheng Bin first lit his pipe, and the gas from the combustion of the fine tobacco from Virginia soaked his lungs well, making his groggy head clear immediately.

"The failure of tea planting in the northern part of Xinhua Port, the failure of tea introduction in Ping'an County, and the unsatisfactory effect of cinchona tree trial planting are all requesting to continue to add special funds for agricultural projects. It's all asking for money, can't you fight for some gas and let us save some snacks......" Zheng Bin cocked Erlang's legs and flipped through the pages of the text submitted by the secretary. He now has four full-time secretaries, except for one secretary in charge of agricultural technology, who was born as a farmer and later studied at the county agricultural cadre training school, the other three are all from the Ministry of Agriculture's agricultural college, and are the best among the graduates, and are responsible for one aspect of the literature and the collation of materials.

"Danum Township and Heyang Fort requested an additional 30,000 head of cattle, as well as ten horse-drawn forage harvesters and twenty horse-drawn wheat harvesters? When our Ministry of Agriculture is an ATM,......" Zheng Bin muttered, and then took a pen and approved the sentence on the text: "It is advisable to allocate 15,000 Andalusian black cattle seized from La Plata." The number of various types of harvesting machinery should also be halved, and each village can coordinate the time and stagger the use of harvesting. At present, the output of Dafeng Agricultural Machinery Factory is limited, and it is hoped that the local agricultural committees will try their best to overcome the difficulties. ”

"The New China Pioneer Team requested the establishment of a botanical garden on St. Mary's Island. It also exchanged and introduced various tropical cash crops with the colonies of Portuguese East and West Africa. This looks more decent, isn't it a species cultivation base, what, 30,000 yuan of special funds? Zheng Bin knocked the ash from the pipe in the wooden ashtray, then picked up the pen and wrote scoldingly: "The 30,000 yuan requested is not allowed." The ministry is short of funds, and temporarily allocates 2,000 silver dollars for the special funds for the construction of the botanical garden, 8,000 yuan for bank acceptance bills, and the rest of the deficiencies are appropriated by the New China Development Team. ”

Naturally, it is not possible to use banker's acceptance bills for transactions with the Portuguese. Therefore, the Ministry of Agriculture actually only allocated 2,000 yuan to the New China area for the purchase of plants, and how the other 8,000 yuan of bills of exchange could be used depends on the overall planning and digestion capacity of the New China colony.

And the so-called construction of botanical gardens. It mainly refers to the cultivation of a plot of land on the beautiful and climatic island of St. Mary's, and then the introduction of many plants from the Americas, Africa, and Asia, which are generally economically important crops, such as tobacco (Honorico, Florida), which is the case with Virginia; Chili peppers, vanilla orchids, and sweet peppers (Peruvian variety) – all three are seasonings; Pepper (Indian), cloves, and nutmeg (Moluga) - the latter two spices were in the hands of the Dutch, and it was more difficult to obtain seeds.

And then there's sugar cane, which requires an expedition to the Pacific. Because at this time, whether it is the Portuguese in Madeira, Sao Tome, Brazil. Or the sugar cane cultivated by the Spaniards in the West Indies and the Canary Islands-Creole species, which are all low-sugar and low-yielding varieties. Europeans had to wait until 1768, when Bougainville made a circumnavigation of the globe to bring Tahitian sugar cane to Mauritius, where it was quickly introduced to Bourbon, Martinique, Jamaica, and eventually the tropics.

As for coffee and cocoa, coffee (Robusta beans) has been on trial cultivation for almost two years in three colonies in New China, and it will take time to see how effective it is. As for cocoa, it has not yet been introduced. Unlike the huge demand for coffee in the Islamic world, the demand for cocoa is currently relatively limited in the East Coast and in Europe. Therefore, for the time being, we are only going to introduce some left-over seeds, and we are not going to carry out large-scale industrial planting.

In this way, it may take a lot of money just to purchase seeds and saplings and reclaim the land, not to mention the planting, maintenance, and cultivation of new varieties in the later stage, in short, it is an extremely costly, time-consuming, and labor-intensive work. The 2,000 silver dollars allocated by the Ministry of Agriculture may only be enough to buy some plant seeds in the early stage, and as for the massive expenses required in the later stage, it can only wait for the next year, after all, the country is in financial difficulties now.

