Lack of funds has always plagued county schools here. [Read the latest chapter] Discussing investment in education. There are four to five hundred acres of school land in Lingao County, so it cannot be said that we don't take it seriously. Xuedian is a type of official land, and as usual there are official tenants - the family of Lu Jia, Wu Nanhai's disciple. This system worked fairly well in the early years, but over time it inevitably became riddled with drawbacks. The burden of official tenancy was too heavy, and gradually the tenants began to flee, and now there is no one left in ten. When the tenants were invited, no one responded. Wang Ci was a scholar who knew nothing about economics. He was helpless except asking for help from everywhere. Hundreds of acres of good paddy fields outside the county gate have been abandoned in vain, but the county school is so poor that it can't even afford the pigs used in the sacrifices to Confucius several times a year. Scholars in the county school have not been able to receive tuition money for many years, and they rarely come to the school. The county school is in a state of desolation. They were so embarrassed that they couldn't come up with the money to repair the Confucian Temple, and the famous Molixuan Academy became a dilapidated building.
The so-called emergency medical treatment, Wang Ci saw that the county school was declining day by day. It was impossible for the county to use money to maintain it, and asking the gentry for donations was not a long-term solution. We still need to start by rectifying the school field. But the scholars were not engaged in farming, and no one was willing to come to sharecropping. Hearing that the Australians were willing to help with farming, Wang Ci came to ask for their help.
Ye Yuming didn't dare to make the decision herself, so she quickly reported it to the Agriculture Committee. Wu Nanhai has long been coveting the academic field outside the west gate of the county. When I heard about this, I immediately agreed. Ye Yuming was asked to come forward and provide technical services according to "VIP" treatment.
At present, Tiandihui has signed a technical service contract with Lingao County Jiaoyu Wang Ci - strictly speaking, this is no longer a technical service contract, but more like a contract. Because there are no workers at all except for a few households of official tenants who are barely surviving on the farm. Everything must be resolved by the Heaven and Earth Alliance.
This matter attracted Wu De's great attention - this was the first step for the Chuanchuan Group to enter Lingao's official land. So the report was reported to the executive committee, and everyone felt that this was a good opportunity to further control the Lingao County government. Although the county school is nothing more than an educational institution, it is the management institution for the scholars in the county. Being able to gain a good reputation in this matter will be of great benefit to win over the hearts and minds of local intellectuals.
In the end, in accordance with the inertia of the Chinese people, this matter was upgraded from a simple commercial activity to a political level. Both the county government and the executive committee paid "high attention" to it and sent personnel for "close consultation."
According to Wu Daling's opinion, it was best not to provoke this group of thieves, but if Wang Ci wanted to do this, he couldn't stop him. Moli Xuan, the most important historical site in the county, is about to collapse, and the county school is also in dilapidated condition. He has not allocated a penny of repair funds so far. It is only through donations from Liu Dalin and the gentry of the county that he can barely repair it. In the past few years, Wang Ci has not received a penny from the county except for his pitiful salary. The county school can only be maintained by soliciting sponsorship from everywhere.
Master Wang argued that this was a good thing and gave many reasons. Magistrate Wu originally thought of letting this matter go, but after Wang Zhaomin analyzed it, he felt that it would be good for the county and not bad, so he completely acquiesced. Of course, his personal benefits are also indispensable.
Members of the Committee of Agriculture took action personally - Wu Nanhai became the main person in charge of the school field project. He took two brothers, Lu A and Lu B, to inspect the school field in person.
Wang Ci led the few remaining tenants of Xuetian, including Lu Da, the father of the Lu family brothers. He was the head of the Xuetian and was half a steward, but his appearance was not much better than the others. These ten or so people were waiting at the edge of the field to welcome the arrival of the "chief".
Wu Nanhai and Wang Ci exchanged pleasantries. Wang Jiaoyu was a scholar after all, although he could not speak Mandarin. I can still speak poor Guangzhou vernacular. The two of them talked and gestured, and they were able to communicate without an interpreter.
This was the first time that Wang Ci saw the leader of the "Kun Thief" up close. When he saw that the man had an upright appearance and kind eyes, he was not the vicious person he imagined, and his heart finally dropped.
