"It's wrong for you to compost like this. It's only reasonable to do this."
"It's impossible. Our family has been doing this for generations. How could there be a problem?"
As soon as the team promoting scientific fertilization entered Zhangjiacun, they started arguing with the farmers in the village.
Although those promotion personnel have been trained and participated in actual combat, they also know that the new method is better than the previous method.
But ordinary people don't believe it.
For hundreds of years, everyone has been doing this. Now you tell me that your method is better than mine. It would be strange to believe it after you have not seen the actual effect.
And fertilizer is very important to farmers. What if my fertilizer is not good according to your method?
So what will our family eat?
Soon the news reached Zhu Youjian's ears. In order to solve the problem, Zhu Youjian could only do the next best thing. On the one hand, when dealing with urban residents' excrement, he was forced to follow new methods to handle it uniformly.
The head of another village followed a new method to dispose of feces, but at the same time promised that if production was reduced due to fertilizer problems, the court would pay for it.
With the court's full promise, and the fact that although the village chiefs' salaries were not high, they were all eating royal grain, the village chiefs agreed and adopted the court's scientific fertilizer-making method, and the matter came to an end.
Next, it was the turn to promote struvite.
Because struvite is mainly produced in the islands along the coast of Peru and Baja California, as well as in areas in Africa where cormorants, pelicans and gannets gather in large numbers.
Although there are islands around Daming, the total number is very small.
In addition, collection and transportation require expenses. In addition, Ming Dynasty has not yet realized industrialization and tax revenue is limited, so it is impossible for the court to pay farmers for free.
Therefore, these guano mines must be charged.
But many times for poor people, they simply don’t have the capital to try and make mistakes.
Asking them to pay for this thing is naturally unlikely.
Therefore, the imperial court could only carry out pilot promotion of the agreement on a village-by-village basis. The court will make the final decision. If the output is greater than before, the farmers will pay the previously agreed price after selling the grain. The price of the guano mine, if the output remains unchanged or the increase in output is limited (after the sale, the additional If the output price is not enough to offset the price of guano ore), the farmers do not have to pay this fee.
In addition, the imperial court also opened chicken farms and duck farms in various counties.
At the same time, farmers are purchased from villages on a long-term basis at the price of 1 copper plate per kilogram to remove locusts and other pests.
Although the price is not high, it does greatly increase the enthusiasm of ordinary people to catch locusts.
You know, there will be a locust plague every 2.8 years on average in the Ming Dynasty.
From an environmental perspective, the cause of the locust plague is mainly caused by drought. The main reason for this phenomenon is that arid environments have many benefits for locust reproduction, growth, development and survival. Because locusts lay their eggs in the soil. The soil is relatively solid and has a moisture content of 10%, which is most suitable for them to lay eggs.
Drought causes locusts to multiply and grow rapidly, causing disasters for two reasons.
On the one hand, in drought years, due to the drop in water levels, the soil becomes relatively solid, the water content is reduced, and the ground vegetation is sparse, the number of eggs laid by locusts increases greatly, and sometimes up to 4,000 to 5,000 eggs per square meter of soil. There are 50 to 80 eggs in each egg mass, that is, 200,000 to 400,000 eggs per square meter.
In drought years, the water levels of rivers and lakes shrink and low-lying areas are exposed, providing more suitable places for locusts to lay their eggs. On the other hand, plants grown in arid environments have lower water content, and locusts feed on them, growing faster and having higher fecundity.
According to scientific research, locusts must lay eggs on land with less than 50% vegetation coverage. If a place has beautiful mountains and clear waters and no bare land, locusts cannot breed.
But in this era, once a drought occurs, people are basically powerless.
Therefore, reducing the density of locusts in various places as much as possible can effectively reduce the possibility of locust disasters.
