"Okay! Very good! Very good! Send a messenger, and all the enlightened priests who participate in struvite research will be rewarded with a salary for one year! Then, several priests with outstanding performance will be selected and all will be promoted to the first level! This fertilization They must continue to study the big issue of increasing production!”
The camp was warm and the fire was bright. Shulot drank a cup of scented tea and exhaled a long breath. He looked at the document from the Divine Enlightenment in his hand, like a farmer looking at the fields, full of hope for a good harvest.
"Food is the foundation of the kingdom! Practices that can increase food production must be researched, promoted, and even popularized in the name of the Lord God!... Eckart, when you encounter documents related to agricultural improvement in the future, you must be the first to do so. Time is in my hands!"
"Yes, head of the family! I will definitely do as you say!"
Eckart, the captain of the guard, bowed his head and stood waiting. Xiuluo nodded and took out a booklet from the most important copper box. It was a small book, "On Agricultural Reform", which he had personally summarized. This booklet has been roughly written out and will be sent to the Kingdom's Divine Inspiration Institute for completion, and will be included in the textbooks of Divine Power University and be disseminated in the name of Divine Inspiration.
Shulot turned over the pages one by one, and the first chapter talked about the basic needs for crop growth, sunlight, water, nutrition, and temperature, and hinted at the principle of photosynthesis, "The divine light falls from the sky, and in a suitable environment It is absorbed by the green plants, and the divine energy in the light and the nutrients in the soil are combined into tiny vitality. The gathered vitality is food..."
Later, in Chapter 2, the actual factors that affect yield are listed in detail, including the seeds themselves, soil conditions, weed competition, water and fertilizer supply at different growth stages, changes in outside temperature, insect pests and diseases, birds and The destruction of beasts...
These are the agricultural common sense of later generations and are the accumulation of thousands of years of agricultural development. Anyone who has spent a little time in the countryside, or has read relevant books, or planted flowers and plants, will have some knowledge.
"A grain of sand from later generations, falling in this era, is a mountain of scientific accumulation, which can save hundreds of years of detours! And spreading the science of later generations and leaving knowledge to the times is what every time traveler cannot forget. Vocational duty!..."
During his free time during the siege of the city, Shulot concentrated on searching his past memories carefully and adding whatever he thought of. Then, he proposed some methods to improve production one by one based on different factors that affect production.
Therefore, the content of the third chapter is the "breeding" that God Qi was previously ordered to do. For the staple foods of corn, beans, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, potatoes... the generations are constantly changing, and the best varieties among them are selected purposefully. Just like the epoch-making hybrid rice, the cultivation of this kind of breeding takes a long time and requires the summary of scientific theories. It has no immediate effect on increasing grain production, but it actually increases the upper limit of crop production!
Of course, His Highness the Divine Enlightenment is only responsible for putting forward a few words and pointing out relevant concepts. As for the boring and tedious specific breeding work, it is natural to leave it to specialized experienced farmers and divine priests. After all, the time for breeding research is measured in units of ten years, and it truly requires a lifetime of dedication!
Chapter 4 is "Field Management, Farm Tool Innovation and Farming System". Although it has such a big name, the only chapters that have been actually written are "Deep Plowing and Human Plows", "Irrigation and Water Trucks and Canals", "Weeding and Hoes", "Harvesting and Scythes"... these Most of them were common scenes in villages in later generations, and they had already sprouted in Central America at this time.
The captain of the guard, Eckardt, could still understand these contents, but he was a little confused about the so-called "farming system" that followed. What about "mixed cultivation of corn, pumpkins and beans", "the floating fields of Chinampa and the base pond of the fish pond of Lake Texcoco", and even "farmland and pasture where oxen are domesticated"...
The captain of the guard, Eckardt, took a few quick glances and then lowered his head. He found that His Highness didn't seem to be very clear and just listed some broad titles. Under each major title, there are a few paragraphs and sentences, which are rough overviews and point out ideas and directions.
"Well, all this divinely inspired knowledge has a direction. As for what it looks like specifically, what its principles are, and how to operate it... let the priests from the Divinely Inspired Institute come to the fields and study hard!"