However, the Botanical Garden is a matter of great importance, and it is inevitable that a huge amount of money will be invested every year in the future. For example, the only botanical garden in the country, the Northern Botanical Garden built on the other side of the Dingxibao River (later San Jerónimo in Brazil), is now planted with cassava, sorghum, corn, cowpeas, tomatoes, Bambara peanuts (West African species), red rice and other varieties of plants. This botanical garden now has more than 200 technicians and workers, covering an area of more than 3,000 acres, and the Ministry of Agriculture invests an average of 5,000 yuan a month in it to maintain various production and scientific research activities.

In addition to these two botanical gardens, the Blackwater region of the Far East is also said to want to build a botanical garden, which will be used mainly to cultivate cold-tolerant crops such as oats, rye, potatoes and other foods. In particular, potatoes, because the potatoes planted in the alpine areas have the characteristics of low toxicity and non-toxicity, and the varieties are not easy to degrade and not easy to be infected with diseases, so they are particularly suitable for cultivating potato varieties, and the cultivated varieties can be sold to farmers for large-scale planting, and the economic benefits produced are undoubtedly huge.

After approving these texts, Zheng Bin changed himself into a more comfortable posture, and then grabbed another stack of texts and looked at them. Zheng Bin probably swept the grain sowing area in the southern region (Yihe area, capital area, Xiling area) last year to further expand, last month's autumn sowing wheat sowing area reached 200,000 mu, of which Dudong County dominated, the county sown a total of 100,000 mu of autumn wheat, accounting for half, in addition to 50,000 acres of miscellaneous grain fields.

The grain sowing area in the northern region is a bit frightening, and the four townships in the west of Huxi (Xihu Township, Dafeng Township, Mucaoling Township, and Low Bunker) alone have sown more than 300,000 mu of wheat fields, compared with the 50,000 mu of grain sowing area in Ping'an County and Zhenhai County, and the four townships and towns in Huxi, which have been determined to be formally integrated into Xihu County next year, are worthy of being the big granaries of the Republic on the east coast, and have almost fed the 17 township-level settlements in the entire north with the strength of one county (Ping'an County and Zhenhai County cannot be self-sufficient in grain), which can be called against the sky.

At present, the county has about 90,000 cattle, 4,000 goats, 2,000 pigs and more than 300 horses, and has a per capita cultivated land area of 26 acres. Every winter, the Government Council and the Ministry of Agriculture organize a large number of people to build a large number of reservoirs, water lifting stations and irrigation canals in the territory under the jurisdiction of Xihu County, and the agricultural machinery produced by the Dafeng Agricultural Machinery Factory is also given priority to supply here, and even the cattle stolen from La Plata are sold cheaply to the people here on a priority basis - this time the Ministry of Agriculture is ready to distribute the newly collected 20,000 Andalusian black cattle here - which can almost make up for the shortage of livestock in the county. This will make Xihu County the first county in the country to complete the reform of the three-crop rotation system.

"It's still a number of people in the Huxi agricultural area." Zheng Bin lingered for a long time on the report on the Huxi region, and then whispered contentedly: "10,000 tons of soybeans were harvested in the autumn harvest, which is really a treasure land, and it is not in vain that the country has invested huge sums of money in construction year after year." And the next county magistrate is probably from our Ministry of Agriculture, well, it's worth allocating some more money. Well, seeing that it's winter now, I guess there's digging rivers and building water conservancy projects over there, so I'll have to take a look. It's a pity that many people from all over the country have been sent to La Plata to fight, and the already scarce labor force is further strained. ”

Now that the battle in La Plata is entering the mid-game decisive stage, the Spaniards are in decline as always, but the east coasters are far from being able to win and return to Korea. As a result, large numbers of troops and manpower were dragged into this quagmire, and not only did they expend a lot of material and money every day, which led to an increase in popular discontent, but also a decline in the country's ability to generate new wealth, as large numbers of peasants and workers were transferred to the front.

With fewer human resources available, it is inevitable to increase productivity in order to maintain the original productivity. As far as agriculture is concerned, the only way to improve agricultural production efficiency is to build water conservancy, popularize advanced agricultural production technology, cultivate more improved varieties of animals and plants, and improve soil fertility.

It is now the dry winter season, and it is customary for all counties across the country to organize a large number of manpower to build water conservancy projects - a practice that has been going on on the east bank for more than a decade. These peasants have no income to dig ditches in the river, which is considered a kind of forced labor, but the water conservancy system that has been built is also for their own use, so there are not many complaints. However, the Ministry of Agriculture still allocates a large amount of funds every winter for the purchase of materials such as river digging tools, warm cotton clothes, raincoats and rain boots, livestock beans, and river workers' rations. (To be continued......)

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