Chapter 458 Harvest

The flying snowflakes are as dense as cotton wool. The land in the north, which has been sunny for a few days, is covered with ice and snow again. Looking out of the window of the train, the country is wrapped in plain and very clear.

White seems to have become the only color between heaven and earth. Although Li Mo's special train has been specially modified, and an extra boiler has been installed at the rear of the car for heating, people still feel cold in the carriage that has not been completely sealed. For this reason, the guards specially set up a fireb in each carriage.

The royal guards were sitting around the coldest place on both sides of the carriage, and the middle was reserved for officials who came to take a ride to Beijing when they stopped along the way. Everyone sat around. Some read the newspaper and chatted in a low voice, while others seized the time to work.

Liao Wentao sat quietly in his seat, burying himself in the data and records from all over the world. It seemed that he was not interested in the beautiful snow scenery outside the window.

I'm afraid that the most inconspicuous person in this political axe is his thirties, middle-aged, ordinary and simple-looking Minister of Agriculture. When Li Mo chose high-educated talents from overseas Chinese children and continued to study in the United States and Britain for further study, he was also selected, but he and his classmates chose machinery, politics, etc. The subject is different. While majoring in law in France, he also chose a very remote agriculture and forestry major.

This is not his little trick. In fact, it has a lot to do with his mother.

His grandfather was the first group of Chinese to go to the United States to search for gold. He finally survived for nearly 40 years under the whip and gunfire before he created a little fame in San Francisco. After his grandfather died, he left nothing but only gave his father a beautiful farm.

In Chinese tradition, land is an extremely important property. Even his grandfather in the United States can't avoid vulgarity. His ideal is to give his son a large piece of land, so he put all his life savings into it.

But before he died, he did not expect that a Chinese exclusion bill made the Chinese worse than pigs and dogs. In the end, his father did not keep the manor and was forcibly acquired by a white American at a very low price.

His father couldn't stand the excitement and never returned, so he grew up with his mother and helped his fellow villagers mend. His mother supported him with his hands after finishing middle school and finally entered the University of San Francisco.

On that day, he was very happy and ran home to tell his mother, but what he didn't expect was that it was that day when his mother fell ill because of overwork and finally didn't get up again.

And the last sentence left by my mother at the time of her death was, "Make money, sell a big manor, plant the land with grain and fruit trees, and fulfill the wishes of my grandfather and father."

He agreed to his mother with tears in his eyes and began his studies alone until he met his good friend Feng Qi. Later, he worshipped Li Enfu as his teacher under his recommendation. Finally, the second year after Li Enfu went to Honolulu, he also completed his study and followed him to help take care of the Honolulu State Council at that time.

Because of his outstanding ability, he and hundreds of selected students were sent to Europe for further study, and came into contact with professional agricultural and forestry knowledge for the first time in France. In order to fulfill his father's long-cherished wish, he finally chose to take this course that was useless in the eyes of his partners.

But he never thought that it was because he studied agriculture and forestry. After returning to Honolulu, he was assigned a special Ministry of Agriculture. At that time, there were actually only a few people in the Ministry of Agriculture, and the largest land was still in Liaodong and Australia, so to put it bluntly, it was specially provided for the emperor. Logistics for food security.

Many people were unwilling to take over this position at that time, but he worked for a few years. Finally, during his tenure, he ensured the food security in the army and territory, and also set a record of the first time that the Chinese used bird droppings to increase production. After the founding of the People's Republic of the People's Republic of China, he was promoted to Minister of Agriculture and Forestry.

When he was nominated and eventually became the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, many people thought that it was Li Enfu's eccentricity, and even he was a little panicked. It was not until the emperor met him alone that he realized that the reason why he chose him was not because he was a student of the Prime Minister, but an article about the conservation of farmland in the Central Plains.

Like Europe, the Central Plains, which has been cultivated for thousands of years, has already lost nutrients. What's more, the land has begun to show salinity and desertification, which are manifestations of large-scale loss of nutrients. In addition, the frequent flooding of the Yellow River has increased the burden on the land.

So he put forward the idea that the water and soil conservation of the Central Plains should be strengthened. Unexpectedly, this idea coincided with the emperor and eventually became a senior political official envied by everyone.