Shulot concentrated on it, thinking while reading, and quickly turned to Chapter 5. Chapter 5 is "Water and Fertilizer Supply at Different Stages". It first puts forward an empirical concept, that is, from small to large, from budding to fruiting, the demand and acceptance of water and fertilizer are definitely different for crops.
As for the specific differences and the demand for different crops, Shulot left it all blank. These tedious practical tasks take years, and must be planted by experienced farmers who are familiar with the fields, and the divine priests must make statistics and calculations, and then record them in books.
Shulot paused for a moment, then looked behind him to see the specific management of water and fertilizer, which was also the focus of the Kingdom's grand plan and the implementation of Divine Enlightenment.
"Water" is very simple, which means repairing water conservancy facilities and regulating water volume, including repairing canals, reservoirs, and water trucks. It's just that this is easy to say, but if you really want to do it, you need to mobilize a lot of manpower and material resources! One of the big plans for the construction of the kingdom is to dredge the rivers in the south, build a series of water conservancy facilities, improve the irrigation conditions in the two southern counties, and regulate floods.
As for "fertilizer", what the Kingdom is currently doing is promoting "compost", encouraging "river mud dredging", experimenting with "cattle husbandry", and the most important natural fertilizer "struvite"!
Shulot picked up the pen and wrote down the newly obtained report in the "Struvite" column.
"God bless you! Grinding 1 ton of struvite stone into the field will continuously release fertility for a long time. It can increase the production of at least 4 tons of grain in the first year, and we don't know yet in the second year... These stone fertilizers are real grain. ! The coastal trade route to the northern continent must be expanded as soon as possible to bring back more struvite!"
As for the final sixth chapter, it is "Other factors affecting output." Shulot has already listed temperature, insect pests, diseases, and animal damage, but in fact, the kingdom can do very little to improve these factors.
In this era, crops were usually "sturdier" and not as high-yielding and expensive as in later generations, and they were relatively resistant to diseases. Regarding insect pests, before the arrival of the European fleet, there were no records of locusts in the Americas. The only troublesome red fire ant still stayed in the Paraná River Basin of South America, which was later known as Paraguay. As for beast harm, villagers will live in the fields during the autumn harvest to drive away birds and beasts. That's all that can be done. As for the mobilization and hunting capabilities to "eliminate the four pests", it is truly an unimaginable "fantasy" in this era!
Therefore, the only topic Shulot wrote was "Agricultural Response to the Cold Wave in the Northern Continent." This topic is related to the future of the kingdom, farming and expansion on the North American continent. Therefore, Shulot proposed a direction for the priests of the Divine Enlightenment Institute, which is to cultivate cold-resistant and frost-resistant crops, giving priority to potatoes, and sweet potatoes can also be tried.
"Unfortunately...the shipping route to the Inca has never been opened. The existing potato varieties in the kingdom were brought back by the Mayans from Chibucha hundreds of years ago...The truly cold-resistant and high-yielding potato crops still have to go to South America. Mainland, go to the Andes!”
Shulot pondered for a moment and looked towards the south. He had arranged new voyages of exploration, in both directions north and south. However, given the kingdom’s level of navigation, all this exploration will take years, so there is no rush for the time being.
“Cultivation of seeds, promotion of new agricultural tools, improvement of field management, construction of water conservancy facilities, promotion of compost dredging, and application of struvite fertilizers... These six contents are the important tasks that are being implemented on a large scale in the Kingdom’s agricultural reform and can enable The kingdom’s food production has increased significantly!”
Thinking of this, a confident smile appeared on Shulot's face. Then, the smile turned into expectation, with a bit of apprehension, and finally turned into resolute fearlessness!
"Of course, there is still a lot of blank space in the content of agricultural reform. The most critical and urgent one is the large livestock from the Old World! Cows, sheep, pigs, horses..."
"In two months, it will be 1490... Come on, come on, they are coming! I have waited too long... Waiting for me to personally lead the troops to defeat the Totonac people in Golden Bay City, The sea route to Cuba will be opened! And the large group of kingdom warriors will be able to go to Cuba...wait for their arrival!
