With the arrival of the summer harvest, all parts of the country began to get busy again. In the wheat field of an imperial village on the outskirts of Beijing, there was a large group of people around.

One group was Jin Yiwei, one group was the peasants in the imperial village, and another group was the emperor and officials, as well as students from the Royal Academy of Science and Technology and reporters from the Daming Daily.

All eyes were on a brand-new harvester.

The harvester was powered by two horses, with three workers on it, and two large harvesting devices on either side, which was not at all in principle different from the reels that rolled at the front of the combine harvesters of later generations.

On the other side of the harvester, there were thirty young men with scythes in their hands.

"Your Majesty, both sides are ready." Xu Guangqi said excitedly to Zhu Youxiao's side, Zhu Youxiao looked at the big guy in front of him, his expression showed great expectation, and waved his hand: "Let's start!" ”

"Ready...... Begin! Xu Guangqi ran between the two teams, waved the flag in his hand, and officially announced the start of the game.

That's right, it's a game.

In an efficiency competition between traditional manual harvesting and the newly developed harvester, everyone stared intently at the two teams in front of them.

As soon as Xu Guangqi's words fell, both sides began to harvest as fast as they could.

The traditional manual team reacted faster, and thirty workers rushed forward with sickles in their hands, bending down to harvest the wheat.

All of them were full of physical strength, and everyone was desperate, harvesting the wheat with a sickle as fast as they could, cutting the stalks one by one, and then piling them neatly on the ground.

The three workers on the other side of the harvester were a beat slower.

"Drive!" The reins in the hands of the groom on the harvester flicked and pressed down. The two horses slowly moved forward and drove the harvester along.

The other two workers began to grasp the rocker and shake it vigorously. The drum used to harvest the wheat in front of it suddenly rolled.

The steel drum that runs presses all the wheat along the way, cuts the straw in the rolling, and rolls the ears of wheat and the straw into the machine.

As the two workers continued to turn the rocker, the wheat that had been rolled into the machine successfully separated from the ears of wheat, and then was separated into a container with a rustle.

The two service horses moved slowly at an even pace. Soon a large field of wheat was harvested.

The people present looked at the harvester that was still moving forward in amazement, such a fast efficiency is really surprising, and the thirty young laborers over there seem to have only harvested wheat from these places!

This kind of hand-cranked animal-powered harvester is actually not much different from the harvester of later generations, which is nothing more than replacing the internal combustion engine with animal power, so as to obtain the power to drive the harvester to move. The manual hand-crank provides the power for the harvesting device. Under the hand-crank of the workers, the inside of the harvester is constantly running. The four-meter-wide wheat field that such a harvester passed through was completely harvested.

But soon the harvester stopped because the cart was full. The workers in the car took out the sacks, one put the bag under the wheat bucket, and the other opened the wheat hopper. I saw the wheat in the wheat bucket pouring into the sack.

When it was full, the worker closed the wheat bucket, and then the two of them tied the mouth of the sack together. Then throw the sack to the side. Then the horses were pushed again, and the harvester was running again.

The harvest continues. The horse-driving workers constantly rotate the workers on the cart so that one of the workers can get time to rest.

In close collaboration with three workers. Ten acres of wheat were harvested in less than two hours. On the other hand, on the artificial team, only half of the ten acres of wheat were harvested.

Zhu Youxiao immediately applauded and shouted excitedly: "Well done." ”

Everyone present also applauded warmly and applauded the success of the harvester.

"Quick, it's too fast."

"The Royal Institute of Science and Technology is a truly amazing invention."

"Judging from the wheat harvested by both sides, one person on the harvester side can be used for twenty people."

"More than that! The wheat of the artificial team over there has not yet shed its head! The harvester has already been detained and bagged. Just ship it away. ”

Everyone was amazed and discussed, and the artificial team and the harvesting team were just a simple competition, which easily reflected the efficiency of the harvester.

There has been a huge increase in efficiency, and the emergence of such machines will greatly reduce the input of labor in agriculture. As a result, more commercial grains can be produced more efficiently. Liberate the population from the land.

There is obviously a huge market for such machines, and first, Liaodong agriculture will adopt a commercial planting model. Second, there are also many landlords in Beizhili who have united to form agricultural companies, and these agricultural companies will be very interested in reducing the number of employees.

The Beizhili Agricultural Company, an agricultural company with a large number of tenant farmers, also has a demand for harvesters. With these harvesters, farmers don't have to rush to harvest in the summer. You must know that one acre of wheat can only be harvested by a person for a whole day, and it is too late to find helpers during the summer harvest every year.

