As a lord, I was forced to farm

Chapter 757: Growing Population

Jiang Ran felt a headache reading the densely packed calligraphy. She glanced at it, put the file down, pinched her brows, and chose to let Wu Yun dictate the contents, "How many cultivators are there in the county now?"

Wu Yun blurted out, "Seven thousand seven hundred and sixty-seven people! Among them, there are three hundred and seventy-five spirit beast masters."

There are more than 280,000 people in Dasu now, which means that there will be two to three cultivators among every hundred people.

But in fact, due to limited resources, some people, even if they have talents, unfortunately do not become monks because their talents have not been discovered.

"How many monks are there in Suling City?"

Wu Yun couldn't help but smile more, very proudly, "Four thousand three hundred and twenty-one!"

It's hard to imagine that there are more monks in the main city than in the other four counties combined! Suling City has a population of 100,000, which means that out of a hundred people, four to five can stand out and become monks!

Moreover, the process of cultivating monks in Daxu is to let children go to public school to learn to read and write, and then be placed in Suhong College to start practicing (except for talented teenagers like Hu Lian or teenagers who have already learned to read and write, who can directly enter Suhong College). This means that after the first batch of public school students officially graduate, Suling will welcome a large wave of new monks, and such days will happen in the next one or two years!

Wu Yun continued, "When His Royal Highness the Prince had just recaptured the towns of Xinheng and Fenghuang, there were only a little over a thousand cultivators in Suling. In just two years, the number of cultivators has doubled!"

"The reason is that in the past few years, His Royal Highness the Prince took in many wandering monks from the outside world, but the most important reason is that after the establishment of Suhong Academy, Crystal's talent was greatly discovered and the monks hidden in the crowd were discovered..."

In addition to the factor of Suhong College, Wu Yun also mentioned the dietary problems of the people of Suling.

Among the dozens of villages in Suling, Qingshan Village, Aojia Village and Nanzhu Village have the most newly-promoted monks, followed by the main red crystal wheat planting villages.

Both the Ministry of Revenue and Suhong Academy investigated the reasons for the surge in the number of monks in Suling, and later turned their attention to spiritual spring water and red crystal wheat.

Especially in Qingshan Village and Aojia Village, the spiritual spring flows directly through the two villages. The villagers have been drinking the spiritual spring water and eating the crops irrigated by the spiritual spring water for a long time. Over the years, the quality of the villagers has changed greatly!
"It seems that there were too few cultivators before because the people ate too poorly." Jiang Ran nodded slightly, "If one day, all the herbs in the territory are spiritual, wouldn't all the people in my Dasu be able to become cultivators?"

Wu Yun was stunned by the prospect Jiang Ran described, and then his expression showed a hint of hope and longing, "That is really the legendary Peach Blossom Spring, an ideal hometown."

Jiang Ran supported his head with one hand, nonchalantly but seriously, "In order to build this paradise, we still need to cultivate more demon spirits."

Generally speaking, spiritual plants grow much slower than ordinary plants. For example, a hundred-year-old spiritual herb in the wild takes a long time to grow into a single plant. However, there are too many humans, and with such limited resources, how could everyone become a cultivator?

However, if there are demon spirits around, the spiritual plants will mature much faster, and when the amount of resources increases, they can be enjoyed by more people.

"Your Highness is right. Now that the Agricultural College has been successfully developed, a large number of outstanding demon spirit masters will emerge in the academy within a few years."

Although Dasu does not have a mentor who specializes in teaching students how to plant and cultivate spirits, Dasu has the "Popular Agricultural Book". Jiang Ran has no doubt that this agricultural book is one of the most comprehensive and excellent books on spiritual agriculture.

The teaching at the Spiritual Agricultural College places great emphasis on practice. One hundred acres of land are specially allocated for students to practice, and the funding is sufficient. In the first year, the focus is on cultivating spiritual fields and planting spiritual crops such as white crystal rice and fire beans, so a large number of spiritual seeds need to be purchased.

The transformation of the spiritual field requires a large amount of materials such as spiritual beast feces, Qi gathering arrays, spiritual bean husks, and the breeding of beneficial insects such as earth spirit earthworms that can loosen the soil and fertilize the fields. The Ministry of Revenue plans to allocate 300,000 spiritual crystals to students for experiments.

The plan is to cultivate large tracts of fertile spiritual fields in one to three years. In the third year, the Spiritual Agricultural College will begin to purchase demon spirits (young, old, sick, and healthy) from the outside world for the Spiritual Agricultural students to observe and cultivate.

Monster spirits have always been expensive, not to mention the monster spirit food and equipment used in the cultivation process, so in the third year, the plan is to allocate 1.5 million spirit crystals...

The above policy is called the Three-Year Demon Spirit Plan by Dasu.

Jiang Ran knocked on the table. "Da Su has implemented many policies to benefit the people, such as distributing land, reducing taxes, and increasing the population. Now that three years have passed, what are the results?"

"In the past three years, many children have been born. Our county's population is relatively young, and there are more women and men of childbearing age. According to statistics, in the past three years, there have been nearly 20,000 women of childbearing age who have become pregnant in Suling City, and more than 14,000 babies have been born successfully and survived."

Thanks to Jiang Ran's policy of distributing land according to population, newborns can be allocated two acres of wasteland as soon as they are born, and they do not have to pay taxes on the wasteland for three years. The government will also reward the newborn's family with gold yuan.

The wheat spirit worm evolved into a wheat spirit monster and then transformed into a red crystal wheat monster. With this monster, the farmers had basic food security.

The people of Suling City now have confidence in their lives and naturally dare to have children.

But when Jiang Ran did some calculations in her mind, she felt uncomfortable. The neonatal mortality rate had reached a staggering 30 percent.

Thinking this in his heart, with a bit of surprise on his face, Wu Yun faced the pressure from the prince, and the sweat on his forehead could not stop flowing, "Your Highness, there was a drought last year, and then there was a war, so naturally there were more babies who died."

Jiang Ran's mood did not ease because of Wu Yun's words. Instead, she became more irritated. "There are so many elixirs in the world, and elixirs that can improve cultivation are endless. Nowadays, people can escape into the sky and into the earth, but they can't protect the fetus in the belly. It's ridiculous. If we pay more attention to those pregnant women, how can we not find a solution."

Wu Yun felt sympathetic, his lips trembling slightly, "The prince is right."

Having said that, Jiang Ran felt that the person who should reflect the most was himself. As a superior and with the experience of the previous world, he should have paid attention to this aspect earlier.

In fact, the deaths of newborns are mostly due to inadequate environmental hygiene, backward medical care and poor living standards.

If we want to improve women's fertility and newborn survival rates, we need to start from these aspects.

At the court meeting the next day, Jiang Ran discussed the issue of women's fertility with all the officials.

Improving people's living standards is not a matter of a day or two, so the top priority is to popularize production knowledge and the importance of environmental hygiene among the people.

Some officials also suggested that it would be better to gather the midwives and doctors from all over the place and set up a Jiazi medical clinic specifically for women giving birth in the five counties.

It's the end of the month, I'm asking for monthly tickets to reserve the next monthly tickets in the pockets of my readers.