Daming Town Haiwang

Chapter 1100 Another Harvest Year
In the golden autumn season, the entire Ming Dynasty has also entered a busy autumn harvest season.

Liaodong, the most important production area of ​​Ming Dynasty now, the entire Liaodong area is sparsely populated, the land is extremely fertile, and it is also a great plain area, which is very suitable for the development of agriculture.

With the migration of a large number of immigrants to the Liaodong area, the agriculture in the Liaodong area has also developed rapidly.

In the fourteenth year of Hongzhi, the grain produced in the Liaodong area could be exported on a large scale. By the fifteenth year of Hongzhi, the grain produced in the Liaodong area alone was enough to feed the entire Ming Dynasty.

This year, the [-]th year of Hongzhi, the Liaodong area once again ushered in a bumper harvest.

In Nanshan Village, Tieling, on an endless field, Li Damao was harvesting wheat with his own steam harvester. With the sound of sirens and rolling black salt, where the steam harvester passed, the golden wheat fields were harvested. , leaving sack after sack of wheat.

"woooo~"

Not far away, several steam harvesters of the same type sounded their whistles, as if they were greeting Li Damao.

Li Damao looked at it, smiled immediately, and then controlled the steam harvester to let out bursts of sirens.

Because of its unique environment, the Liaodong area is fertile and full of plains, and at the same time, the land is sparsely populated. There are as few as several hundred mu of land per household, and as many as Li Damao, who have already reclaimed thousands of mu of land.

With so much land, it must be difficult to cultivate it only by manpower, so farmers in Liaodong area like to use machinery to cultivate it.

Steam cultivators and steam harvesters, these two kinds of agricultural machinery that rely on steam to provide power for production, are the most popular in Liaodong.

In Nanshan Village, because of Li Damao's latest use of steam harvesters and steam tillage machines, everyone has seen the benefits and benefits of these steam harvesters and steam tillage machines.

Therefore, in the [-]th year of Hongzhi in the entire Nanshan Village, the villagers bought more than a dozen steam harvesters and steam cultivators. At this time, when it was harvest time, the steam harvesters whistled in the fields around Nanshan Village. stopped.

Steam harvesters are not cheap. A machine costs more than one hundred taels of silver. Under normal circumstances, it is difficult for ordinary people to afford it.

Even these farmers in the Liaodong area are considered rich in every household.

Thanks to the immigration policy, farmers in Liaodong have been exempted from paying grain taxes until now. They are still in the tax-free period, and every household has grown a lot of grain.

Last year alone, the Nanshan Village, which had a great harvest, sold grain for dozens of taels of silver, but grain is also the bulk of income, and apart from various expenses, there is not much left over.

It obviously takes a few years to buy a steam harvester with more than one hundred taels of silver.

Everyone can afford it, mainly thanks to the preferential loans provided by Daming First Bank to support agricultural development.

The interest on loans for purchasing machinery is very low, and installments can also be paid. Under these preferential policies, the villagers in Nanshan Village also bought steam cultivators and steam harvesters one after another.

With the help of these two machines, the villagers of Nanshan Village reclaimed all the fields around Nanshan Village in just one year, planted food, and every household has thousands of acres of land.

"I'm afraid the food price this year will be even lower than last year!"

The big harvest should have been a happy day, but Li Damao couldn't be happy.

On the one hand, there are more steam machines in the Liaodong area, which makes his business even more difficult.

Last year, because he was the first to buy a steam harvester, he made a lot of money by harvesting wheat for others, and he earned back the money for buying the machine in just two months.

But this year is different, there are more steam harvesters, he can get fewer jobs, and the price is also lower, because if you quit, someone will come back to do it.

Another aspect is the issue of food prices.

This year, the Liaodong region ushered in another bumper harvest.

This is an extremely fertile black land with abundant rainfall. In winter, there is a lot of snow and there are few pests and diseases. This makes the wheat yield and quality in Liaodong area high.

The promotion of agricultural machinery has also allowed the land reclaimed in Liaodong this year to far exceed the sum of the past. It is said that the northernmost land has been reclaimed to the edge of Heilongjiang.

Originally, most of the immigrants from the Liaodong region gathered on both sides of the Liaohe River (later in Liaoning Province), but with the continuous migration to the Liaodong region in the past two years, the immigrants also continued to migrate north.

Then it gradually expanded to the Heilongjiang River Basin, where fields were reclaimed and wheat was grown.

A large number of fields have been reclaimed and planted, and this year's grain production in Liaodong will definitely usher in a big increase.

The large increase in grain production will inevitably lead to a continuous decline in grain prices. Last year, grain prices were already very low, and the good Liaodong wheat on Wushi could only be sold for one tael of silver.

This year, I am afraid that the price of grain will be even lower.

This is why Li Damao is frowning.

If it was before, when Li Damao had not immigrated to Liaodong, it would be something to be happy about the bumper harvest of grain, because it meant that his family would have more grain to eat.

