Although traditionally speaking, the revenue of the salt administration is the bulk of the feudal dynasty, but for a vast and sparsely populated Fengtian, which is rich in resources and urgently needs to carry out various developments such as agriculture and processing industry, although the income of the salt administration may be more important in the past two years, the existing income of the salt administration of millions of silver cannot become the financial pillar of Zhao Dongyun in the future.

Zhao Dongyun must find a way to make more money, and for Zhao Dongyun, who is bent on expanding the army and establishing a huge base area, how much financial revenue does Fengtian have to reach every year?

If the status quo is to be maintained, that is, to support the two mixed associations and pay the third town 40,000 taels of silver per month for the defense fee, although the third town under Zhao Dongyun is known as the Beiyang lineage, the main military expenditure is paid by the household department, but during the period of stationing in Fengtian, Fengtian pays part of the defense expenses, plus Zhao Dongyun is additionally equipped with many weapons, and the cavalry unit is also overstaffed, so there is a lot of extra military expenses.

In addition, although the patrol officers in Mukden could not be expected to fight, and the cost was far less than that of the regular army, they also needed to spend money to support.

Zhao Dongyun had to come up with about 220,000 taels of silver every month, or about 2.5 million yuan a year.

In addition to military spending, a huge Fengtian also needs a lot of other funds, such as according to the current scale of education reform, let's not talk about it later, but this year we have to invest at least 300,000 taels of silver in education funds, and at the same time there are administrative funds that occupy the majority, and this part also needs about 2 million taels of silver every year.

As for the rest of the mess, let's not talk about it, anyway, according to Fengtian's existing annual income of more than two million taels of silver, it is far from enough, even if it doubles to four million taels of silver, it is not enough.

According to Zhao Dongyun's estimates, just to maintain the existing reforms, it will be necessary to invest at least 6 million taels of silver every year. If you want to expand the two mixed associations into two towns, and then restore the needs of the people's livelihood in Liaodong and other areas after the end of the Russo-Japanese War, support industry and commerce, etc., even 10 million taels of silver will not be enough next year!

And to achieve an annual income of 10 million taels, this is really not just a matter of opening your mouth, nor does it mean that you can only rely on tax rectification or salt rectification, but you also have to open up other sources of finance.

Zhao Dongyun has prepared a lot of solutions to this, not to mention industry and commerce for the time being, Zhao Dongyun also has high hopes for agriculture, he hopes to further develop agriculture, and then drive Fengtian's agricultural product processing industry, and then expand and strengthen Fengtian's unique soybean industry, grain industry and textile industry.

In this series of links, expanding the output of agricultural products is the basis of a series of agricultural product processing industries in Northeast China, because only when the output of these agricultural products increases, then Fengtian's various agricultural product processing industries can flourish.

And even if the technical content of these agricultural product processing industries is low, they belong to the industrial category, and the tax collected will be much more than the mere field tax.

In other words, Zhao Dongyun does not expect much tax revenue from agriculture, he only needs to maintain a normal level, and the tax revenue he expects will come from the agricultural product processing industry, such as Fengtian's traditional economic pillars: oil extraction, raw silk, winemaking, etc.

In addition, the development of agriculture is also related to key issues such as Zhao Dongyun attracting immigrants and increasing the overall grain output in Fengtian, so Zhao Dongyun naturally does not dare to relax the problems in agriculture.

"Mr. Chen, how is the reclamation on your side recently?" After Zhao Dongyun roughly listened to Zhou Ziqi's report from the General Administration of Salt Affairs, he quickly set his sights on Chen Zhenxian, the general office of the General Administration of Agriculture and Forestry.

The General Administration of Agriculture and Forestry, when Zhao Dongyun was established, was only an agricultural reclamation bureau, but later in order to develop forestry resources, a forestry bureau was created, and then in order to develop animal husbandry, and then in order to develop animal husbandry, it was planned to build an animal husbandry bureau, but in this way there were too many institutions, which did not conform to Zhao Dongyun's original intention of streamlining administrative institutions, so he simply merged the above three institutions, with Chen Zhenxian as the general office, and set up a reclamation office, forestry department, animal husbandry department and a fishery department.

Therefore, although the name of this State Administration of Agriculture and Forestry sounds like a lot of dirt, and it seems that it is not as glamorous as the State Administration of Finance and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, it is a veritable heavyweight department under Zhao Dongyun, and almost all of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery are in charge.

Chen Zhenxian, like several other people from international students, did not wear a traditional horse coat or official robe, but a suit, most of the people present were from traditional backgrounds wearing horse coats or official mansions, and Zhao Dongyun, who was born in a military, was born in a military uniform, and the international students were basically in suits, and four completely different costumes could be seen in a small meeting, which was also a feature of the times in the late Qing Dynasty.

Chen Zhenxian had already prepared for today's meeting, Zhao Dongyun was going to hold a plenary meeting to discuss and solve financial problems, and he would listen to the reports of various departments before discussing and solving the problem, so Chen Zhenxian was also prepared in advance.

