"I still think it's good to learn agricultural skills, and it's most comfortable to eat a full belly," Jiji said in a slurred voice, touching his slightly swollen belly. His Chinese is not fluent, and he stutters, so he is very silent most of the time, whether among his friends or at school. This time it was a surprise to rush to speak, and the rest of the people stopped talking when they saw him like this, and quietly listened to him tell his learning story. Gigi stammered and stumbled, but everyone understood what he meant: The Thunderbolts are very good at farming, and I have learned to feed the whole tribe when I go back.

The Luo clan ghost country is very poor, and Ji Ji's clan is the poorest in the Luo clan. It bordered the kingdom of Dali, but it was not occupied by the Mongols. On the one hand, although Jiji's people are few, they are short and sturdy, and they are good at using a kind of poison that seals their throats with blood, which makes Dali and the Mongols jealous. On the other hand, the mountains are high and densely forested, and the few hillside fields are also covered with stones, so it is very difficult to cultivate. The Mongols had no intention of occupying it at all, and were not even interested in robbing it. It's just that this is an important channel for the communication of various tribes in Miaojiang, and the Mongols frequently reconnoiter here, and even carry out military operations through here, but the tribe is inevitably from the disaster of soldiers. The villages were frequently harassed by the Mongols, the young and strong were taken into slavery, the women were raped, and many were even innocently killed.

"If you fall behind, you will be beaten", in order to avenge the blood feud with the Mongolian army, and also to find the backing to resist Mongolia, the Jiji tribe was the first tribe to agree to sign a tripartite agreement with the Banju Perak army. It is said that although Jiji's father is the head of the tribe, his family is really poor, and the family can only barely wrap their stomachs, and they can't even afford to eat salt. The situation of the tribal leaders is like this, and the living difficulties of the ordinary people of other tribes can be imagined. Eating is the first priority of the whole tribe, because the lack of food causes the people of the tribe to be short and weak, which leads to being bullied. With enough food there will be more people, and then more strong men and warriors, and more land. Because they were hungry, Jiji's tribe became interested in agricultural technology.

Except for a few places such as Banzhou, agricultural production in the entire Miaojiang is slash-and-burn, and the grain yield is naturally extremely low, and in the event of natural disasters, the harvest is not even enough seeds. In view of the completely different geographical climates of Miaojiang, Yibo Alpine Region and West Sichuan Plain Region, the Agricultural Technical School has opened three agricultural technical classes, among which Jiji's Miaojiang class is located in the Wugen Mountain Area, the Yibo class is located in Wandanping, the highest place in Jiguan Mountain, and the West Sichuan Plain class is located in Yongqu Township. Each of the three classes has hundreds of acres of land, which is cultivated by the students, and the theory in the classroom is put into practice. However, this kind of teaching is more popular with students in Miaojiang and Yibo areas, after all, farming does not need to burn the brain, as long as you follow the method.

In view of the situation in Miaojiang, the school put forward the agricultural policy of "sharp tools, selected seeds, and fine management" for planting agriculture in Miaojiang's mountainous areas. The so-called sharp tools are the selection of suitable agricultural tools such as treadmills, crane-beak shovels, and short sickles. The Jiji and other tribes have always cultivated the scattered plots on the hillsides, sowing them directly on the burned land, or using sharp wooden sticks to make holes and bury the seeds in them. On the one hand, this is due to the high cost of iron farm tools, and on the other hand, Miaojiang simply does not have such convenient and advanced farm tools. After the tripartite agreement is signed, the tribes can exchange goods for purchases, and even buy them on credit.

The selection includes two aspects. The first aspect is to choose different varieties for planting according to climate, rainfall, light, soil thickness and fertility. Although there is a lot of rainfall and the climate is mild, most of the slopes have thin soil and poor water retention, which is more suitable for planting drought-tolerant varieties such as soybeans and sorghum. The second aspect refers to the need to select plump and large seeds before sowing, and sterilize them with plant ash water or lime water. After the harvest every year, the best fruits are selected and retained, and high-yield varieties are continuously selected and cultivated.

In addition to being diligent in daily fertilizer and water management, often weeding, and repelling birds and beasts, the most important thing is to implement compound planting and make full use of light, heat and biological resources. Most of Miaojiang is mountainous, but there are also many small rich mountain basins. If Perak Army's current planting method is adopted, or if the greenhouse seedling cultivation method is used, these fertile fields can also achieve double cropping of rice and wheat as in western Sichuan, instead of harvesting only one rice season. For areas with abundant water sources such as lakes, ponds and marshes, three-dimensional agricultural planting models such as mulberry (hemp) - fish - duck - lotus root can be realized.

Gigi listened carefully to the lectures and worked extremely diligently, which was unanimously praised by the instructors. In addition to taking agricultural skills classes, he often used his free time to go to the nearby blacksmith shop to modify his farming tools to make them more suitable for his tribe's gravelly hillside farming. Based on his suggestion, the Perak Army Farm Tools Factory also redesigned the agricultural tools suitable for Miaojiang, which can not only improve labor efficiency, but also reduce the wear and tear of iron agricultural tools. Although the cost of transporting farm tools to Banju by water is not too high, the transportation cost of Banju to various tribal areas accounts for more than half of the total cost. Although Perak Army has already set up a mine in Banju, it will take some time before it can be put into production. Reducing wear and tear equates to increased production.

After Ji Ji finished speaking, Huang Bochun chewed the crispy wheat cake and talked about his study life slowly. The Huang family was the first family to follow the Yang family to Banzhou, and their ancestors were valued by the Yang family for their military exploits. It's just that when Yang Wen's father, Yang Price, was in power, the family road had already fallen, and there was no one in the clan who was neither an official nor financially strong, but just famous. Huang Bochun has always had great ambitions and has always had the ambition of "governing the country and leveling the world with one family". This time, Banju sent people to study in the Perak Army, and military, teachers, and doctors were the most popular. The Huang family has declined, and naturally cannot compete with those families who hold important military and political positions in Banzhou. Yang Wen remembered the old relationship and assigned a few places to the Huang family, and Huang Bochun's study trip was born.

At the beginning, Huang Bochun actually had some regrets, he actually wanted to study military affairs. After all, firearms have achieved the invincible prestige of the Perak army, and in this troubled era, of course, to make meritorious contributions is to obtain military merits, which is also the most convenient way to restore the glory of the Huang family. Teachers, preaching and teaching to solve doubts, although noble, it is difficult to make contributions. He didn't want to spend his life buried in the Four Books and Five Classics, and he didn't want to be like those old scholars in Banshu City, who showed his knowledge with a full mouth. It's just that after this time, he found that the Perak Army's normal school, although it was nominally a training teacher, was actually more like training reserve officials.

The reason why Huang Bochun made such a judgment is that the curriculum of the Perak Army's primary normal school contains very little content in the Four Books and Five Classics, and there is little mention of the Confucian doctrines of the current dynasty. You must know that the emperor can greatly respect the people of science, and the government at all levels also regards science as the foundation of official science. The content taught by the Perak Army even conflicts with the science of science, for example, the science advocates the monarch and the ministers, but the Perak army teaches that "the people are the most important, the society is secondary, and the king is light", which is simply deviant.