Above the mage

Chapter 790 Agricultural Development

Thanks to the rapid development of the North, the relevant functional departments of the city hall are also taking shape one after another.

Today, the number of departments or organizations, large and small, has exceeded ten, and continues to expand and improve as the North develops.

Because the municipal functions system is becoming more and more complete, the scene at this municipal hall briefing was particularly lively.

The heads of various departments gathered together, and looking at the bustling scene, it could be considered that there was a wealth of talent, and it was beginning to resemble the team that Gaode had envisioned.

The key point is that these teams are all the original founding members of the company.

This means that every member is someone who makes their living through hard work.

Individual abilities have improved along with the development of the North and the department. There are no mediocre people who hold positions without doing their jobs, and no bureaucrats who engage in empty talk.

Each of them has made real contributions and is a core backbone supporting the development of the North.

Those who can attend the city hall briefing are all important figures from their respective departments.

Once everyone had arrived, the meeting room quickly fell into a quiet and orderly atmosphere.

"Then let each department report on its recent progress, including completed tasks, ongoing projects, and currently stalled problems that require coordinated solutions."

Gao De sat in the main seat, his gaze sweeping across the entire room. Seeing that everyone had arrived, he slowly began to speak.

As soon as he finished speaking, everyone in the room lowered their eyes and fell silent.

Then everyone turned their attention to a certain little person who was the smallest in the room, but whose status was by no means insignificant.

Although there are no requirements, everyone implicitly agrees that the order of reporting is important.

This order often directly reflects the department's weight and strategic position.

Following this logic, the Ministry of Agriculture and Lady Flora would always be the undisputed first priority.

Food is the foundation for development in the North.

Flora, on the other hand, is the mother of food.

Lady Flora, facing the overwhelming expectations, showed neither stage fright nor humility.

In fact, she hadn't thought that much about it at all.

Seeing that everyone was looking at her, she immediately started counting on her little fingers and listed out the latest achievements of the Ministry of Agriculture during this period for Gao De.

You wouldn't believe it until you hear it, it's truly astonishing.

Firstly, during this period, the Forestry Office under the Ministry of Agriculture, under the leadership of Flora's Grandmaster-level magical plant cultivation capabilities, has newly established two distinctive plantation forests.

The tree species were all obtained through trade channels in the Blue Flame Islands.

They are respectively the magic cottonwood and the black mulberry.

Both are first-tier magical plants and possess immense economic value.

The former has white downy hairs on the surface of its leaves, which provide excellent warmth and wind protection, and also has a slight cold resistance. It can grow into a forest in three years.

Its seeds were a wild tree species discovered on an island by a minor nobleman whose fiefdom was an island.

He himself did not find a great use for this magical plant.

The white fluff of the "magic cotton" is indeed soft and warm, but the fibers are too short, making it extremely difficult to spin into yarn.

The island has a hot and humid climate, so there's no need for thick clothes.

After learning that the Blue Flame Islands were buying up various magical tree species at high prices, he casually took a lot of saplings and stuffed them into the ballast of his cargo ship, then sold them to the Blue Flame Islands.

Then they are transported directly from the Blue Flame Islands to the Northern Territory.

When Elsa was checking the inventory list, she immediately saw the potential of Magic Velvet Cotton.

It has a short cultivation cycle, high yield, and short fibers are actually an advantage in the North.

This means that it has a stronger heat storage capacity, and its warmth retention and windproof performance far exceed those of ordinary cotton.

If it can be spun into thread, woven into cloth, and made into clothes, it will be top-quality warm clothing. The latter is a tree species that was introduced from the Central Plains Continent.

Its bast fibers are extremely strong and have a slight fire and water resistance, which can be used to weave high-performance wear-resistant fabrics for industrial applications.

The former is finally able to solve a major predicament currently facing the people of the North: all clothing is made from the fur of the hunted animals.

A developed and mature society should industrialize and systematize all aspects of life, especially in the areas of clothing, food, housing, and transportation.

