"Of course I have that!" As soon as Leonid spoke, he heard his father's heavy cough, shrugged helplessly, and added two more polite words, "It is not enough for me to be alone, I need a lot of support from all the seniors and colleagues here, and of course, the guidance of His Excellency the Minister of Transport is also indispensable." ”

The son makes fun of his father, and everyone just thinks it is a natural expression of the affection between father and son, and it is okay to laugh. Old man Matvey was deeply gratified, with Leonid's unruly and obedient personality, it was really not easy to do this.

"Leonid was right when he said that the invention of a new generation of vehicles is an epoch-making project, and it is by no means a problem that can be solved by a genius in a flash of inspiration, and I hope that all of you here will work together to overcome this problem and go down in history with your name."

Roland's serious attitude infected the people in the venue, and they all put away their smiles and seriously considered this work, feeling that there is a long way to go.

"Set up a research group specializing in the development of the next generation of road vehicles, with Leonid as the team leader, Jack, Kafta, Morozov, Master Duvalin and Mr. Matvey as consultants to the research group, and if they need manpower, they will be transferred from the Ordnance Institute and the Mecha Research Institute, and as for the funding of the research group...... Temporarily allocate 1 million gold thalers, if it is not enough, it can be added, as long as it can produce results, you don't have to worry about research and development funds. ”

Roland's promise made Leonid secretly relieved. He has talent, but what he lacks is funding. A million gold talers were smashed, and if he couldn't hear a sound, he wouldn't have had to speak without Roland, and he wouldn't have the face to see anyone.

"With regard to the new generation of road vehicles, I support in principle Leonid's idea of modifying a horse-drawn carriage with a magic steam engine, and at the same time put forward several performance requirements." Roland groaned and said slowly under the gaze of everyone: "First of all, this vehicle should have excellent load capacity and off-road performance, and secondly, this vehicle must be able to start quickly and brake quickly, only if all the above requirements are met, this magic guide automatic vehicle can become a tactical vehicle for the future Far Eastern Mechanized Army." ”

Everyone suddenly woke up when he heard his last sentence, no wonder Roland attached so much importance to the research and development of a new generation of road vehicles, even at any cost, it turned out to be out of military needs.

There was silence in the chamber, save for the slight rustle of the tip of a pen across the paper, and people were carefully recording Roland's request.

Taking a sip from his teacup, Roland didn't give any further hint about the engine. It was decided to let Leonid figure it out on his own, and if no decisive progress had been made in R&D after a year or two, he would have to abandon his fantasies about steam-powered cars and come up with a new concept of the "internal combustion engine" that even he knew little about, although so far he did not know how to make fuel or its alternative energy in the world of Vares.

……

It seems that there is a force at work in the shadows, and whenever Roland is invited to visit Bethlehem, the capital of Canaan, he will always be unable to make it because of one or another factor.

When Roland first traveled to the world of Vares four years ago, he had the opportunity to travel to Bethlehem to serve as a squire knight to Corephas, and he had already planned a trip north, and certainly had no interest in traveling far away to serve as a follower.

Now, four years later, he has become a prince of the Far East, on a par with the Canaanite prince of Coropha, and has more real power than he is entitled to visit Bethlehem as the prince of a kingdom. Unfortunately, the Bethlehem Exposition was held during the busy agricultural season in the Far East, and Roland had to pay close attention to the 200 agricultural reform pilots, personally confirm the crop yield of each pilot, and make a preliminary summary of the six-month rural reform experiment and write a report for the reference of the cabinet.

July is the time of harvest of early rice in the Far East, and the plains along the river are like a sea of abundance with rolling golden waves. By the end of July, the southern rice fields were harvested, and all parts of the country were harvested, especially the pilot yield of the farm that Roland focused on was the most prominent, with an average yield of 700 pounds per mu, setting a new record for the yield of early rice in the Far East!

There is no gap without comparison, and those yeoman farmers who did not join the farms, cultivated almost exactly the same fields, and spent more effort on intensive cultivation under the same climatic conditions, but the yield of early rice harvested per mu was only about 300 pounds at most, barely half of the yield per mu of collective farms.

Why is there such a huge disparity in yields on the same plots and the same crops?

There is no doubt that the Green Field Druids stationed in the commune should be the first to act, just the three-ring natural magic of "plant growth" can increase the crop yield by 1/3 compared with the normal year, not to mention that the Green Field Druids have also made vital contributions to the cultivation of improved seeds, the improvement of fertilizers, and the prevention and control of pests and diseases in farmland.

However, according to the statistics provided by Valentina, in previous years, some villages also had green druids in charge of agricultural production, why did the increase in yield not be as significant as the pilot farms? This only shows that the doubling of production was not entirely the work of the Druids of Oz, and that the organizational model of the village commune and the corporatization of the collective farms also played a role in promoting agricultural productivity to varying degrees.

As a matter of fact, the greatest advantage of the corporate-run collective farms is not to increase the yield per mu of crops, still less to compete with the yeoman peasants or the plantations under the control of the feudal aristocracy, but to liberate the labor force to the greatest extent and cultivate as many fields as possible with as little labor as possible. Only by adopting the business model of collective farms can we cultivate 20,000 mu of farmland with less than 500 adult members and 100 public horses, and can we turn the current situation of "a small number of people on land" in the Far East from a disadvantage in the traditional sense into a comparative advantage.

Roland was well aware of the advantages of collective farms, so when the press hyped topics such as "the success of the agricultural reform pilot" and "the record-breaking yield of early rice per mu in the south" attracted the public's attention, he was more concerned about the total yield of crops. Only by increasing the total grain production will it be possible to collect enough public grain from the peasants to feed the urban population, which is surging with the industrialization of the Far East, to expand the army, strengthen national defense, and even to export surplus grain to replenish the state treasury.

Judging from the harvest of more than 60 pilot farms in the south, Roland's goal of implementing agricultural reform can be said to have been successfully achieved. In the north, where spring wheat, soybeans and corn were not harvested until mid-August at the earliest, and corn was not harvested until early October, Roland did not want to jump to conclusions about the success or failure of agricultural reform in the Far East.