Zhao Xin's current state, coupled with the fact that the Ding Navy controls the iron materials of the entire world, he has a deep understanding of the current situation of farm tools in the entire Northern Song Dynasty.

In the past two years, the changes of the Dinghai Navy to the entire Northern Song Dynasty are also demonstrated, in fact, the use rate of iron agricultural tools in the Northern Song Dynasty is increasing.

Before the Dinghai Navy did not get involved in the field of steel, the price of iron has been maintained at about 80 Wen per catty of iron, which is convenient for transportation, and in places with large populations, remote areas, plus freight, and profits, etc., the average price of a hoe is more than 300 Wen, and the shovel and the like are 200 Wen The plough has no pure iron, only the wooden one plus an iron plowshare, which is also very fragile and easy to break.

A farm tool, may cost 300 Wen, or even 400 Wen, for farmers who can only hukou, to accumulate such a sum of money, it is not easy, just like this agricultural tools, not every family has, some families, mostly some homesteaders with more land, they can accumulate enough capital under the premise of meager income, for the transformation of tools.

If 300 Wen can buy a tool that greatly improves labor efficiency, it is still acceptable for farmers to grit their teeth, but this kind of farm tool is really not very good.

Iron is a relatively common metal, easy to refine and process, but in nature, iron is easy to oxidize, once oxidized into iron oxide, the tool will lose its original strength, not to mention ordinary iron, his hardness is about 4, in nature, the hardness of many things is greater than it.

Hardness is not the most important indicator of the tool, but it is one of them, use an ordinary iron knife to cut tofu, not too sharp, and even use it for decades without damage, but used to cut stones, it is different, even if it is a very strong steel in later generations, it will be damaged by grinding in the long-term work, not to mention the durability of iron is far inferior to steel, in the farm work, it is easy to break.

Among the various blacksmith shops scattered throughout the countryside, the most profitable is the repair of farm tools. Compared with building, repair is simpler, but the income is not low at all, for an item of more than 300 Wen, broken, can not be thrown away, repaired again and again, spent again and again, in exchange for a gradual decline in performance.

Sometimes, in ten or twenty years, the money spent on this alone is enough to buy several new ones, but for farmers, there is no way to do it.

Now, with the commissioning of the Dinghai Iron and Steel Plant, a large number of materials are flooded in the market, and the price of ordinary iron has been reduced to about 20 Wen, only a quarter of the previous one, and the price of a good farm tool is only less than 100 Wen.

100 Wen and 300 Wen, the difference between this is huge, not to mention, the Navy will consider many aspects, no longer traditional, or arbitrarily made, but after careful investigation, the most suitable for use. Farming tools are no longer ploughing tools with wood as the main body, but tools that combine wood and steel.

Different from the traditional blacksmith shop, Dinghai has been producing on a large scale from the very beginning, and the quality and durability of the products have been greatly improved.

Whether it is a hoe, a rake, a shovel, or a plough, in terms of the relationship between materials, most of the iron is used as the main body, and the process of the navy is splicing, that is to say, in the place where it is easy to wear, steel is added, this kind of steel may not be as good as the use of the magic weapon, the weapon used is the hardness index of 6.3, but this, the hardness index has also reached 5.8.

It sounds like a lot less, but 5.8, which is the standard of entry-level Uzi steel, is a representative of high-hardness steel even in later generations.

This move, of course, can't be said openly, it's terrible to say it openly, this can be exchanged for 2000 pieces of magic weapons in the Northern Song Dynasty, even if it is only in the place of the blade, wrapped in a thin layer, but agricultural tools, mostly bulky and coarse, for example, hoes, a simple layer shrouded in sharp steel, at least about a catty, according to a long sword three or four catties, simply this, at least worth 500 guan.

Zhao Xin provided these farm tools, in order to improve the effect of iron farm tools, but also to increase the service life, of course, can not be sold according to the magic weapon, the Navy may produce more than 6.3, it still needs some effort, need to add some trace elements, but about 5.8 steel, has been quite mature.

