1635 Han style rises again

Chapter 680 Food and Population

October 1652, 10, Hanzhou, Daxing Mansion (now Brisbane, Australia), Yongchang County (now Gold Coast, Australia)

After Gao Xiquan planted a long potato, he straightened up with difficulty, put down the shovel, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a wave of his hand.For more than [-] days, relying on the cattle, mules and horses rented in the village, they planted more than five acres of potatoes and more than ten acres of wheat, and finally the busy spring plowing was coming to an end.

Although the body is extremely exhausted, Gao Xiquan is extremely fulfilled and gratified watching the seedlings sprouting in the field one after another.Can't help but start to appear in my mind, my mother-in-law is holding a bowl of stewed potatoes with whale meat with an attractive aroma, and it is still steaming, slowly walking towards me.The two children held the soft white flour steamed buns in their hands and chewed them vigorously.

"Head of the house, drink some water and take a rest." Gao Xiquan's daughter-in-law, Gao Lishi, with her eight-month-old pregnant belly, handed the water bottle to her husband.

"Add sugar?" Gao Xiquan took the kettle and just took a sip, looking at his wife in surprise.

"Hey, let it go." Gao Li nodded with a smile, "You work hard, drink some sugar water to make up for it."

"I'll just drink plain water, don't add sugar in the future." Gao Xiquan said in his mouth, but he couldn't help taking a big gulp, "The brown sugar sold in the house is for your body."

Gao Lishi just smiled. Among the midwife girls in the village, pregnant women should not eat too much sugar, but her husband is a loving man. Thinking that sugar water can replenish energy and blood, he insisted on spending a few cents. Bought some to keep in the house.

I remember when I was a child, I saw that when the women in the village were pregnant and gave birth, there was no sugar water to eat, not even fish, meat, or eggs.But now, there are more than a dozen chickens and ducks in the house, and there are poultry eggs to eat from time to time.What's more, when you go to the market every ten days, you can buy a large piece of whale meat for a few cents, which is enough to eat for many days.

The days in Hanzhou, compared with the former Daming, is not like heaven, full of food and clothing, with fields and houses.Even in a severe drought like last year, you won't be hungry.It's a pity that my mother, who died at sea halfway, couldn't enjoy the blessings with her.

"Boss, do you think the drought can be alleviated in the second half of the year? If the wheat sprouts and lacks entropy, there won't be much harvest next year." Mrs. Gao looked up at the bright red sun and said with a frown. .

"I don't know about God's business!" Gao Xiquan handed the water bottle to his two-year-old son behind him, and watched him drink happily, with a trace of warmth on his face, "It's a big deal, let's continue to eat potatoes and drink polenta. Eating corn buns can also fill up the stomach. Maybe the government will continue to distribute relief food to us."

With the warm and humid environment of Daxing Prefecture and several years of land improvement, the whole area began to plant wheat, cotton, sugar and other crops on a large scale a few years ago, and potatoes, sorghum, and corn were planted in large quantities during the initial development period. Coarse grain crops have been gradually reduced.However, with the spread and expansion of the drought in the eastern part of Hanzhou last year, large areas of crop production were reduced or not harvested, which made the food supply of the entire region suddenly tense.

Therefore, local governments and agricultural officials throughout the eastern and southeastern regions of Hanzhou actively organized farmers to plant drought-tolerant and high-yield crops such as potatoes on a large scale to cope with the sudden food supply problem.

The domestication of potatoes was completed by the Indian ancestors in South America 8000 years ago. The Indians also domesticated other foods such as corn, sweet potatoes, cassava, peanuts, and tomatoes.However, for the inhabitants of South America, the Andes Mountains are cold and barren, and potatoes are more important than corn. At the end of the 15th century, before the Spanish conquest of South America, the population of the Inca civilization distributed in the Andes Mountains reached 1000 million, and its population density exceeded that of Europe during the same period.It can be said that potatoes fed a large number of people in South America and were the foundation of the prosperity of the Inca civilization.

After the Spaniards arrived in the South American continent, they discovered the potato plant in South America, and brought potato breeding and fruits back to the Old World, thus starting the global spread of potatoes.

