Quickly wear it and insist on being an old man forever

Chapter 348 I Really Want to Live Another 20 Years ()

At the end of the first decade, the first two batches of students specializing in vocational skills had basically all graduated successfully, and the basic industrial system, from scratch, officially started to take off.

State-owned agriculture and animal husbandry are booming.

The prices of grain and meat have dropped to extremely low levels.

During this transitional period, Bai Sheng took many measures to minimize the impact of low grain prices on farmers. For example, if the per capita land area was less than a certain number of acres, all land-related taxes would be exempted. Another example is that the state set a minimum grain purchase price. In addition to the previous exemption of various taxes such as the head tax, in reality, ordinary people with per capita land area less than 50 acres actually had no explicit taxes and could survive without selling grain.

Moreover, it was not only the price of food that dropped, but the prices of other commodities including salt, iron, various tools and cloth also dropped a lot, so in the end there was no situation where low grain prices hurt farmers, and everyone's lives were even getting better and better.

In those days, ordinary people sold grain for money mainly to pay various exorbitant taxes, as well as to buy salt and broken farm tools. They would only buy cloth or meat if they had extra during festivals. If not, they would not buy anything.

Therefore, most of the exorbitant taxes and levies were abolished, a minimum price for grain purchase was set by the state to prevent grain merchants from excessively lowering prices, and the prices of salt and iron were also lowered.

It may be a little difficult to make the people rich.

But there will definitely be no problem in having enough food and clothing.

This treatment is much better than before.

By the end of the second decade, the basic industrial system had been fully formed, and while various industrial products were being produced on a large scale, family handicrafts had basically withdrawn from the stage of history.

In addition, land policies have also changed.

All areas suitable for large-scale mechanized planting will have their land reclaimed in a unified manner, and collective farms will be established with the land as shares. Villagers can work to earn wages, or do nothing and go out to work and receive a certain dividend at the end of each year, so as to liberate productivity as much as possible.

As long as they invest in land, even if they do nothing every day, the income at the end of the year will be enough to ensure their food and clothing.

Of course, it is definitely impossible to eat too well.

But rice and flour can definitely make them die of bloating.

All walks of life are booming, and many national projects have achieved great success. For example, more than half of the accumulated silt in the Yellow River has been cleared, and the cleared silt has created tens of thousands of hectares of fertile farmland. In addition, areas such as Guanlong, which is already 60% to 70% of the future Loess Plateau, have also regained their greenness.

The sand fixation and afforestation work was done quite well.

The latest plan is to transform the desert area.

In addition, a series of major water conservancy projects such as the South-to-North Water Diversion Project are also being prepared. At present, the water shortage in the west and north is not particularly serious, but as time goes by, this problem will become more and more serious. There is nothing wrong with doing some century-long or even thousand-year-long projects in advance, because the level of science and technology and human resources are not particularly developed.

Some super-large water conservancy projects may take thirty to fifty years, or even longer, to complete. Such planning is truly far-sighted.

By the end of the third decade, Lingnan and other southern regions, including Zhenla and the black soil area in the north, had successfully completed basic development. The newly developed land was used for farming, fruit trees were planted, and medicinal herbs were planted. In short, all of it was utilized and was never abandoned or left to grow weeds.

Problems such as the poisonous miasma in the south.

Problems including the large number of snakes, insects, rats and ants can all be solved through large-scale reclamation and planting. For example, if you cut down a certain forest, or comb it, and clean up all the dead branches and rotten leaves that have accumulated in the forest for countless years, the miasma will naturally disappear. After all, miasma is actually some toxic fermented gas, collectively known as miasma.

There are people who specialize in tending and grooming the forest.

It cannot produce those miasma.

The same goes for snakes, insects, rats and ants. Once they are hunted in large numbers and their natural enemies are raised and their living environment is destroyed, their numbers in the wild will quickly decline. Of course, it is still very difficult to completely eradicate them.

Moreover, complete extinction is not conducive to the ecological cycle.

So as long as it's not so horrible that when you sleep at night, seven or eight snakes crawl up your body, leaving you paralyzed in bed unable to move, or you get eaten by rats, it's fine.