Immediately stood up, and then took out the information in his hand and distributed it to everyone present: "At present, the agricultural development of our province is still relatively smooth, and the number of existing cultivated fields is relatively large, but there are a large number of private fields that are concealed and not reported, in addition to the barren fields, pastures, paddocks, etc., which are part of the barren fields, pastures, paddocks, etc., the recent work of our General Administration of Agriculture and Forestry is focused on identifying private fields and recruiting official fields and pastures. ”

Chen Zhenxian said this, the corners of his mouth slightly curled: "Since June, our bureau has successively promulgated a series of measures such as private earnest reporting, and has successively investigated 1.3 million mu of private and honest land, ranging from 1 or 25 yuan to 5 yuan per mu according to the excellent and unequal land price, and at present, our bureau has collected 1.5 million taels of silver for this alone. ”

The above private sincerity refers to the land obtained by private individuals in the government-owned 'no class' official land, wilderness, ownerless wilderness and other places, as long as the reclamation person registers with the government and pays a fee of one or two silver per mu, then this acre of land will be your permanent private property in the future.

In fact, this hand is to sell the barren official land and ownerless land directly, but the price is much lower than the price of normal farmland.

Several other people here, such as Zhou Ziqi of the General Office of Salt Affairs, and Zhao Dongping of the General Administration of Finance, although they knew that the General Administration of Agriculture and Forestry had made a lot of money in the past few months, they did not expect that one mouth would be more than 1.5 million, and more importantly, looking at Chen Zhenxian's meaning, it seemed that there was still something to come.

Sure enough, after Chen Zhen opened his mouth first and came with one and a half million taels of silver, he continued: "In addition, our bureau has already reclaimed official land such as Dalinghe Ranch and Fengtian Enclosure, and it is estimated that 3 million mu of official land will be reclaimed within the year, and it is estimated that about 1 million taels of silver will be obtained!" ”

This so-called reclamation, in fact, is not to give the land to people casually, even if the field is cheap, the official still needs to collect money, but the land price is very cheap, the price of 3 million mu is only about 1 million taels, and the average price is only more than 3 yuan and more silver. The reason why the land sold for 'claiming' and 'reclamation' is so cheap is mainly to attract displaced people from Zhili, Shandong, Henan and other places.

Of course, in order to prevent those rich people from buying tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of acres of land in one go, those reclaimed lands generally have all kinds of incidental political conditions, and they are purchased according to the Dingkou restrictions, and if you buy them, you must open up the land, and if you don't open up the land, the land will be repossessed by the government.

On the one hand, the reason for doing this is to prevent land annexation, and on the other hand, it is to increase the population of Northeast China, after all, people do not come to Kanto to be small farmers for others, they are here to own their own land.

Chen Zhenxian spoke twice in a row, once for more than one million taels of silver, and twice for two and a half million taels of silver, which made everyone else present stunned......

Chen Zhenxian continued to talk about his report, but everyone didn't have much to listen to! Only Zhao Dongyun listened to it with relish, and after talking about agriculture, Chen Zhenxian talked about forestry and fishery, but these two aspects are ordinary, and it is difficult to rely on them to create a large amount of money in a short period of time, and animal husbandry is mainly concentrated in the area close to Mongolia.

The jurisdiction of contemporary Fengtian is larger than that of Liaoning in later generations, in addition to Liaoning, it also governs part of Mongolia and part of Jilin, so there are more herdsmen in the area close to Mongolia, and there are more animal husbandry.

Zhao Dongyun didn't care too much about how much money Chen Zhenxian had in his mouth, because the money from the sale of land was a one-shot deal, and it would be gone after receiving it this time, which means that the more than two million taels of silver in Chen Zhenxian's mouth were a one-time income. Zhao Dongyun attaches great importance to the sustainable development of agriculture, which in turn leads to the increase of agricultural taxes and grain production, and then drives the agricultural product processing industry.

After all, Zhao Dongyun was at the end of the Qing Dynasty rather than in later generations, and in this era, he did not have the ability to sell land to sky-high prices to maintain the operation of the entire financial system, because although he also had official land in his hands in those years, there was more land in private hands, and it was impossible for the state to control all the land like land ownership, and then he could sell a little a year like squeezing toothpaste, creating an artificial tension between supply and demand, and then raising land prices.

So the sale of land, especially the silver from the sale of official wasteland, was not Zhao Dongyun's main source of income in the future, and he was even willing to distribute the land to the immigrants for free, if possible. Why? Because the immigrants will pay taxes every year after reclamation, Zhao Dongyun is more looking forward to paying taxes on those fields than a one-time purchase of land silver.

After the General Administration of Agriculture and Forestry finished speaking, Zhao Dongyun turned his gaze to Zhao E: "Brother Zhao, what is the current situation in the industrial zone?" Can income and expenditure be stable? ”

Immediately, Zhao E, the general office of Huludao Industrial Zone, got up and reported!