"This time we have to work Mr. Wu." Wang Ci bowed, "Farming is not a trivial matter, and the quality of the school fields is even more related to the morale of Lingao's articles..."
"I understand this." Wu Nanhai smiled, "Don't worry, there will definitely be a good harvest in autumn!"
Wang Ci thought to himself: why did this person talk big words when he first came up, without even a polite word? He was really an overseas barbarian.
"Then I have to rely more on you."
"This is the head of the village, Lu Da, who is in charge of the school field." Wang Ci shouted, "Why don't you come over and see Mr. Wu!"
Lu Da came running over and kowtowed. This was the first time Wu Nanhai met his apprentice's father. He is thin and small and looks like a traditional farmer. His blue homespun clothes are knotted in knots. He is no better than a beggar.
Wu Nanhai first inspected Xuetian's condition, and after seeing it, he even expressed his regret. This school land is much better than the land they saw in Meitaiyang. It is close to the river bank, it is easy to divert water, and there is no problem of waterlogging. It is considered the best land in the local area.
Lu Da respectfully handed over the land brochure, but Wu Nanhai couldn't understand the schematic diagram that looked like ghost drawings. Just ask: "How many fields are there? How many paddy fields and how many dry fields?"
"Replying to the master, there are a total of three hundred and twenty-six acres of paddy field, four acres of dry land, and thirteen acres of garden land."
"Is there no other place?"
"there is none left."
"What are you growing?"
Lu Da reported that the main crop grown was rice, and the dry land was a local millet. Sweet potatoes and peanuts are also grown by tenant farmers, but not in large numbers.
There is a lot of land, but no one is cultivating it. Originally, Lu Da planned to recruit some long-term workers to cultivate the wasteland. But after all, if you hire long-term workers to plant all the wasteland, you will have to pay more for food. Not only will you lose nothing, but you will also have to pay for it. It is better to just abandon the wasteland.
The most useful thing is the garden land: growing some vegetables and raising pigs with vegetables such as pumpkins in the vegetable field, these tenants can barely make ends meet.
Wu Nanhai felt confident and started his plan to transform the school field.
On the morning of this day, a group of laborers sent from the Bairen Commune appeared outside the west gate of the county with tools and pushing a newly produced "Zidian-style" mass-produced wheelbarrow. Several students studying surveying and mapping brought soil Then, amid the noise, a branch line began to extend from the Bairen-Lingao Highway, leading directly to the west gate of the county seat.
Roads must be built beforehand, which is the consistent style of Chuanchuan Group in running industries. Lu Da looked at the busy road construction site and was dumbfounded - wouldn't Tiandi want to help farm the land? Why were the roads built to the ground first? He originally thought that the Heaven and Earth Society would send seeds and send a few people over to give guidance, but he didn't expect that this would happen.
He hurriedly brought out all the young people from the Xuetian tenants, and met "Wu Chang" who was leading the team. Standing beside him were his two sons, carrying green satchels. Lu Dagang was about to kneel down and kowtow, but Wu Nanhai stopped him.
"No need to be too polite. Gather all the tenants in the tenant farm. I want to do a population count and assign work."
"All the young men are here to wait for the commander's orders -"
"Bring out the women, the elderly and the children. Lu Jia, prepare to register!"
"Yes!" Lu Jia took out a notebook from his bag.
"Young man, go and call me right now." Lu Da wondered where this song was about. Not daring to neglect his steps, he quickly returned to a side street in Ximen Pass and called out all the families of the tenant farmers living there. Not a single old man, woman, or child was left.
According to the inventory, there are seven tenant households in the Xuetian, with more than 40 men, women, and children. Check and register one by one. Lu Jia then assigned people to jobs according to their gender and physical condition based on a pre-made plan. Strangely, all the young men were ordered to stay and wait for notification.
The road construction team is fighting hard, and a new work team is here. With tools, vehicles, cattle and horses. Level the land and dig trenches. The original messy, horizontal and vertical field ridges were all eradicated and turned into large square fields. What was originally a simple earth ditch has been transformed into a criss-crossing channel system with separate irrigation and drainage.
