Shaziying Village, near the Wenyu River, has a large cotton field in the southwest corner of the village, and it is the cotton harvest season at this time.

Unlike in the past, when people were scattered to work in their own fields, today the villagers of Shaziying Village are gathered in a field of nearly 30 acres. The cotton fields here are also very different from the fields on the side, the cotton trees in these 30 acres are sparsely planted, but they are very tall, and the cotton bolls on the trees are more and larger.

The villagers filled their baskets and hurried to the side of the ridge, where a clearing had been carved out and a pergola had been erected to weigh and store the cotton they had picked.

Between the pergola and the fields, Wei Liangqing and the cadres of the peasant association kept running around, while asking them to keep an eye on the villagers and not to go into other cotton fields to pick; On the other hand, the weighing personnel are instructed to weigh and weigh according to the unit of mu, and make a record.

He also walked into the cotton field from time to time, extracted any cotton tree, and counted the number of cotton bolls on it, although the weather was still cool today, but the clothes on Wei Liangqing's body were already wet and dry several times. Although the work of picking cotton is very tiring, from Wei Liangqing to those villagers, not only no one shouted tired, but they were all energetic.

The reason for this is that the harvest of this cotton test field is too amazing. After receiving the news, some villagers from neighboring villages couldn't help but rush over in the afternoon and stand on the periphery of the cotton fields to watch the picking of these overseas cottons, wanting to know how much the output of these foreign cotton has increased compared with the local cotton.

With the help of the villagers, Wei Liangqing and the local farmers' association finally picked and weighed the cotton from the 30 acres of experimental fields when the sun was setting in the west. Thirty piles of snow-white cotton were piled up under the pergola, some large and some small, but not very different. But compared to a pile of local cotton as a comparator, it is at least twice as much.

When Wei Liangqing was about to instruct the cadres of the peasant association and the villagers to load the cotton into the truck, the villagers and the onlookers stopped doing it, and they shouted to the peasant association one after another: "Ladies and gentlemen, we have been busy (waiting) for so long, how much can this cotton increase the yield per mu, you can also tell the truth..."

Wei Liangqing and the cadres of the peasant association, because they often deal with the villagers, have a little less official spirit, and these villagers and onlookers have more contact with them, so they are not afraid of them, but are willing to get close to them.

And since his uncle fell and was educated by Chongzhen, Wei Liangqing also felt that the water in the Ming officialdom was too deep for him to be a hillbilly. Therefore, after being ordered to set up the Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Peasant Association, he completely stayed away from officialdom and dealt with the villagers and the land all day long.

Wei Liangqing, who was originally born in the township, quickly recovered his good temper in the countryside, so he was deeply welcomed by the villagers. And his move also benefited the entire Wei Zhongxian family a lot.

Those officials who wanted to take revenge on Wei Zhongxian's relatives could not catch Wei Liangqing's handle, and because of the achievements of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Agricultural Association in promoting improved varieties and overseas crops, they had to give up the idea of revenge and adopt an attitude of ignoring Wei Liangqing, who was far away from the court.

Hearing the demands of these villagers and villagers, Wei Liangqing hurriedly stood up and said to the onlookers: "Okay, good, good, I'll tell you about the yield of this cotton."

The yield per mu of seed cotton is about 150-200 catties, which is more than double the yield per mu of local cotton. Moreover, the size of the cotton is more than one-third larger, the fiber is thinner and longer, but the tensile force is very strong. In the afternoon, we also stripped some seed cotton for testing, and found that the lint yield may be about 10% higher than that of native cotton.

Therefore, the yield per mu of cotton is at least twice as high as that of native cotton, and as for the real data after the whole test, we will introduce it to you again through the farmers' association in the future, and we will rush back today, so we will not talk about it. ”

Wei Liangqing's words later, the onlookers didn't listen to it, because they were all busy calculating the income from planting cotton, and a few of them with more flexible brains had almost pinched their fingers to calculate.

This year, the lint price of high-grade cotton has risen to 12 yuan per quintal, while the second-grade cotton also costs 10 yuan per quintal. Planting one acre of cotton wool, even the price of inferior cotton is worth 2 yuan, an increase of 34% over last year's income. However, after changing to cotton, the output of this mu reached 4 yuan, and almost the best watering land in the north was produced.

After calculating such amazing benefits, some bold villagers couldn't help but plead with Wei Liangqing again: "Lord Wei, can you share some of the seeds of this cotton?" Or we can buy it at our own expense..."

The people on the side also woke up one after another, and began to ask Wei Liangqing or the familiar peasant association cadres for cotton seeds. The farmers who planted cotton in the village were also a little alarmed, and immediately claimed that they had the priority to divide the seeds. Because, at the beginning of the year, when the peasant association encouraged everyone to plant foreign cotton, only they responded to the peasant association's request, and everyone else was worried that there would be losses, and even the cadres of the peasant association were nowhere to be seen, so how could they come and grab their own benefits now.