Zhu Youxiao hurriedly asked Xu Guangqi about the cost, and Xu Guangqi replied: "The cost of a harvester is not very high, and it doesn't cost a lot of money for materials, mainly because it costs more about machining, but the cost of a harvester is only about eight yuan." ”

The harvester is nothing more than wood and steel, because this hand-cranked harvester has a simple structure, that is, the heading device may have some failures, but it is also easier to maintain. After all, the most problematic thing about a machine is basically the power plant.

The power of the hand-cranked animal power harvester is a combination of animal power and manpower.

Of course, the cost of the harvester will also rise with the rise of labor costs, but the rise of labor costs means that the efficiency of the harvester put into use has also improved.

The cost of harvesters is low, and the most expensive is two horses. However, horses can be used all year round, so horses are not much cost, and now Mongolia and Tibet are doing horse business with the Ming Dynasty, especially Mongolia and the Ming Dynasty have a large horse trade, and there is no shortage of horses in Beizhili.

This means that the profit of the harvester will be high enough, and the price of a harvester can be mentioned as fifty or sixty yuan.

"We put the harvester into production right away, and if no design flaws were found. Next year's summer harvest should be fully distributed in Beizhili, and as far as possible in all wheat-producing areas in other provinces. Zhu You instructed the left and right.

"Your Majesty."

The next day, "Daming Daily" carried out an in-depth report on the hand-cranked animal-powered harvester, which immediately aroused a warm response.

The agricultural companies of Beizhili have gone to the Royal Machinery Manufacturing Factory to inspect the harvester, and after the reform of the land management model, there is obviously a strong demand for the harvester.

Those agricultural companies are not short of money, they just want to hire fewer workers.

The current minimum wage in Beizhili is 2 yuan a month. However, if an agricultural company wants to find someone to harvest wheat, it is absolutely impossible for the daily wage to be less than 40 yuan, and it will cost 400 yuan to harvest 10 acres of wheat on average.

After some calculations, the Royal Machinery Factory offered a price of 50 yuan per unit. After a lot of data comparison, the efficiency of the harvester is actually about 1:30, that is, one worker can reach the speed of 30 workers to harvest manually. When a harvester is bought, three workers can replace the workload of 90 workers.

90 workers can earn 72 yuan in about ten days of the summer harvest. And if you buy a harvester and put it into use, you will be able to pay for it in a year. The back harvester is net worth. And it's a durable product, and it's no problem to use it for one or two decades to repair it.

The price of 50 yuan is still relatively affordable, and agricultural companies can afford it. After this price was set, orders came in like snowflakes, and in addition to agricultural companies willing to buy, some workers were also willing to buy in joint ventures, intending to make a fortune at the time of the summer harvest next year.

A large number of harvesters appear on the market, and the remuneration for summer harvesting will naturally be reduced. However, the price of 50 yuan is still very cost-effective. If you take one month out every year, you can earn a salary that can only be earned in a few months.

Naturally, the Royal Agricultural Company also has a large number of orders.

So much so that orders are placed a few months after the end of the summer harvest. It has risen to more than 60,000 units, and harvesters have also been welcomed by many landlords in other northern provinces. Not all landlords lease their land to tenant farmers, and some landlords hire long-term workers to run their own businesses, and they are also interested in this type of harvester.

The Royal Machinery Factory's product salesmen began to sell everywhere in the northern provinces, and orders continued to rise.

The manufacture of agricultural machinery apparently gave the Royal Maschinenfabrik a great taste of sweetness. Funding was initiated, and mechanical workers and the Royal Institute of Science and Technology were set up to research projects on various agricultural machinery.

This year, the summer harvest in the northern provinces is in full swing, and the collection of agricultural taxes in various places is not much different from that of previous years. It's just that this year, the imperial court exempted many regions from agricultural taxes, which greatly reduced the taxes. However, the agricultural tax levied in Beizhili has skyrocketed.

In just one Beizhili, the amount of agricultural tax collected in the summer of this year reached 8 million yuan in one fell swoop. It was almost more than the agricultural tax in the entire north in the past, and the imperial court received ready-made silver, not 6 million stone of grain.

These agricultural taxes are levied from agricultural companies, which is the biggest benefit of Beizhili's agricultural business mode after it becomes dominated by agricultural companies.

Those scholars who have meritorious names no longer enjoy the original tax exemption policy in Beizhili at this time.

At the same time, the Beizhili Agricultural Company generated a lot of tenant profits, which were distributed to shareholders according to shares, among which the Royal Bank received the most dividends. After all, more than 30 million acres of land in the Beizhili Agricultural Company originally belonged to the Royal Agricultural Company.

In these 30 million acres of land alone, 15 million stone wheat was expropriated.

