On February 1, 1648, the fertile east bank of the land ushered in the harvest season, whether it was Ping'an County, Xihu County, Zhenhai County in the Yazihu Basin, or Meilin County and Xiayihe County in the Yihe region (the establishment was approved by the Executive Committee in January 49, including Xiayihe Township, Heyangbao, Ningjin Township, and Danuma Township), or further south Dongfang County, Luoqia County and Qingdao County (established together with Xiayihe County, including Qingdao Town, Guiyi Township, Sifang Township, Xinxiang Township and Bingtuan Erbao), everywhere was a bumper harvest of joy.

According to statistics and estimates, more than 60,000 tons of wheat were harvested from the 1.03 million mu of wheat fields sown in the East Coast Republic of China last year, with an average yield of 118 catties per mu, an increase of 13.5 percent on the basis of last year. It is not easy to know that this achievement has been achieved on the basis of the addition of many new raw lands, and it also shows the terrifying potential of food production on the long-cultivated mature arable land on the east coast. Of course, this is also related to the continuous collection of cattle and sheep from La Plata, and the in-depth promotion of the three-crop rotation system in the country.

In the tide of agricultural harvesting, some agricultural machinery leasing companies began to appear in the fields, using their own horse-drawn harvesters, drying machines, grain lifters and other machinery and equipment to help farmers harvest grain and dry pasture. After harvesting the wheat in the field, before the farm machinery company has yet to leave, some steam plows begin to move from the construction site to the field, helping farmers clear ditches and plough the land in preparation for the time-tight autumn ploughing operation.

With the gradual development of agricultural machinery leasing enterprises, the industrial chain of this industry has begun to take shape. Dafeng Agricultural Machinery Factory, which is in the most upstream, has also gotten rid of the dilemma of losses and began to make a certain profit. These profits, in turn, encourage them to spend more energy on improving the reliability and quality of their machines with financial subsidies from the Ministry of Agriculture. At the same time, more new machines will be developed.

And downstream. Some self-employed agricultural machinery maintenance has also begun to gradually increase, they are more or less in Dafeng Agricultural Machinery Factory has received free training in relevant knowledge (training agricultural machinery maintenance personnel is the consistent policy of Dafeng Agricultural Machinery Factory, which can increase the number of employees in the agricultural machinery industry and enrich the soil of the agricultural machinery market), so they have also begun to provide supporting services to agricultural machinery leasing enterprises. And it is precisely because of their efforts that the agricultural modernization on the east coast has really seen the dawn of the beginning.

As for what to plant on the harvested farmland, there is actually no uniform regulation in the country. However, specific to each county or township, there is generally a unified local plan. This is mainly to facilitate harvesting. After all, there is a difference between the horse-drawn corn harvester and the horse-drawn soybean harvester, if a village or even a township is a mess of crops, in the case of a relative shortage of agricultural machinery, it is really not easy to coordinate the deployment, therefore, now the townships generally have a unified planting plan.

However, compared with the administrative instructions of the township government, the market has the greatest constraints on farmers. In today's east coast, especially in the south, autumn soybeans have become a common practice. This crop has a high economic value. Second, it can fix nitrogen, which can protect soil fertility to a certain extent. As a result, the sown area in rural areas is increasing. Even in Qishan Township and Heyangbao in the south, most of the farmers there grow soybeans twice a year.

Soybeans are probably the most commercialized crops on the East Coast today. This crop, which was propagated from the soybeans of the Northeast originally brought by the travelers, has been planted all over the north and south of the Great Lake, and has even been brought to Brazil by Portuguese spies and planted in small quantities - but not for climatic reasons. On today's earth, there is really only one East Coast that grows soybeans on a large scale and industry, and there is no other semicolon.

In today's Qishan Township, Meilin County, the soybean oil industry has become a trend. A large number of handicraft workshops and machinery and semi-mechanical enterprises began to set foot in this industry, so that the soybean industry in the East Coast has developed rapidly. Among them, some low-cost workshop-type enterprises still adopt the traditional animal power grinding to crush soybeans, then steam them, and then use guò wedge presses to extract oil; Some of the more powerful ones are more advanced, they use steam engines to crush soybeans, and then use hand push or animal power spiral pressing to extract oil; The Xu Kee Oil Mill, which represents the most advanced oil extraction technology on the east coast, uses full steam power, crushing soybeans, cooking, and water pressure pressing, which not only has a stronger production process and production scale than other enterprises, but also has a higher soybean oil quality and soybean utilization rate, which can be called a leader in this industry.