And velvet cotton is an important foundation of the textile industry in the North.

As for the latter, its value is in no way inferior to that of velvet cotton.

Its most crucial strategic use in the North at present is to produce sails and waterproof tarpaulins needed for long-distance ocean navigation.

To develop commerce and trade in the future, the North needs to open up shipping routes and establish trade lines with the outside world, which inevitably requires it to have its own shipyard.

Xuanjiaosang solved a major raw material problem for the shipyard ahead of schedule.

However, there has not yet been a complete clue on how to make efficient use of these two cash crops.

In addition to the new economic forestry industry, the core food industry is also making steady progress.

The planting area of ​​the two major grain varieties, Northwest Barley No. 1 and No. 2, continues to expand.

The yield per acre is also continuously increasing, which has completely stabilized the food supply in the northern border region.

Meanwhile, in accordance with Gaode's requirements, the Ministry of Agriculture, taking advantage of the extreme cold in the northern region, has built ten huge granaries to store grain, and another five granaries are still under construction.

In addition, corresponding grain ledgers were established, with daily and monthly reconciliations, and all inflows and outflows were traceable.

All ledger data is entered into the Northern Heart database to ensure that there is a reliable source of information.

The current food reserves are sufficient to keep people from starving even if the wheat harvest fails for a whole season in the North.

Furthermore, since Moutai has gained the approval of Master Yang and has been extremely popular among the people of the North after its trial sale, it has been in short supply.

Upon seeing this, Deputy Minister Grant, who was in charge of brewing, promptly submitted an application to the city hall and received approval from Sunefa.

In the name of the Ministry of Agriculture, he built a large wine cellar in Ironforge to brew wine, using the residual heat from forging to control the temperature.

It is now nearing completion.

Finally, the first batch of edible fruit trees has officially borne fruit, producing a small amount of edible magic fruit, which has slightly filled the gap in the scarcity of fruits and vegetables in the North.

This has enabled the previously singular food system in the North to begin diversification.

After Flora finished speaking, she blinked her clear, big eyes and turned to Quentin beside her, signaling for him to continue.

Quentin's Livestock Office was also under the Ministry of Agriculture.

However, animal taming, breeding, and raising are not Flora's areas of expertise.

Therefore, the entire matter was entrusted to Quentin for independent management, and he naturally handled the reporting work alone.

Quentin calmly took over the conversation and began to report on the achievements of the Livestock Office.

After subjugating the Frostwolf Clan, many skilled animal trainers with experience in raising Frostwolf joined the Livestock Bureau, completely revitalizing the previously unremarkable bureau.

Taking this opportunity, Quentin abandoned the crude model that previously lumped hunting, domestication, and breeding together, and completed a refined reform.

He separated two independent systems within the Livestock Office: one for food breeding and the other for draft labor, each with its own dedicated animal training and breeding departments, with a clear division of labor.

As the name suggests, the food system focuses on mass production and self-sufficiency, and specifically selects leyline creatures with low aggression, high meat quality, short breeding cycle, and low breeding cost to replace the primitive nomadic hunting mode in the North.

After the unification and stabilization of the North, the population is experiencing explosive growth, and traditional hunting is completely unable to support the meat needs of such a large population.

Only large-scale farming can stabilize the supply of goods for people's livelihoods.

The Animal Husbandry Office has finalized two types of low-level ley line organisms that can be farmed on a large scale; both are zero-level ley line organisms.

The first type is the Snowfield Fathoof.

This is a herbivorous terrestrial creature with short, thick limbs and a body covered in thick hair.

Adults are about the size of a calf, and are docile and non-aggressive.

The meat is tender and has almost no gamey smell, and the fur, after tanning, makes excellent bedding.

Most importantly, it has a high reproductive rate.

Females give birth to two to three cubs per litter, and the cubs reach adulthood in one year. They can produce two litters a year.

The second is the Icethorn Porcupine.

The name sounds scary, but in reality, this creature is not much different from the Fathoof Beast in temperament, and is also a herbivorous leyline creature.