It's okay if there are fewer of these things, but if there are too many,

That can really threaten human life at any time.

In addition, in the last year of this third decade, troops were specially mobilized to carry out a comprehensive cleansing and crackdown on those families and family alliances that have grown and expanded in the past thirty years and have now become new cancers.

In fact, there will be less resistance if you clean it once every ten years.

It's just that thirty years ago, the purge of aristocratic families was too thorough, and it did scare a lot of people afterwards, so the development speed of new local tyrants will be relatively slow. In addition, during the period of vigorous development, it is not suitable to be too strict in all aspects, which can easily make some officials and families feel constrained and dare not develop.

Therefore, unless something goes too far, many minor problems with little impact are basically not investigated in depth.

Just let the AI ​​remember as much as possible.

Now, thirty years later, not only have all aspects of the country been put on the right track and developed quite well, but many families and forces that originally played a certain role in promoting the local economy have now become cancer, started to hinder local development, and even become local tyrants.

For example, a certain family has many talents in recent years. After thirty years of development, not only are many local officials from their family members, but local land and even many businesses are also monopolized by them. Not to mention that in this process, they have used some illegal means and even killed people. Even if they really abide by the rules and honestly operate and develop, with the current situation, they cannot be tolerated to continue to exist!

The so-called local tyrants refer to these families.

They occupy a large amount of means of production, and the local ordinary people can only depend on them for survival. The local officials are powerless against them and even end up becoming their running dogs.

From the perspective of the country and the grassroots people, such existence is undoubtedly a national cancer and oppressor.

However, although they have developed over the past thirty years and have considerable power in the local area, they are still no match for the previous aristocratic families. Under the crushing of the army, they were naturally unable to resist and were easily eliminated.

It's a good opportunity to train the soldiers at the same time.

Because at the beginning of the fourth decade, the country continued to expand, and all the lands previously conquered had been digested. Although the current development is far from its limit, there are also abundant resources in all aspects, and it can even be considered rich.

But just like people never complain about having too much money.

A country never complains about having too much territory and resources.

If you have the ability, it is undoubtedly better to occupy more territory, and the more territory you occupy, the easier it will be for Bai Sheng to implement other plans! Therefore, the first five years of the fourth decade were mainly about expanding the army and expanding the territory. All the land that could be captured without the navy was captured, and the development of ships and navy was started.

Countries like the Western Qin and Europe.

All destroyed together.

People still adhere to their traditional principles of kindness. Except for those who must be killed, the rest are exiled to places where no one is willing to go to open up wasteland.

Guilty, but not punishable by death.

They were all taken to mine.

Although Bai Sheng could use robots to do all these jobs, if all these jobs were done by robots, what would happen to the criminals, the labor camp inmates, and the alien races? Could they still be supported? Could they still enjoy the same treatment as the citizens? If we didn't give them the hard and tiring jobs, how could we show the superiority and nobility of the citizens of Da Zhou?

This was the first five years.

In the next five years, the main focus was on gradually taking over and controlling the newly occupied lands.

The fourth and fifth decades that followed did not see much development, and basically continued the previous policies. The ocean-going business currently focused on fishing to enrich the food on the tables of the people of the Great Zhou. As for crossing the oceans and occupying land in other places, there was no rush for the time being.

When there aren't enough people.

Taking up too much land is actually more like a burden.

After fifty years of development, the current Great Zhou has reached a point where materials are extremely abundant and the output is extremely large, so much that it cannot be used up and there is no place to sell it.

Even if we deduct the part used for disaster relief and consumption from the annual grain output, the remaining part is still enough to feed everyone in the country for two or three years. If we accumulate this amount over fifty years, we won't be able to make enough wine. The minimum purchase price of grain has been falling for thirty consecutive years. There is no other way. The cost of building a grain storage has exceeded the price of grain.

The abundance of grain directly led to a sharp drop in grain and wine prices, and the prices of livestock meat also plummeted.

Those serfs who were transported to mine and open up wasteland.

They were so happy that they could eat as much bread as they wanted for three meals a day. None of them wanted to run away. They were all very grateful. After all, they couldn’t even get enough of the black bread mixed with stones before.