Although potatoes were introduced to Europe in the early 16th century, they were mainly grown in the gardens of dignitaries and dignitaries. They have not been favored by people for a long time, and only particularly poor families eat potatoes.

It was not until the middle of the 18th century that the scale of potato planting accelerated, and it began to spread spontaneously in Ireland.The reason why Irishmen widely plant potatoes is because of the colonial rule of the British, the fertile land was occupied by the British, and the barren land was left to the Irish.The Irish had no choice but to grow potatoes, which were easy to survive and had high yields.Potatoes provided guarantees for the lives of the Irish, whose population exploded from 18 million in the mid-150th century to more than 19 million in the 40s, a fivefold increase.

In the 16th century, shortly after the Europeans arrived in China, potatoes also began to spread in China, but this spread was spontaneous. Although the planting area was expanding, the speed was not fast. It was not until the Qing Dynasty that the staple food gradually began to be used. .

Potatoes have always played an important role in agricultural crops in Hanzhou, and they have become the four major domestic staple foods along with wheat, corn, and rice.In response to the temporary food shortage caused by last year's drought, a large number of temporarily replanted potatoes, coupled with the increasing fishing along the coast, basically prevented the people of Hanzhou from experiencing widespread hunger.

Seeing that the drought in the first half of the year has not eased, in order to ensure the food supply of the people, in addition to increasing food imports, the entire Hanzhou has increased the sowing area of ​​potatoes on the basis of last year.At the same time, many new resettlement site development plans were almost completely stopped, and the immigrants allocated from various places were all invested in the local farmland and water conservancy construction.

For the famine, every immigrant who came to Hanzhou has a deep understanding and lingering fear.In the chaotic territory of Ming Dynasty, in addition to countless people dying directly under the butcher knife of Qing soldiers, more people died of hunger and plague caused by the war.

The war not only destroyed the economic order and social order, but also severely disrupted the order of agricultural production, which caused even more terrible famine, and then caused a serious population crisis.Through the collation of historical data, it can be clearly seen that in a country or a region, the number of deaths in a year after a bad harvest is two to four times that of a normal year.Furthermore, in a normal year, two-thirds of deaths are among children and the elderly.In years of war and famine, more than half of the deaths were among adults in their prime of life.

In other words, an existential crisis undermines the labor force and family structure, which is not conducive to the reproduction of the population.During times of famine, women are less likely to become pregnant than normal.The sudden drop in fertility is due to several reasons.Some had their partners die, some were infertile, and some had abortions out of desperation.

It is also possible that the women who survived the famine were so starved and so deprived of nutrients that they did not menstruate for short periods of time and were unable to ovulate.

Plus, even when desperately hungry, people rarely actually starve to death.More often than not, their bodies are too weak to fight off common ailments such as flu or dysentery.

Throughout the seventeenth century, both in Asia and in Europe, the population was almost in a process of sharp decline.The 30-year war that broke out in Europe, the change of Ming and Qing Dynasties and massacres in the East all caused the death of hundreds of millions of people.Even in other areas where wars have not occurred, population growth is extremely limited due to food shortages, or frequent outbreaks of diseases and plagues.

But in the Hanzhou continent, with more than ten years of development and construction, coupled with the continuous import of immigrants, the population size of this ancient continent began to grow rapidly.

During this period, population growth faced many severe challenges due to limitations in medical care, sanitation, and food nutrition.One in four to one in five newborns dies within a year, and even if they survive to reach a year, half of them die before reaching adulthood.Thus, in order to reproduce their offspring, almost every couple has an average of four to five children.

Since the establishment of Hanzhou, although it has experienced several foreign wars, none of them have spread to the mainland on a large scale. It has basically maintained a peaceful and stable development environment. In addition, the government has not had too many "tyranny and remnants". Instead, there are many policies and measures that benefit the people and farmers, which have made great progress in the development of local agriculture in the entire Hanzhou.

With the development of agriculture and the steady improvement of food supply, the mainland of Hanzhou and several overseas territories began to experience a baby boom.Three years ago, there were more than 6 newborns, and last year it was 18. By this year, it may be close to [-].Once married, most couples have their first child within the first year of marriage, and then have more children at regular intervals.Therefore, in many settlements and towns in the mainland of Hanzhou, many women can be seen either coaxing their children or breastfeeding them (mothers generally do not conceive another child during the lactation period. Usually [-] to [-] months).