Then came the herds of cattle. These cattle pulled huge agricultural machinery of iron and wood structures. Before the emergence of diesel engines and steam engines, large-scale animal-driven agricultural machinery had appeared in the Americas. Each machine had as few as four horses and as many as a dozen horses on each side. This was the first time for Lu Da to see such large-scale animal-driven agricultural machinery - here it was changed to using cattle for traction. The scene of more than a dozen cows lined up on the land dragging huge machinery for deep plowing made many passers-by stop and watch, reluctant to leave for a long time.
The entire reconstruction site was noisy like a hornet's nest. Such a large-scale concentration of manpower and material resources on agricultural production shocked Lu Da from the bottom of his heart:
"The land can still be so cultivated!" he muttered. I saw his eldest son standing on the edge of the field with great dignity, making gestures with a strange thing. The younger son held a piece of wood and wrote something on it. He looked over and saw that there was a large iron clip holding the paper on the wood piece. It was filled with words and things that looked like ghost drawings - he had heard it said before. This is called the "big food number", which is the number used by Australians. Lu Dalian didn't even know Chinese digits, so he felt a little sweet when he saw his son writing skillfully and shouting with the workers from time to time - the boys are all getting ahead! But it's also a bit sour. As a father, I haven't made any progress at all...
Not long after he thought about it, all the young men of Xuedian's tenants were gathered in Bairen Commune, led by Lu Yi. There they will receive a fifteen-day Tiandihui farming training.
Not only the tenants in the school field participated in the training class, but also other customers who participated in the Tiandihui planting promotion program. According to the notice, at least one person from each household will come, and a maximum of three people will come. Most of the labor comes from the landlords themselves and their families - small landlords do a lot of farming by themselves. Fu Bu'er himself also brought his family's long-term workers to study.
Wu Nanhai’s courses focus on promoting planting techniques and field management of common crops. These agricultural methods are all proven effective through long-term practice. He had long discovered that Lingao's agricultural production technology level was extremely low. Many planting techniques and agricultural tools that were widely used in the Ming Dynasty are missing here. He once asked Jiaoyu if there was anyone selling agricultural books in the local area, but Jiaoyu actually said that there was no bookshop here at all. If you want to buy books, you have to go to Fucheng at least. As for several important agricultural books in ancient times, even scholars like Wang Ci have never heard of the famous ones such as "Essentials for Qi Min".
Needless to say, the new agriculture of the 21st century has not even absorbed the advanced achievements of the 17th century. Therefore, Wu Nanhai’s textbooks were designed to be simple and easy to learn, combined with the advanced agricultural technology at that time, and focused on teaching the planting techniques of rice, wheat and sweet potatoes. To use a fashionable saying, it is "in line with the level of social productivity at that time."
Obviously, the agricultural department is on the right track by adopting the strategy of planting their own fields first and then promoting it after achieving results. Otherwise, it would be strange that these farmers would believe Wu Nanhai based on some of his strange remarks during class.
Wu Nanhai made a sowing plan while attending class. He's not prepared to give these customers too many varieties of new crops. In fact, he favored turning them into monocrop farms.
Rice is the focus of grain production, and Wu Nanhai plans to promote short-leg lodging-resistant rice varieties in the fields of these customers this year. According to the climate characteristics of this time and space where the accumulated temperature level at the peak is lower than that of modern time and space, a rice-rice-wheat rotation method was adopted.
Although the yield of wheat is not high, compared with rice, wheat also consumes much less labor in field management. Another factor is that many people in the crossing group like pasta, and everyone hopes that the canteen can make buns, steamed buns, noodles, pancakes and other foods that are popular among the people every now and then. Finally, the Navy hopes to use baked biscuits instead of the odd rice cracker as dry rations in the future.
Next is sweet potatoes. He plans to plant this high-yielding crop in all his customers' dry fields. In order to serve as a demonstration and promotion role as soon as possible, more farmers will accept this crop. Sweet potatoes can be produced in large quantities. With sweet potatoes, there is a starch industry, and with starch industry, there is a modern food industry. Whether it is the starch industry or the food industry, the scraps produced can be used as feed.
With feed, the scale of the breeding industry can be further expanded. The livestock manure and manure produced in the breeding industry are returned to the fields to provide sufficient nutrients for the soil.
At the same time, the promotion of order farming is also in progress. According to the principle of voluntary application, Ye Yuming signed breeding agreements with several farmers near Bairencheng and loaned chicks to them.