The ice thorns on its back are purely for defense and it never attacks proactively.

Adults are about the size of a domestic pig and are omnivorous.

They eat grass roots, berries, small rodents, and even carrion; they'll swallow anything, making them ridiculously easy to raise.

However, its breeding cycle is slightly long, producing one offspring per year.

Each litter contains four to six puppies.

Both types of ley line organisms are inexpensive to raise because they are herbivorous and can thrive on wheat and wheat stalks.

Logically speaking, they should be high-quality livestock and poultry, and should have been on the dinner table long ago.

The problem is that they couldn't keep them alive at all before.

In the past, the northern regions were barren, and they could only dig through the snow to find moss, lichen, and some berries underneath for food.

Due to limited food resources, the quantity is extremely small.

Even if the Northerners hunted one and kept it in captivity, it would be useless without enough feed; it would become thin and emaciated after just a few days.

These two types of creatures are extremely sensitive to heat; they cannot function properly when the temperature is high and are only suited to living in places like the North.

Even if outsiders know that these two types of ley line creatures are valuable, they cannot raise them.

Due to the mismatch between food and environment, these two leyline creatures, which have excellent meat quality and are very easy to domesticate, have never been able to be domesticated on a large scale.

Now that the food problem in the North has been solved, this structural contradiction has been completely resolved.

The service system prioritizes low-level ley line creatures with high load-bearing capacity, high endurance, docile temperament, and suitability for infrastructure.

It is specifically designed to serve heavy infrastructure work such as road construction, mining, material transportation, and land reclamation.

Then, through artificial selection and generational breeding, the physical condition of the species is continuously optimized to improve their load-bearing endurance.

The need for infrastructure development is clear and urgent, so Quentin is focusing more of its work on this area.

He led the staff of the Livestock Office to traverse the snowfields surrounding Phoenix, and finally identified three types of leyline creatures that were extremely well-suited to the infrastructure of the North and relatively easy to tame.

One of them is the monitor lizard that carries people.

This is a first-tier ley line creature. Adults are four to five meters long, with thick limbs, claws like iron shovels, and a slow temperament, rarely attacking.

The monitor lizard is a natural strongman, capable of dragging more than three tons of weight across the snowfield for up to twenty miles a day. Its large claws have an extremely strong grip on the snowfield.

What's even more remarkable is that monitor lizards have unique skills in digging.

Its forepaws are sharp and it is good at digging burrows, able to dig several meters deep overnight for wintering.

This will undoubtedly be of great help to the field of mineral vein and tunnel construction in the North.

The second is the iron-horned frozen raw cattle.

Also native to the North, their greatest advantage lies in their endurance, allowing them to work continuously for six to seven hours.

Thirdly, there is the ice field armored rhinoceros.

This is the largest of the three ley line creatures, with adults standing over two and a half meters tall at the shoulder and over five meters long. Its entire body is covered in grayish-white horny scales, making it look like a moving rocky hill from a distance.

The Icefield Armored Rhinoceros is extremely docile, perhaps because its shell is hard enough and it moves somewhat clumsily, so it is in a "nobody can touch me" state all year round.

Its dragging capacity is more than three times that of a monitor lizard.

The domestication work went smoothly and seemed to yield remarkable results.

However, domestication is actually only a relatively simple preliminary step in the work of the animal husbandry office.

Most creatures in the ley lines have fixed habits. Once you figure out their patterns, provide them with enough food and add magical assistance.

An experienced animal trainer can complete the process of capturing a creature from its ley lines and training it to obey basic commands in a maximum of two months.

The real challenge lies in breeding and propagation.

The essence of domestication is teaching, while the essence of breeding is modification.

For example, a disadvantage of the Ironhorn Aborigine is its slow reproduction rate; population expansion cannot be rushed.

The Icefield Armored Rhinoceros is the strongest, but it is also the most difficult to tame and raise.

The black rhinoceros takes up to six years to reach sexual maturity, and its gestation period lasts for nearly two years.