But in fact, he later learned that compared with his own article, the emperor had already begun to plan the water and soil conservation methods of the Central Plains. He first took advantage of the land reform to recover a large number of land, then accelerated the immigration of the Central Plains, evacuated the local population, and finally set up a special forestry company. After discussing with the Prime Minister, 100,000 people were allocated to a construction regiment to plant trees in the area.

The emperor is a real activist. He seldom talks about the truth. He likes to do it first and say it later, just like he and the four imperial concubines often quietly go to the people to visit those people and provide them with food and medicine. When they never talk big, they just focus on their own things.

In the past ten years, the Construction Corps has cultivated a total of 120 million saplings and has planted more than 70%. Although this amount is not enough to fill the Central Plains and the northwest from the scale, if this policy continues, it will only take three to 50 years for the vegetation in these places to be initially restored, a huge The green corridor will appear in the Central Plains.

At that time, the problem of soil erosion will be maximized, and our generation will also leave a beautiful country for future generations, not a desert full of holes in resources.

Liao Wentao smiled and closed some suggestions and progress reports on water and soil conservation that had just been fed back, and opened the last annual agricultural report that had just been counted and was about to be brought back to Yanjing to report to the Prime Minister. In fact, he had read this report many times, but every time he opened it, he couldn't help but be excited.

Judging from the whole year of last year, it is undoubtedly another bumper harvest year. The number of arable land registered in the country has reached 1 billion mu, which does not include the private pioneers of farmers in these years, and the larger and more extensive undeveloped arable land in Siberia. If those add up, it will exceed 2 billion mu.

Although not all land will be used to grow food, in recent years, whether it is the emperor or the Prime Minister's office, the investment in agriculture does not seem to be as vigorous as industry and commerce. In fact, the share is not much. Among them, the development of land in the South Sea is the most amazing, only in Borneo. The area of farmland and plantations in Canada has reached 5,6 million mu, and a large number of people in the Central Plains have begun to emigrate there.

In addition to the increasing amount of arable land, the newly opened land has sufficient nutrients and a suitable environment, so the grain has been maintained at a high yield. The minimum purchase price protection proposed by the emperor has fully mobilized the farmers' active grain cultivation.

Although the large-scale construction of fertilizer plants has only been fully rolled out in the past two years, the continuous flow of bird droppings from Daxia Province and South America has become the most basic fertilizer material at present, solving the problem of the support of some barren land in the mainland. Under multiple stimulus, last year's grain output finally exceeded 400 million tons.

Judging from the current total population of 660 million in China, the average disposable grain of the country is nearly 900 kilograms! Among them, the largest increase is in Nanyang and Northeast China. One of these two places is three seasons, and the other is the first to use chemical fertilizer.

This output has greatly exceeded the usual consumption, and a large amount of surplus grain has promoted food-related industries, such as winemaking, feed processing and other new industries.

In addition, the number of livestock slaughtered last year also reached 500 million. In short, on average, each person can eat one pig and sheep per year. Although this proportion is much worse than that of the United States and Europe, it is much higher than that of the end of the Qing Dynasty.

And an important thing happened last year, that is, 50,000 tons of grain were exported abroad for the first time after the founding of the People's Republic of China, which not only means that agriculture can finally start to generate foreign exchange for the country, but also means that Xinhua is gradually moving towards a grain exporter.

No matter which dynasty, grain is the most important national resource. Sometimes grain is even more powerful than bullets. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the scale and quantity of national grain reserves. First, it can alleviate the pressure brought by the market by a large-scale increase in grain production and achieve stable control of grain prices. At the same time, no one can guarantee whether there will be a major disaster or something in the future. It is still necessary to take advantage of the harvest year to intercept more.

Thinking of this, Liao Wentao took out a pen and a notebook and began to record his ideas about stabilizing grain prices, increasing national reserves, and building ten national grain reserves warehouses one by one. When he finished writing the last stroke and was about to raise his head, a voice suddenly sounded from behind him.

"You have a good idea, and you need to speed up and do it."

Hearing the voice, Liao Wentao quickly turned around and found that Li Mo was wearing an overcoat and stood quietly behind him, smiling and nodding at his notes.

At this time, he found that his colleagues around him had already stood up and hurriedly got up to salute: "Wen Tao has seen the emperor."