With a package of cooperation agreements between the Republic of the East Coast and the Genoese, soybean oil from the East Coast began to be trial-sold in the stores of large syndicate companies such as the St. George Comptoir. This kind of edible oil, which has never appeared in the European market, gradually has a part of the Genoese people's recommendation under the recommendation of the Genoese, these are those who can neither afford butter nor olive oil (the main production area of olive oil, the Ottoman Empire, has recently fallen into chaos, exports have plummeted), given that the soybean oil on the east coast is unusually cheap, so they have no choice but to buy some edible, and after a long time, a small number of regular customers have formed, and the soybean oil on the east coast has more or less opened some markets in Europe. Mainly concentrated in the German region.

In addition, after seeing that Europeans had a soft spot for butter, the East Coasters also began to research margarine. At present, the Institute of Natural Sciences has successfully used soybean pressed oil as a raw material under the conditions of the real yàn room, and produced a grease somewhat similar to butter. At present, they are continuing to research and improve in order to develop edible alternative oils and fats that are not much different from real butter, and if this can be successfully applied to industrial production, then it will be of great significance to the East Coast, because it is a daily necessity called cotton cloth, and the consumer market is extremely large, it is simply a cash cow.

There is no market for margarine, but bean cake, an important residue and by-product, has become an important commodity on the East Coast. In today's rural areas, farmers are happy to buy some leftover soybean cakes from oil mills to use as livestock feed, or simply to fertilize their fields. The popularization of soybean cake by the agricultural technology extension workers of the agricultural technology stations in various towns and villages has contributed to such a trend, especially those farmers who have raised a lot of livestock, in addition to planting alfalfa on the fallow land, they will also regularly buy some soybean cakes to feed their livestock.

At the same time, they are now beginning to realize that soybean cake also plays a considerable role in fertilizing the field, so if the price is not very expensive, they will also spare money to buy some back to use, which suddenly opens up the market for soybean cake as a by-product of oil extraction, and effectively improves the profitability of various enterprises.

From mid-1648, however, the East Coast oil millers, who had gathered in large numbers in Qishan Township, Meilin County, were increasingly willing to sell the by-product of soybean cake abroad rather than to farmers at home. The main reason for this is that neighboring Brazilians buy large quantities of soybean cakes at prices higher than the domestic market price on the east coast, and then ship them back to their sugar cane plantations to fertilize the fields.

Sugarcane, an important cash crop, is actually very labor-intensive. Usually a fertile virgin plot of land is used to grow sugar cane or tobacco, and if the owner does not take care of it, it may not be long before the land is exhausted and it is no longer possible to grow these very profitable cash crops. But with soybean cake, it can replenish the nutrients lost by the land, prolong the life of the land, and make the owners of sugarcane plantations more financially profitable. And this is obviously the reason why they are willing to spend money to buy East Coast bean cakes, after all, compared to the violent sugar cane industry, the purchase cost of a small amount of bean cake is a little worth mentioning.

Just as Europeans imported large quantities of Chinese bean cakes from the Northeast for their tropical colonies, Portuguese planters in this era quickly discovered the value of bean cakes and began to wave their money bags to buy them in large quantities at the ports of the East Coast. In the second half of 1648 alone, people on the east coast exported more than 400 tons of bean cakes to Brazil through the port of Guò Luoqia, with an average export price of 1.8 yuan per bag (50 kilograms per bag), creating an export income of 14,400 yuan.

Soybeans are truly an amazing crop! This is the common voice of many workers and business owners who are engaged in the soybean industry in Qishan Township, Meilin County. It can be used not only as an edible oil, but also as an important by-product of soybean cake, which can be used as a major raw material for soap in addition to edible oil, and even margarine, a promising commodity in Europe; And the soybean cake is also the same, not only can be used as animal feed, but also can fertilize the field, almost to the extreme, there is no waste on the body, it is a miracle.

Since the prospects are so broad, driven by commercial capital and industrial capital, the East Coast Government Council has now begun to seriously formulate a soybean industry revitalization plan. With the arrival of new immigrants (about 15,000 Ming immigrants will arrive in the mainland this year, with a 2:1 ratio of men to women), the Government Council plans to plant soybeans in the five first settlements of the newly built Fort Hayin (Rio Blanco on the other side of the Agualang), Fort Xinmin (later the town of Bergara), Xiaoxi Township (Grand Arroyo), Fort Zhongyi (Sarandi de Jane), and Carmen Township (Carmen).

Anyway, the newly cultivated land in these new settlements is basically raw land, and it is not a bad thing to plant some alfalfa or soybeans in the past few years to fertilize the fields, but on the contrary, it will be beneficial for the harvest when planting cereals later, so why not? (To be continued......)