Seeing that the villagers at the scene began to argue, Wei Liangqing hurriedly reassured: "Don't worry, don't worry, this cotton seed will be there for everyone in the end." Now the cotton has only been planted for one season, and it is not known if this variety has any other defects. In order to avoid losses for everyone, let the farmers' association continue to cultivate seeds, strive to obtain better and more suitable cotton seeds for local planting, and then distribute them to everyone..."

After easily appeasing the somewhat excited people, Wei Liangqing hurriedly escorted the car with the cadres of the peasant association and rushed to the nearby railway station.

On the rocking carriage, Wei Liangqing began to sort out today's records. Last year, cotton seeds were shipped back from Mexico, and in the spring of this year, 10 experimental plots were set up in Gyeonggi, Hebei, Shandong, Henan and other places, each with a size of 30 acres.

According to the comparison of these experimental plots, except for one experimental plot that was flooded, resulting in a significant reduction in yield, the other nine experimental plots exceeded expectations.

These cotton seeds from Mexico can produce 5 or 60 to 7 or 80 cotton peaches per tree, which is much more than the average of 2 or 30 local cotton seeds. And when it comes to the cotton harvest period, these cotton peaches are also larger and plump than the local varieties.

After the harvest of this experimental field today, Wei Liangqing has confirmed that the yield of cotton seeds from Mexico is much higher than that of local cotton seeds. Next, it is to wait for the cotton textile workshop to spin and weave these cottons, and if the woven cloth can meet the standard of good cotton cloth, then these foreign cotton can be promoted on a large scale.

This year, the cotton fields in Hebei, Shandong, and Henan have expanded to 7.5 million mu, an increase of nearly 2 million mu over last year. If foreign cotton can be popularized on a large scale, the increase in cotton production in the north alone is equivalent to more than half of the cotton output in the past, which is really an astonishing figure. However, Wei Liangqing didn't realize this at this time, he just felt that he had done a good job, which could increase the income of the farmers in the township.

In the Wensi Academy, Xu Xingsheng is carefully inspecting the latest generation of spinning machines and weaving machines, compared with spinning machines, weaving machines have not made any breakthroughs in technology, but the production and batch assembly of common parts have reduced the cost of weaving machines by nearly one-third.

However, the spinning machine still has made a breakthrough in technology, with 24 spindles for manpower, 48 spindles for water, and multi-spindles for animal power. These machines have increased spinning efficiency by 25 percent, and the labor wage on each catty of cotton yarn has been reduced to 25 cents. Therefore, after the sharp rise in cotton prices, the increase in cotton yarn prices is quite small.

However, the price of cotton cloth has risen from 09 yuan per horse to 1-11 yuan per horse, while Songjiang cotton cloth has risen to 08 yuan per horse. Under the condition that the output of cotton cloth that provides the market this year may exceed 60 million horses, the price of cotton cloth has risen instead of falling.

It is not that the market consumption within the Ming Dynasty is growing too fast, although the growth of consumption power in the Gyeonggi region is indeed amazing, but most of the northern region is still just maintaining the old situation.

As a result, the supply of cotton cloth exceeded demand, or the rapid development of overseas markets, especially in the Houjin, Korea, Mongolia, Tibet and the Western Regions, which were originally due to political reasons, the Ming Dynasty adopted the means of blockade or restriction of trade. Originally, hundreds of thousands of horses were sold in these areas a year, and they were still high-priced products after heavy taxes. But now that it has been opened to trade, the consumption of cloth has increased several times or even tenfold.

In particular, after the trade route to the Western Regions was reopened, the trade route to the Safavid Dynasty was finally opened to the caravans of the Ming Dynasty. Although there was the obstruction of the Yarkand Khanate on the road, the Yarkand Khanate, which was already in crisis, did not dare to take the risk of completely angering the Ming Dynasty and monopolized this trade route.

Therefore, in the third year of Chongzhen, the Chinese caravan entered the area of Afghanistan occupied by the Safavid dynasty through the Yarkand Khanate. Although Abbas the Great, the most famous in the history of the Safavid dynasty, had just died, the Safavid dynasty was still at its most powerful and had a strong spending power.

The only thing that restricts China's exports of goods is the high cost of transportation caused by the long land transportation between the two countries. Of the 60 million pieces of cotton cloth that flowed to the market, one-third was shipped overseas, and the remaining 40 million horses still could not meet the domestic demand of the Ming Dynasty.

After the completion of the Xu Shengsheng inspection, he was quite satisfied with the performance of the new machine. Because of the rise in the price of cotton and cotton cloth, the planting area of cotton fields in the north is constantly expanding. Some businessmen also took advantage of this opportunity to start workshops in Luoyang, Xi'an and other places close to the cotton producing areas, which made the cotton textile machine factory under the name of Wensi Institute usher in a period of rapid development.

He felt that he could go to the emperor again to report the good news, these workshops in Luoyang, Xi'an and other places were put into operation, in addition to making the internal affairs government make a lot of money, but also digest a lot of homeless people, thinking that the emperor must be extremely happy after hearing it.