In many areas of Hanzhou, whether it is initiated by local government organizations or voluntarily by residents, there are many childcare services specially established in villages, towns and villages for children under the age of three or four. Generally, parents of children will pay some childcare fees or provide Part of the food, some women who are pregnant or breastfeeding take turns to help look after the children.These measures have also relieved the worries of many families to a certain extent, allowing some mothers to conceive their next child without any worries.
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Just when Gao Xiquan and other farmers finished the spring plowing activities and were about to rest for a few days, the agricultural officials and agricultural experts who came down from Daxing Mansion began to mobilize the farmers from all over the country to rotate the temporarily fallow fields in their respective fields. Turnip or alfalfa grass provides winter feed for livestock in towns and pastures in various places.

The reason why we started to advocate crop rotation is to eliminate the practice of fallow every two or three years. This can greatly increase the utilization rate of land and directly increase the income of farmers.

In order to restore soil fertility, farmers, under the guidance of local agricultural officials and officials, began to plant fodder crops such as turnips or special grasses such as alfalfa in their allotments, and used them as grasslands to support more livestock.Some farms and pastures in eastern Hanzhou had difficulty maintaining large numbers of livestock due to the lack of crops such as turnips, which are excellent fodder for livestock during the winter.

In addition, the root tubers of turnips cultivated in rotation can also be cooked or used to pickle sauerkraut as edible vegetables, and the fleshy roots are plump and edible.The roots and leaves of turnips are edible.Moreover, turnip can also be used as medicine. The flowers are pungent and bitter, flat in nature and non-toxic. Chest and abdomen distension.

Turnip, also known as turnip, is commonly known as kohlrabi.Kohlrabi is also a kind of popular dish, with high yield and high quality. It can replace food in times of famine and disaster, and countless people live.But before the Ming Dynasty, kohlrabi could only survive in the north. If it was planted in the south, the big head would become a small head.

Xu Guangqi, the former Minister of Rites of the Chongzhen Dynasty of the Ming Dynasty, a scholar of the Wenyuan Pavilion, and the second assistant of the cabinet, through continuous farming experiments, breeding fine varieties, adapting to the seasons, and improving cultivation techniques, finally succeeded in making turnips all the way to the south. In the south, the small head finally grows. Cheng Datou has since been called kohlrabi.

"Turnish Shu" in his "Nongzheng Quanshu" has a detailed description.

In the previous ten years, the weather in Hanzhou could be said to be favorable. Countless wastelands have been cultivated and improved for several years, and the grain production has increased year by year. Gradually increasing Hanzhou people do not worry about food and clothing.

Therefore, due to manpower constraints, more than [-]% of the farmland of the farmers who have been allocated land is often in a fallow state.

However, the large-scale drought that lasted from last year to the present has suddenly caused all the people in Hanzhou to panic, worrying that various disasters like those in Ming Dynasty that lasted for more than ten years will be staged in Hanzhou mainland.Therefore, in addition to increasing the sown area of ​​food crops, governments at all levels have also increased their support for livestock and poultry breeding.

In the past, the relatively extensive livestock breeding mode was relatively labor-saving, but without special feed, the growth and reproduction of livestock would naturally become somewhat slow, which was not conducive to the rapid expansion of the population.That being the case, what better way to rotate crops such as turnips or alfalfa in the fallow fields in the hands of farmers, which can not only provide a large amount of special feed for livestock, but also improve land fertility.

The benefits of crop rotation go beyond simply producing more and better breeds of livestock from fallow land.Integrating livestock into conventional agricultural production instead of raising them alone can produce more fertilizer and directly improve land fertility, which will be of great benefit to the next stage of food planting, thus effectively improving the productivity of cultivated land.

In short, useful things are always growing in the land, its fertility is constantly increasing, and the production of both livestock and grain is increased.

The implementation of crop rotation and stubble rotation, autumn plowing and winter irrigation, increasing the application of organic fertilizers, and improving soil fertility will greatly promote and enhance the sustainable development of agriculture in the entire Hanzhou.

(End of this chapter)