The reclamation of wasteland in full swing continues in the Gyeonggi area, because the food supply is relatively good, and there is a temporary 'hospital' to ensure the medical care of the farmers, and the farmers are extremely motivated in the process of reclamation.

The reclamation activities of Huangzhuang quickly spread to the entire Hebei region. The number of tenant farmers and displaced people recruited quickly exceeded 200,000. The area of reclamation has also expanded to 6 million mu.

In terms of funds, it is very abundant, and the amount of deposits of Daming Royal Bank in the capital has quickly exceeded 8 million taels of silver. Among them, nearly 5 million taels are five-year long-term deposits.

Many of these funds were the money of those officials, and the corruption situation shocked Zhu Youxiao. It's just that for the time being, Zhu Youxiao has no way to engage in anti-corruption, after all, the emperor's position has not yet been secured.

When the position is secured, anti-corruption is obviously very rich!

Now let's raise pigs first!

Let them fatten a little more, and when the time comes, they will be slaughtered together.

The gift tickets issued by the bank make a lot of money, first of all, these gift tickets allow the bank to get the funds at their disposal, and these funds are not subject to interest. At the same time, a 3% fee is charged for huàn gift tickets, and one hundred taels of gift tickets can earn 3 taels of silver. In just half a month, the gift tickets exchanged by the Daming Royal Bank reached more than 300,000 taels, and the bank earned nearly 10,000 taels of silver.

At present, gift tickets are the only business in which banks make money directly.

The loan business was not very popular, and only 130,000 taels of silver were loaned in the first batch, all of which were secured by assets. Businessmen in these days are not very willing to owe money to others. And the interest rate on bank loans reaches 15%, which is not as high as that of loan sharks, but it is also more scary.

Those businessmen, if they are not desperate, generally do not come to the Ming Royal Bank to borrow.

But it doesn't matter, Huangzhuang investment needs a lot of money, and Daming Royal Bank's funds have a place to digest. Soon, the funds of Daming Royal Bank increased by 2 million taels again, reaching the scale of 5 million taels.

Such a huge amount of money is equivalent to half a year's financial revenue of the imperial court.

Before reclaiming wasteland, Daming Royal Agricultural Company first carried out cost estimation and risk estimation in accordance with the investment rules formulated by Zhu Youxiao.

If the cost per mu exceeds 0.5 taels of silver, it belongs to the category of 'cost exceedance', and the land with a reclamation cost of less than 0.5 taels per mu can be reclaimed first.

Risk assessment is mainly about disasters, after the completion of a water conservancy project, if there is still wasteland with a high risk of disaster, it will not be reclaimed, and the land with a lower risk will be reclaimed first.

Anyway, there is a lot of wasteland in the north, and it is estimated that within the scope of Hebei Province in later generations, there will be more than 20 million acres of wasteland.

In terms of predictable disaster risk, it is relatively small, after all, there are no major rivers in Hebei, and the annual flooding is not too poor. Although droughts and floods exist, they are unpredictable and not as common as the floods of the Yellow River.

The cost of reclamation per mu of cultivated land is controlled below 0.5 taels of silver, and the investment risk is relatively small. After three years, there is roughly an income of 1 stone of grain. If 1 stone of grain is sold to the grain bank, there will be a profit of about 0.7 taels, and the repayment will be 0.555 taels of silver, and there will be a profit of 0.145 taels of silver per mu of land. If an interest-free loan of 10 taels of silver is given to each tenant farmer, and after three years, it will be amortized into each mu, which is 0.033 interest. This means that after three years, each mu of land can make a profit of 0.112 taels of silver.

Coupled with the interest-free loan, it is equivalent to investing 0.8 taels of silver per mu, and 5 million taels of silver can reclaim 6.25 million mu of land, and the profit generated after three years is 700,000 taels of silver, plus 1.875 million taels of loans repaid by farmers. It is equivalent to a profit of 2.575 million taels.

After three years, the profit that can be generated per year is 1.45 million taels of silver.

If natural disasters and other factors are taken into account, then in three years, 2.57 million taels of silver is enough to resist the risk of natural disasters.

After Yang Ruiguo calculated this result at the price of 0.7 taels per stone of grain, Zhu Youxiao was quite satisfied with it, which was equivalent to his annual exemption from 910,000 taels of silver tenant rent and interest-free loans, and the peasants of Huangzhuang had increased their ability to resist risks, and they did not have to pay their talents when they were affected by disasters, nor did they have to rush to repay the loans.

On how to improve the farmers' ability to resist natural disasters so that they do not need to be relieved by the imperial court, Zhu Youxiao immediately thought of sweet potatoes, that is, sweet potatoes.

30 acres of land, only need to take out 3 acres every year, plant sweet potatoes in the spring, and sweet potatoes are very drought resistant, when the drought is really not good, just put water once or twice. In other words, even if the remaining 25 acres of winter wheat grains are not harvested, farmers can survive until next year by eating sweet potatoes.

In later generations, the production capacity of sweet potato mu reached 2000~3000 kg, even if the management was not good, the variety was not very good, the fertilization and insecticidal technology were not good, and the yield per mu was 500 kg! 3 acres can produce 1500 kilograms, a family of five can't eat for half a year, and winter wheat can be harvested again after half a year.

With sweet potatoes, even if it is a disaster, the imperial court does not need to provide disaster relief to Huangzhuang.

"Sweet potatoes? Sweet potato? Sweet potato? Chen seems to have heard that it has been cultivated in Fujian and other places, but it is very rare in the north. Sun Chengzong listened to Zhu Youxiao's question about sweet potatoes, thought about it and replied.

"That's it!" Zhu Youxiao felt a headache, why do you have to go to Fujian to introduce it? However, in terms of planting technology, it still needs to be explored for a while.

Before Zhu Youxiao crossed, he had been exposed to this thing in the countryside when he was a child, but when it came to specific management techniques, he really didn't know very well.

But even if it's difficult, you have to promote it!

The problem facing the north now is that there is a shortage of grain, and the price of grain has risen to one tael of silver per stone. With sweet potatoes, at least the common people don't have to starve to death.

In the prosperous Kangqian era of the Qing Dynasty, wasn't it eaten by eating sweet potatoes!

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, sweet potatoes were actually being promoted, and some officials even promoted sweet potatoes in Shaanxi, where the peasant army was the most violent.

It's just that the intention is good, but the promotion methods are too rough, and the people have never touched this thing, and suddenly asked them to plant sweet potatoes, but the result is simply the opposite.

The promotion of sweet potatoes also caused a civil uprising, which was really embarrassing, and in the end, the Manchus picked up the cheapness. In the Qing Dynasty, the harvest and scraping of the peasants was much higher than that of the Ming Dynasty, but the reason why the Qing Dynasty was able to maintain it was mainly due to the sweet potato.

Zhu Youxiao didn't want the people to be so poor that they could only live on sweet potatoes, but at this time, the Ming Dynasty had reached a special dangerous period, and sweet potatoes were a very good choice for transition.

After getting through this difficulty, we will find a way to make the people rich.

Just when Zhu Youxiao was worried about the introduction of sweet potatoes, Xu Guangqi had come to the capital in the dust, and he also solved the technical problems of promoting sweet potatoes for Zhu Youxiao.