The number of people who applied to raise chickens was more enthusiastic than expected. It only takes 20 eggs to exchange for a chicken, and Australians will underwrite all future eggs. The benefits are quite attractive. Because the value is not high, small farmers can afford to take the risk even for speculation.
The number of chicks is limited, and only 20 households can receive the chicks in the first batch. Other farmers can only register first and wait in line. Ye Yuming thinks this is fine: the promised provision of formula feed cannot be fully implemented because earthworm breeding has not yet reached a large scale. If the scale is expanded rashly and the promised things are not supplied, it will seriously affect the reputation.
Ye Yuming completely separated the farmers, basically using a model of one household per village to spread out along the villages in the main agricultural areas on both sides of the Wenlan River. In order to achieve a better demonstration effect, he also plans to use these farmers as agricultural science and technology teaching points in each village in the future.
In addition to the intensive promotion project, the Ministry of Agriculture is also developing high-yield fields here. Wu Nanhai can hardly be divided into two parts. Simply leave the high-yielding field affairs entirely to Fa Shilu. Everyone is busy. However, as a result, the planned pesticide factory became unpopular. After careful consideration, Wu Nanhai decided to jointly establish an agricultural pesticide factory with the health department. In addition to manufacturing pesticides, it was also responsible for manufacturing veterinary drugs.
After the fifteen days of training, Wu Nanhai announced that everyone could go back to the village to prepare farm tools and fields. The "agricultural technicians" who go to the countryside will soon go to the countryside to provide specific guidance.
Everyone was originally confused by the content of the class, because most of them were illiterate and couldn't take notes. They were worried about not remembering everything. When they heard that someone came to give guidance, they couldn't help but marvel.
"There is no need to pay the technicians who come to visit. These are all included in your service fee. Each of you will provide food and accommodation, and they will bear the food expenses themselves."
Everyone felt bad when they heard that the technician who came to the door had to pay for his own meals. Someone said:
"This can't be done. If you hire a long-term worker, your employer will have to provide you with food, so you don't have to spend the food money."
"Technicians eat three meals a day, each meal contains half a kilogram of rice..."
"We can afford even a pound of food."
"There is a chicken every day. If you don't have a chicken, you can have a fish. One pound per pound, and you have to have an egg every day..."
Those who had enthusiastically expressed their willingness to provide free meals fell silent. Only Liu Youren from Calais said:
"It's okay, my family can afford this."
"Mr. Liu, of course your family can afford it." Someone said sourly. "
Wu Nanhai could now understand a little bit of Lingao's dialect, so he took a few more glances at the person who said he could afford it. I saw that this man was only thirty years old, with a big body and a round waist. He was dressed just like the ordinary farmers in the local area, except that his clothes were not torn or patchy, neat and clean, and his feet were a pair of green cloth shoes, stained with mud and water. Wu Nanhai knew that farmers in the old days rarely wore cloth shoes - they were easily worn out when working in the fields, so they were mostly barefoot or wearing straw sandals. When going to the city to do errands, I would bring a pair of shoes, put them on when entering the city, and take them off when leaving the city. A person who doesn't care about shoes at all must be a rich and indifferent owner. Looking at his waist, he still has a Xiangfei bamboo cigarette rod and a white jade pendant.
He casually looked through his personal information. Liu Youren comes from Jialai Village and reports that he has more than 300 acres of land. However, people from the Intelligence Committee told him that Liu Youren did not actually live in Calais Village, but in a village several miles outside the village. He is a typical local tycoon who builds a village in the countryside to protect himself. The entire Liujiazhai has at least five to six thousand acres of land. Liu Youren's participation in the Tiandihui was probably just asking for advice.
The following is not chargeable unless it contains 5,000 words.
Note: Moli Xuan is the most famous historic site in Lingao. It was founded in the second year of Shaoxing in the Southern Song Dynasty. In the 18th year of Shaoxing, when Hu Quan, then a reformer of the Hanlin Academy, was demoted to Jiyang Army, which is now Sanya, he passed by Lingao. The county magistrate Xie Wo hired him to give lectures in the academy for more than a year. A few years later, Dai Dingshi, a local student, passed the imperial examination. This is the first time in the history of Lingao that people have been elected. Molixuan's status among local scholars is very high. ! ~!