Therefore, in the fiftieth year of the reign of Queen Mother of the West, at the New Year's Day court meeting, the first topic to be discussed was what to do with the stored materials that were about to expire?
There may be more and more expired materials in the future.

What should I do?
At the grand court meeting, the younger generation of officials had a very heated discussion, while the older officials, especially those over 100 years old, all expressed some emotion and sighed.

Not to mention a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, even fifty years ago, or even forty years ago, they could not imagine that the court would discuss the topic of how to deal with the problem of too much food and food products to be eaten.

Back then, people were more worried about where to get food to provide disaster relief when a famine occurred in a certain place!
A lot has changed in the past fifty years.

Bigger than any change in the past two thousand years.

What are the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors compared to the Great Heavenly Venerable?
"Great Lord, since those grains and other supplies cannot be used up and are about to expire, why not turn them into fertilizer and return them to the earth? All future supplies can follow this process. Returning them to heaven and earth will not be considered a waste and can nourish the land."

Soon the younger generation of officials.

I quickly came to this conclusion.

Then several cabinet ministers who were nearly a hundred years old stood up together and loudly reprimanded those young officials, saying that they were unaware of the suffering of the people at that time and how precious grain was. How could they just turn such good grain into fertilizer and bury it?
However, the younger generation of officials are unwilling to admit defeat:
“What the elders said makes sense, but what you said happened more than fifty years ago. Not to mention that under the rule of the Great Celestial Lord, we should not have to worry about food shortages in the future. Even if there is a shortage of food hundreds or thousands of years in the future, the food we have now cannot be stored for hundreds or thousands of years.

If these materials are left for a while longer, they will completely rot and even be poisonous if made into fertilizers.

But what other options are there? Building a cold storage may help preserve the food for a few more years, but the cost has already exceeded the price of these materials, so it’s not worth it.”

Indeed, no matter how much the older ministers felt sorry for wasting food, they had no other way to preserve the food. Compared to letting the food rot completely, it was better to make it into fertilizer.

Finally, the Minister of Personnel Zhang Jiuling came out to ask Bai Sheng if he had any magic to preserve food. Bai Sheng thought about it and felt that it would be too wasteful to make it into fertilizer directly, so he said:
"I have a pill called the Bigu Pill, which is made from the essence of grains. One pill can keep you from starving for a month. If you apply magic, it should be no problem to keep it for three to five hundred years.

It is best to refine it with spiritual grains, but anything can also be used.

It's just that the consumption is a bit too high.

How about this, I will send dozens of Yaochi female fairies to various granaries to refine the surplus food into fasting pills and bring them back to the capital, and then I will seal up the fasting pills. Excess meat can also be refined into essence pills. Mortals can only avoid hunger by eating fasting pills, but they may have no strength after a long time. Only by taking essence pills can they maintain a normal body.

It even has some physical fitness effects.

However, you still need to eat some fruits and vegetables on a daily basis. Otherwise, it may be okay for a month or two, but problems will still arise over time.

Simply rely on Bigu Pills and Jingqi Pills.

Still lacking some essential elements for the human body.”

After all, Bai Sheng still couldn't stand wasting food. Ordinary methods and technological means could not preserve the food for too long, so he decided to find another channel.

It's just a little more trouble for yourself.

As soon as this was said, naturally no one in the court objected, and they even started discussing whether the Bigu Pills and Jingqi Pills could be used in ocean voyages, military combat, and other areas. They might also be good for disaster relief.

Some officials also asked whether it could be sold externally?

If you eat one or two pills when you are busy, you can skip three meals a day for a month and eat some fruits and vegetables occasionally. It is quite convenient. You can save at least one hour of meal time a day, and more than 300 hours a year.

Maybe toilet time can be reduced as well.

With this calculation, more time is saved.

Of course, these were only the first topics discussed at the New Year's Day court meeting of the Queen Mother of the West in her fiftieth year. Other topics were raised afterwards, such as whether to pardon the descendants of the aristocratic families from fifty years ago, whether to tighten the household registration requirements for foreigners to join the Great Zhou, and whether to appropriately retain some of the characteristics and cultural heritage of foreigners.