The summer grain harvest in Beizhili was the same as last year, mainly because of the improvement of a large number of water conservancy facilities, which ensured the full growth of wheat.

Among them, more than half of the drought and flood harvest protection project has been completed. 90% of the land under the entire Beizhili Agricultural Company has been built into land for drought and flood protection, and the remaining 10% will be left for next year, and some cultivated land is not in the scope of construction because the cost of drought and flood protection projects is too high.

The rest is farmland for other agricultural companies, many of which do not have the idea of building the project. After all, this is something that the agricultural company has to pay for itself. However, after all, these agricultural companies have to operate, and they still have to ensure basic water conservancy facilities. Therefore, there are no disaster years, and the impact on them is not great.

With the overall improvement of water conservancy facilities, most of the wheat fields in Beizhili have been turned into irrigated land. In addition, the wheat management technology has been guided by agricultural companies, and the yield has also increased significantly. So much so that during the summer harvest in the third year of the Apocalypse, the wheat yield in many lands exceeded 3 stones, but most of them remained at the level of about 2 stones.

The cultivated land with a yield of only 1 stone per mu of wheat is getting less and less, after all, the average land will not have such a low yield after becoming irrigated land. Only those cultivated lands that are relatively poor are no longer grown with wheat, but with crops such as sweet potatoes and corn.

This year, the grain output of Beizhili was very gratifying, and Beizhili successfully achieved self-sufficiency in terms of commercial grain. The only problem is that cotton production is insufficient, and most of it has to be imported from other provinces.

This problem is what has been bothering Zhu Youxiao for the past two years, people have to dress warmly in addition to being well-fed. The supply of cotton as a raw material is still relatively stable, and this cotton-producing area in Henan, Shandong, and northern Jiangsu can produce a lot of cotton every year, but this commercial cotton production area used to be mainly sold to Songjiang.

With the development of the textile industry in Beizhili, the battle for cotton between Beizhili and Songjiang merchants has caused the price of cotton to be raised by nearly 30%.

The price has increased, making the cotton planting area in Henan, Shandong, and northern Jiangsu more huge this year, not to say that there is a shortage of cotton, but the supply of cotton is indeed a bit out of touch.

If the vast land in eastern Liaoning can be developed and become a new commercial grain producing area, then it will be very easy to increase the cotton planting area in the Guannai.

During the summer harvest, a group of Jiannu captives were escorted to Jingshi and a ceremony of unprecedented scale was held. Among them is Du Du, the owner of the white flag, and it is the existence of this guy that the level is high enough that Zhu Youxiao agreed to the holding of this event.

A group of Jiannu were held in a prison van and entered through the city gates. On both sides of the road, there were people who had heard the news and came to join in the fun. When the convoy was seen, the crowd burst into cheers.

An exciting victory is indeed too much for Da Ming at this time.

Liaodong was defeated again and again, making careerists everywhere ready to move, and the Southwest Tusi frequently launched rebellions, and Shandong also made trouble with such a moth as the Wenxiang Sect.

The great victory of the summer offensive launched by the Ming army not only boosted the morale of the army and the people, but also had a very good deterrent effect on careerists everywhere.

Zhu Youxiao personally attended the ceremony, and after the ceremony, thousands of slaves were taken to the outskirts to be shot.

Only Du Du and more than 30 other high-ranking Jiannu generals were escorted to the entrance of the vegetable market for beheading.

For Dudu, it's the end of the world. Several high-ranking generals of Jiannu were scared to defecate before the execution, which was very embarrassing. However, the other high-ranking generals of Jiannu were barbaric, and they were still struggling when they were beheaded.

But in the end, the head was cut off with a knife.

However, after the head was cut off, many of the Liao people present stepped forward one after another to buy the human flesh of these high-ranking generals from the executioner. These Liao people who were exiled in other places hated Jiannu to the core.

At the same time, many people use steamed buns to dip their heads in blood, which seems to be able to cure some diseases.

Zhu Youxiao was not at the execution site, but when he heard the minister's description of the scene, he only felt that he was covered in hair, and he was actually ......

couldn't help but think about it, but at this time, Yang Guang ran in and happily shouted to Zhu Youxiao: "Your Majesty, great joy!" ”

"What's the matter?" Zhu Youxiao asked calmly.

"General Qin's troops once again won victory in Guizhou, and in the past two months, they have captured nearly 50,000 Tusi soldiers and horses, and the Tusi rebellion has basically been put down." Yang Guang presented the good news to Zhu Youxiao.

"So smooth?" Zhu Youxiao couldn't help but be stunned, and hurriedly opened the recital and looked at it. He is ready to prepare for a long-term battle, and the two Southern Infantry Divisions have not yet been formed! (To be continued......)

PS: There is still only one change today. 、