For a breeding family to establish a stable population, it takes at least ten years.

Moreover, armored rhinoceroses have an astonishing appetite; an adult armored rhinoceros needs to consume 300 kilograms of feed per day, so the problem of feed supply must be solved before large-scale breeding can begin.

The Livestock Office cannot simply rely on finding a working animal to complete its mission.

Their main task is to breed superior populations that are more docile, stronger, and require less feed through successive generations.

Besides the technical difficulties, this also requires algebra, time, massive amounts of observation records, and pairing and filtering.

After listening to their complete reports, the meeting room fell silent once again.

Gaode was also quietly pondering.

After a moment's thought, Gao De spoke slowly, his voice not loud, but carrying an undeniable decisiveness: "Let's first talk about the issues of the two major magical plant industries."

"The fibers of velvet cotton are short, and ordinary spinning wheels cannot spin yarn, so we need to modify the equipment."

, 7

"You can ask those two masters from the Yang family to help you modify the equipment."

"In addition, we will immediately set up the first textile factory in the North to connect with the two magical plant forests... In the early stage, the textile factory equipment will be purchased from outside, and we will mainly carry out internal renovations. The products will also mainly meet domestic demand."

"As for the black mulberry, although its current use is limited, its prospects are broad. We should prioritize the development of waterproof and fireproof canvas, ship sealing tarpaulins, and wear-resistant belts using its bark as raw materials, and stockpile core consumables for shipbuilding and infrastructure in advance."

'

"Secondly, the grain reserve system needs a comprehensive upgrade."

Gao De's gaze swept over the crowd, his tone becoming increasingly serious: "The food issue is a matter of people's livelihood, the foundation of everything, and grain storage is an issue that cannot be ignored."

"The current food storage system in the North is very crude, with many deficiencies and insufficient reserves, which absolutely cannot support the future population expansion and war preparedness needs of the North."

"A Grain Reserves Department will be established under the Ministry of Agriculture to specifically coordinate grain storage work across the entire northern region."

"The most important responsibilities of the Grain Reserves Department at present are to establish a tiered reserve system, from central grain reserves to regional grain reserves, and then to mobile grain reserves —"

"We also need to establish a rotation system. Although low temperatures greatly enhance food reserves, old grains cannot be stored indefinitely. When new grains are put into storage, the old grains from the previous batch should be transferred out in proportion."

"Finally, the Grain Reserves Department is also responsible for controlling grain prices. If grain prices fluctuate significantly in the market, the warehouses must be opened to release grain."

""

"The candidate for the head of the Grain Reserves Department must have extremely strong mathematical and organizational skills. You can choose first, and the final list must be reviewed and approved by me."

"Then, after the Ironforge wine cellars were completed, they were directly registered under the Northern Border Wine Group, which is directly under the Ministry of Agriculture..."

'

Gao De's explanations were clear and logical, and everyone listened attentively.

One point is that every point Gaode made at the meeting was packed with valuable information.

Although it may seem like a detailed answer to a specific question, if you can grasp its underlying meaning, you will definitely be able to apply it in your future work.

Everyone can attest to this.

Another point is that "personality cult" is actually quite serious in the North.

The people deeply admired Goddard for bringing about tremendous changes to the North.

Just like following a celebrity, even if the celebrity is talking nonsense, you will listen very carefully when you are there.

There was only one exception.

To Flora, Gao De's words were nothing more than empty platitudes.

Flora wanted to listen attentively, but for some reason, she suddenly felt sleepy as she listened. Her eyelids felt heavy, and she would droop her head down from time to time, her eyelids almost closing.

Just as I was about to close the book, I suddenly remembered that I was in a meeting.

But how could I, the dignified Lady Flora, a prominent figure whose image is printed on the currency of the North, possibly fall asleep in such a solemn place under the watchful eyes of everyone?

With a start, he lifted his head again and struggled to open his eyelids.

This went on for a while. I didn't fall asleep at all, but I didn't hear a single word Gaode said. I just treated it as buzzing white noise.