But it's different now. Immigrants in the Liaodong area have no worries about food and clothing in every household, and there is so much food that they can't finish it.

Most of the grain needs to be sold, and the proportion of the grain that is sold is very small.

Therefore, food prices are related to everyone's income.

There is no way, the current Daming is no longer the previous Daming.

In the past, Daming was just a land of two capitals and thirteen provinces, with a large population and little land. Coupled with land mergers, most of the land was concentrated in the hands of landlords and gentry.

This has led to the fact that everyone has to rely on the land to survive, and the hard work of farming throughout the year is just to be able to eat a few full meals.

It's different now, Daming got too much land.

Nanyang, Australia, Golden Continent, Liaodong, Western Regions, river systems, Nanyun Province, grasslands, etc., any place is a vast and fertile fertile field, coupled with the development of overseas colonies and vassal states, it also attracts a lot of people. population.

Under the continuous immigration policy, these places are gradually being developed, and the most important performance is the bumper harvest every year.

The grain produced in Liaodong was enough to feed the entire Ming Dynasty. The grain produced in the Western Regions and the river system was too much to eat. It was used to develop animal husbandry on a large scale. The prices of horses, cattle and sheep also fell year after year.

The animal husbandry industry in Australia is developing rapidly, and now the textile factory has been relocated to Australia, and woolen fabrics are specially sold to Europe in Australia.

The gold craze on the Golden Continent is still very hot. A large number of people are looking for gold in this land, dreaming of getting rich overnight.

However, with the influx of a large number of immigrants, agriculture on the Golden Island is also developing rapidly. The output of corn and wheat has doubled every year, which greatly promotes the migration of immigrants. At least you don’t have to worry about starvation when you come to Golden Island. .

Also in Nanyang, the plantation economy has been very hot, and there are more and more plantations. Traditional sugarcane planting is still popular. However, because of the strong demand for spices in Europe, there are also some plantations that specialize in planting spices.

As for rice, the planting area is very small, but the output is extremely high, which not only satisfies the growing population in the Nanyang region, but also sells a large amount of rice back to Daming and exported to overseas colonies and vassal states.

The grain harvests in almost every region are bumper, except of course in Shaanxi, Shanxi, North Zhili, Henan, Shandong and other places in the Ming Dynasty.

Due to the migration of a large number of people in these places, there are not even one out of ten places in many places, such as the loess high slopes in Shaanxi, because of the difficult conditions, it has always been a key area for the imperial court to emigrate.

A large number of people migrated to various places, and they lived a happy life, which naturally led to the spontaneous migration of people in these areas, resulting in a large loss of population.

As a result of the large population loss, a large amount of arable land in these places has been left uncultivated, and no one is cultivating it, so the food production will naturally drop significantly.

Landlords and gentry in many places don't even have a place to cry.

In the past, everyone rushed to cultivate the good land, but now no one cultivates it, and can only watch it continue to be barren.

In areas where a large number of people have migrated out, the population has decreased rapidly, and food production has also continued to decline.

This is caused by the imperial court's immigration policy, but it is also the situation that the imperial court wants to see.

The natural conditions in these areas are really too harsh. Except for a few plains where the conditions are okay, other places can no longer bear the huge population.

The population moves out, the arable land is barren, the land is barren, and the mountains and forests are recuperated. As long as it goes on for a long time, the natural environment will gradually become better and better, and gradually recover.

There are also areas such as Henan, where the population is too large and the arable land per capita is too small, so conflicts between people and land can easily arise, and accidents can easily occur if there are natural and man-made disasters.

However, with the large number of people moving out, the population of this place in Henan is also decreasing. In the past, the landlord Laocai’s land was planted by the strong, but now the landlord Laocai begged everyone to plant it, and no one would plant it for them.

Because everyone is now focused on going out, whether it is to work in the Beijing-Tianjin area, or to immigrate to overseas, it is better to go anywhere than to stay here in Henan and farm for the landlord's old money.

Under the leadership of fellow villagers, relatives and friends, a large number of people spontaneously migrated to Liaodong, Western Regions, Hexi, Nanyang and other places, which also led to a two-year decline in grain production in Henan Province, a major grain-producing province in the past. .

As for Beizhili, the impact of immigration is very small, and the northern Zhili has been deeply influenced by capitalism and colonialism. A large number of people have entered factories and gone overseas.

This also led to a sharp drop in grain production in Northern Zhili, requiring a large amount of imported grain.

This is the current situation of the Ming Dynasty. The newly acquired territory is basically a bumper harvest of grain. However, due to the large outflow of population in the traditional two capitals and thirteen provinces, a large amount of land has not been cultivated, and then there has been a sharp drop in grain production. Happening.

However, this did not affect the food security of Ming Dynasty, because the grain production in the two capitals and thirteen provinces has decreased, but the population has decreased more sharply, and the demand for grain is smaller. Even if the grain production plummets, the grain production in these areas still With the surplus, coupled with the promotion of sweet potatoes, corn, and potatoes, Daming did not have to worry about food at all.

(End of this chapter)