Even if it is more expensive than ordinary iron, it is also limited, so the silent promotion is not quiet, and no one will put their minds on the farm tools.

Super-hard steel, even if it is only by splicing, with a layer attached to the surface, can transform the tool, let alone compare it to the previous wooden tools.

Within two years, the cultivated land area of the Northern Song Dynasty has increased significantly, conservatively estimated at about 10%, and there will be a large increase in the future.

The use of iron tools can improve the labor force, but there is a certain limit, the labor has an end, sleepless to work, the result can only be tired, only mechanized tools, in order to greatly improve efficiency.

It is very unrealistic to popularize agricultural machinery, even large combine harvesters, but it does not mean that there is no other way to think, in the absence of steam or internal combustion engine as the power of the premise, animal power has become an important help, Zhao Xin in fact, is to improve labor efficiency ideas, put on these animal power.

The key reason why Asia and Europe have developed over other continents is that they domesticated cattle and horses, especially horses, very early.

In the Northern Song Dynasty, in the perception of any peasant, large livestock was sometimes even more valuable than people.

In the busy season of farming, animal power can play a great role in farming, harvesting, and even later grain processing.

It's just that the peasants of the Northern Song Dynasty didn't even dare to think about it before, since the founding of the Northern Song Dynasty, they have lost the sixteen states of Youyun, lost this northern barrier, and lost pastures, and there were originally cattle and horses in the west, but after the independence of Western Xia, this channel became less and less.

The price of cattle and horses has increased dramatically, even small landlords cannot afford to buy cattle, let alone horses, even the most ordinary horses, the price is as high as dozens of guan, and a little better, it is more than 100guan, which is not something ordinary landlords can afford.

In the era when there were no small machines, animal power was actually able to solve a lot of problems, as long as it was developed around it, its work efficiency was very high.

In the Northern Song Dynasty before, even if there was such an idea, there was no way, let alone a horse, even if it was a cow, there were not so many.

Now it's different, he participated in the war in Western Xia, destroyed Western Xia, and relied on a Lingzhou peace conference, almost the entire cattle and horses of Western Xia were included in the northwest.

The relationship of transportation, these cattle and sheep can not be transported on a large scale, but in the future through the railway, the transportation cost will be reduced a lot, the efficiency will also increase, more than 10 million cattle and horses into the Northern Song Dynasty, which will have a huge support for agriculture, simply they themselves, can improve a considerable amount of labor efficiency, save a lot of labor shortage, if there is no one about cattle and horses farming tools, the efficiency is still not much.

The same power, with the blessing of different tools, the final effect is completely different, in the Tang Dynasty, there was the appearance of horse-drawn plows, and the efficiency was much improved compared with the previous plows.

Unfortunately, China's habits, such things, if no one specializes in research and maintenance, will soon be lost, the Northern Song Dynasty because of the shortage of horses, in the vast majority of blacksmiths, will not make such horse-drawn plows, perhaps in the Ministry of Industry, there will be some simple records remaining.

Even the horse-drawn plough of the Tang Dynasty, in Zhao Xin's view, did not improve the efficiency to the maximum, the power of the horse, is very large, only the power of the horse, thoroughly utilized, and as far as possible to reduce consumption, so as to maximize the efficiency.

To this end, Ding Haijun has already started research, and in the current Dinghai Agricultural Research Institute, in addition to conducting research on seeds and planting techniques, it is also conducting research on agricultural tools in cooperation with iron and steel mills.

On the basis of the original, under the improvement of the simple mechanical knowledge of the Dinghai Navy, the research on labor-saving and efficiency is carried out.

The first is toughness and sharpness, which can reduce the consumption of strength, on cultivated land, not to mention ordinary soil, even if it is gravel branches and the like, it can be easily cut, the stronger the tool, the higher the efficiency, and the more effortless.