"Sit down, everyone sit down." After Li Mo waved his hand and asked everyone to sit down, he took the initiative to sit next to Liao Wentao. While grabbing his thick notebook, which was almost full, he smiled and said, "Ha ha, just about to get out of the car, I thought that I hadn't come to see you. Unexpectedly, I saw your notes. Don't blame me for peeking."

"How come, Your Majesty, you're kidding." Liao Wentao smiled shyly.

Li Mo looked through the notes carefully and didn't even notice that the train stopped. From these words, it can be seen that the agriculture and forestry minister he chose was indeed doing his best for the country and the welfare of the farmers all over the world.

And his series of ideas about strengthening reserves, suppressing market prices, and treating food as an important resource to influence the means of various countries at the most critical moment are very appealing to him. You should know that in later generations, some big countries use grain to achieve the purpose of controlling small countries, so it is very realistic to strengthen food management. The requirements.

"This method is very good." Li Mo pointed to the notes just recorded by Liao Wentao and nodded, "Although your work in the past two years has made a bumper harvest of grain, our country is really too big. No one knows what God blamed that day, so it is urgent to increase grain reserves, and Latin America and Africa are all places that are places in short of grain. In the past, these places Fang's grain market is mainly dominated by Europe and the United States, but now Europe has a strong smell of smoke. All countries are strengthening their own reserves, and grain exports have begun to shrink, so if you can guarantee me a bumper harvest for three to four years, then Huang Zichen's Minister of Industry and Commerce will be anxious, because his export profit will be exceeded by you.

"Ha ha." Liao Wentao smiled. He knew that Li Mo was joking. It was basically difficult to surpass the proportion of grain and industry and commerce after gradually entering industrialization, and the value of grain exports was not high. Ten thousand tons was not as good as building a warship for others. However, although we can't guarantee a bumper harvest in three or four years, we can't say that it won't be impossible, as long as God helps. When the fertilizer plant is rolled out on a large scale and a large amount of land such as Siberia begins to be reclaimed, it is not a random fabrication to increase the output to 500 million tons in ten years.

Liao Wentao's notes and this report made him very happy, because it meant that he could finally not have to worry about hunger, and once the war started, food production in Europe would drop sharply except for the United States and himself.

Xinhua has the world's largest amount of arable land, tractors, fertilizers, small pumps and other production materials, which will greatly reduce the labor intensity of farmers. When Europe falls into war and the United States is dragged into the water by itself, there will be a food market vacuum with nearly 1 billion people, which is an extremely companion. The market, even if there is only a profit of 1 percent, will bring back billions of yuan of revenue.

In addition to food, Li Mo also asked about the breeding scale of dairy cows, which is one of the most important things he has dreamed of strengthening the national physique for a long time. One cup of milk per day was the ideal he put forward when he founded the country, but it is still a dream. Although there are no less than 100,000 high-quality breeding cattle imported from abroad over the years, the population The base number makes it much more difficult to realize this plan than the year.

However, Liao Wentao also brought him some good news. At present, the weight of cows in the country has exceeded 5 million, which can basically meet the daily requirements of primary and secondary schools in various places. It is possible to need at least 30 million cows per person a day, and the processing and storage of fresh milk are problems, so their Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry can only For the time being, we have cooperated with some businessmen, purchased the latest equipment from Germany, and established milk powder processing factories in major breeding bases. At present, dairy products have been removed from the shelves of high-end goods and are gradually entering the homes of ordinary people, but fresh milk can only be temporarily supplied to those cities close to farms. City.

After listening to this, Li Mo was not only not angry, but also very happy. Liao Wentao was able to bring agriculture to this level in ten years. Liao Wentao stood up with a smile, patted him on the shoulder and said, "I'm very happy, but you should also pay more attention to rest. I lost a lot of weight when I saw you. I heard that you had a serious illness last year! Is that so?"

"Thank you for your concern. I was sick in Shanxi, but it's much better now." Liao Wentao didn't expect that Li Mo would care about the details of his body, so he quickly said gratefully.

"Do it well, but also pay attention to your health. If you are tired, I have no place to find a second Minister of Agriculture and Forestry." Li Mo patted him on the shoulder again, and then said hello to everyone and got off the train. He didn't know that the carriage had become lively after leaving. His attention turned to the Huludao Shipyard in front of him again

(to be continued)