Feng Yunshan has always believed that the Chinese Empire was different from those European countries in the West, especially from the great powers such as Britain and France. When those countries rose, they mainly relied on industry, and for agriculture, they had developed into a farm situation with capitalist characteristics, relying on large farmers to hire agricultural workers to carry out large-scale planting or grazing, which was indeed much higher in terms of efficiency than the traditional agricultural level of the Chinese Empire. Moreover, like Britain and France, their native population is small, and the whole of Europe is their hinterland, and there are a large number of colonies, which can buy grain at any time and send it back home.

In the case of England, they naturally prefer to send the low-yielding rural population to the factories of the cities, where the same labour can create more value, and the profits of a textile worker, and even his own wages, are far greater than the wealth he would have gained by cultivating his own fields. Moreover, Britain not only has its own well-established native agriculture in the vast areas of England and Scotland, but also has a large number of food suppliers on the island of Ireland, the European continent, especially Tsarist Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Persia, India, North America, and other places.

But the Chinese Empire was different, Feng Yunshan learned from the experience he learned in later generations that every year the Central Committee would talk about the three rural issues, and the first document of each year was almost all about the development of agriculture. This is precisely because China is a large country with a large population, and as the old saying goes, the people take food as the sky, and it is precisely because there is too much population and too little arable land that the problem of eating for the people is the fundamental matter. And now, for the Chinese Empire, the reality of such a large population is here, it is necessary to pay attention to agriculture, and only after solving the problem of food can we say anything about the development of industry.

Fortunately, I got the phosphate fertilizer out in advance, although it is the most elementary phosphate fertilizer, and it is relatively simple, but at least it can increase grain production a lot. In addition, the occupation of arable land in the Red River and Mekong basins in Southeast Asia, as well as the islands of Luzon, Borneo, and Java, and the immediate resettlement of paddy fields, has led to a significant increase in grain production, especially rice.

Moreover, because of his foresight, Feng Yunshan organized more than one million immigrants to settle in the Northeast to develop the famous granary of the Great Northern Wilderness and the entire Heilongjiang River Basin, which has not only achieved self-sufficiency, but also began to increase the food supply to Zhili and Siberia year by year.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, as of last year, the Chinese Empire had about 1.45 billion mu of grain cultivation land, 300 million mu more than the 1.13 billion mu at the height of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, that is, in the last year of Daoguang. Among them, the arable land that can grow grain has been increased in the newly added territories of the Korean Peninsula, Vietnam, Nanzhang, Luzon and the East Indies, the Kazakh Khanate and the New Mexico Province, and the arable land that has been developed by immigrants in the northeast and northwest regions of the country.

Grain is mainly rice and wheat, as well as some corn, soybeans, sorghum, etc., and the average yield per mu is converted into rice, the average has increased from 325 catties per mu in the last years of Daoguang to an average of 406 catties per mu today, which is equivalent to an increase in yield by a quarter.

This is also because of the lack of fertility of newly reclaimed farmland and the fact that the promotion of holy fertilizer is not in place, which has lowered the average output value per mu in the country. Otherwise, on the basis of the extensive use of holy fertilizer, some farmland even has a yield of more than 450 catties or even close to 500 catties per mu.

According to this statistic, the country's total grain output last year was 588.7 billion catties, or 294.35 billion kilograms, which was 221.3 billion jin more than the accounts in the Manchu household treasury seized after the Chinese Empire captured the city of Beijing, and the Manchu Qing's grain output in the last years of Daoguang was 367.4 billion catties, which was 6 percent higher than that in the last years of Daoguang, when the Manchu Dynasty's grain output was at its peak.

This is undoubtedly a huge achievement! In particular, Feng Yunshan participated in it as a dominant player, and the excitement and pride were difficult to express.

Nowadays, due to the expansion of the Chinese Empire, the original Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia, North America and other places have all been incorporated into the empire, and in the past ten years, the population has increased a lot, from the original 430 million to 520 million. But the increased food was enough to feed them.

The per capita grain share has increased from more than 800 catties in the last years of Daoguang to 1,130 catties today.

What is a political achievement, what proof is good for the people, what can be said to be a contribution to the country, so that the people can live happily, this real data can explain everything! Moreover, the data of the last years of Daoguang in the Manchu Qing Dynasty, as well as many Manchu and Mongolian nobles, they have the most resources, naturally including food, and now, although the empire has not achieved equality for everyone, but at least the gap between the rich and the poor and the status gap has narrowed a lot compared with the Manchu era, so that today's average data of 1130 catties of grain consumption per person per year is more golden, and Feng Yunshan is more satisfied.

According to the estimation of the Ministry of Agriculture, this year's grain and summer grain harvest has become a foregone conclusion. The most important thing is that in addition to the newly cultivated paddy fields in the Mekong Delta of more than 3 million mu, this year will also add nearly 4 million mu of arable land for potato and corn cultivation in New Mexico, as well as more than 8 million mu of corn and wheat and more than 5 million mu of cotton planting areas in the Hexi region of North America and the Kazakh Khanate, which have officially begun to be planted and put into production this year, and more than 10 million mu of new reclaimed grain arable land in other parts of the empire will be added sporadically, plus the increasing application of holy fertilizer year by year. In this way, the new arable land this year alone will bring up to 10 billion catties of food, and these new grains can almost feed the entire population of the British mainland.

However, although the empire's food supply is worry-free for the time being, Feng Yunshan will not give up the importance of food. In his opinion, food always comes first. Only with the guarantee of sufficient food can the entire empire have the most fundamental material foundation. Moreover, the empire's grain production was high enough in the eyes of several cabinet members, but in Feng Yunshan's opinion, it was still far from enough. He seems to remember that in later generations, modern China, whose land area was greatly reduced and the area of arable land was much smaller than that of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, produced twice as much grain a year as the present Chinese Empire.

In later generations, the United States was strong not only because it was the largest in the world in terms of industry, but also because its agriculture was the world's largest exporter, and it was also the largest and most advanced in the world. The strength of agriculture and the sufficient storage of grain allow them to devote all their energy to industrial development.

Feng Yunshan admired this very much. He imagined that the future direction of the Chinese Empire's agricultural efforts was to emulate the United States in later generations, with much more arable land than later China, but the population engaged in agriculture was only less than 1 percent of the total population, a gap of dozens of times compared with the population engaged in agriculture in China.

Feng Yunshan knew very well that although the population of the empire was as high as 500 million, if agriculture was not developed and the agricultural population of the empire was not freed from the land, then there would be no difference between the 500 million population and the 50 million population. The reason why Britain was strong before was actually that the population they liberated from agriculture invested the most in industry and commerce, that is, the demographic dividend was the largest.

Therefore, the empire must work in this direction, and the purpose of developing agriculture is not only to increase grain production, but also to send the agricultural population from agriculture to industry, so that the greatest advantage of the demographic dividend of the Chinese empire can be reflected, and only in this way can the industrial development of the empire be truly promoted. （）