On the other hand, it is from the comfort level of the horse and the degree of adjustment, how to use the simplest structure to make the cow and horse more comfortable, which is also an aspect.

Ding Haijun is completely different from the rest of the Northern Song Dynasty in that he formed a real experimental method, everything starts from the experiment and is decided by the experimental data.

Sometimes, for a certain point of improvement, hundreds or thousands of experiments will be done, and a lot of experimental materials will be consumed, which is meaningless and wasteful in the eyes of many people, but for the level of a country, even the slightest improvement in efficiency, multiplied by the huge base of the entire Northern Song Dynasty, the final result is also very terrible.

This rigorous attitude has a huge effect on the horse-drawn plough that is still in its infancy, not to mention, in the experiment, the top materials of the current Ding Navy are also used, and the effect is of course huge.

You must know that now in the Northern Song Dynasty, the area of cultivated land recorded in the record exceeds 800 million mu, even if 10% of manpower is saved, it means that millions of manpower have been liberated, not to mention, the current research results are quite efficient.

Under the premise of using cattle and horses, it is equivalent to three or four laborers, and with the right tools, the efficiency of ploughing has exceeded 10 times, ordinary people can plough 2 acres a day, but under the premise of using horse-drawn new farming tools, in the laboratory, two people can plough 65 acres a day, which is almost more than 15 times the increase.

The improvement of simple cultivated land does not mean that the direct use of manpower is one-fifteenth of the original, but it can be achieved to reduce labor consumption, increase labor efficiency, coupled with machinery throughout all aspects of agricultural production, for the entire cultivation of different degrees of improvement, not to mention the increase in cultivated land output, simple cultivation itself, can save two-thirds of the labor force.

In ancient times, the agrarian society, with the gradual development of the era of peace, the labor force was always in surplus, the general surplus, not enough to cause social unrest, when the output was no longer enough to feed the people, the turmoil immediately generated, which is also the whole of ancient China, the general trend of the world will be divided for a long time will be the fundamental reason for the long-term and long-term division.

This surplus labor is a source of unrest in an agrarian society, but in an industrial society, the huge industry is enough to absorb this population and create higher value.

Food, to some extent, is only the most basic consumption, and as long as food meets the needs of the population, additional industry produces a sense of satisfaction that cannot be given by an agrarian society.

These basic researches are only seen by Zhao Xin, a traverser, who has this foresight, and he is not afraid to invest in them, and in many experiments, he even uses materials with a hardness of more than 6.5.

It is difficult for ordinary steel to reach a hardness of more than 6.5, but special alloys can, and with a gold finger like a card system, Zhao Xin can refine most of the metals he has ever seen.

Ferroalloys are not good, but what about titanium alloys? What about rare earth alloys? These things can't be made out of an ordinary steelmaking furnace, or even processed, but they can still be used to get materials through the card system, and then grind them out little by little through higher-strength tools.

This six- or seven-pound weapon can be sold for 20,000 yuan, and it will also be applied to agricultural production, and it can only be produced by hand, which is not an ordinary price.

A wide horse-drawn wide plough, with a total weight of more than 150 catties, is converted into knives, which is almost 25, which means that a plough like this, if sold according to the divine weapon, is as high as 500,000 yuan.

No one would do such an experiment so crazy, but for Dingjun, the cost of these things, that is, the cost of their own materials, and the cost of production, even if it is titanium alloy, its value is also within the acceptable range.

After many experiments, in consideration of the future popularity, titanium alloy is made, but, as an aspect of the experiment, it was added, and it was not used as a target material, and the final target material was still at the level of a divine weapon, with a hardness of about 6.3 steel.

This kind of high-hardness steel is not as high as imagined, a little higher than ordinary steel, but it is not as high as the original Northern Song Dynasty. The formula can be controlled, some trace elements are added, and through special methods, added and manufactured, under the premise of no R&D expenses, the increase in cost is not terrible, even if it is popularized on a large scale in the future, it is acceptable.