Chapter 102: Specialized Agricultural Management
He Xi's shallow knowledge was actually worrying all the time.
Although 600,000 people were resettled in Beijing, no resettlement fee was paid, in fact, these people were absorbed by the Beijing City Project that was being built and the supporting factories in various places. The entire Beijing City Project has about 400,000 people. .
After all, a population of 600,000 cannot be all men. If factory workers are included, there are about half a million people working under He Xi's baton.
Although the market labor price is very low, on average, the labor cost per person is about one or two. This cost is not just the wages of each person, but also the money the trading company makes on this person.
In the past two months, He Xi has put two to three million taels on the Beijing market.
The number of takeout scallion pancakes in Beijing has also changed from four large copper coins to one copper coin.
If we don't mention He Xi using military rations from Peiping to stabilize grain prices, even if grain prices don't move, they will rise even faster.
He Xi felt that the money in the market urgently needed a direction to flow.
He Xi almost thought a lot, and after much deliberation, it was still about agriculture.
When people, officials, and merchants have money, they will do one thing, and that is to buy land. In the north, the land is vast and sparsely populated. It is impossible to buy the land without anyone taking care of it.
He Xi feels that livestock that provide agricultural efficiency and new agricultural tools that provide agricultural efficiency are a good direction.
Needless to say about livestock, King Yan has them there. And King Yan also wants to support him. He Xi felt that it would be much better to replace direct support with purchasing livestock. Among the people, cattle are more expensive than horses, although cattle on the grassland have not been domesticated and do not know how to plow. But no matter what, they are cattle. There are millions of cattle here in King Yan. Not to mention too many, hundreds of thousands of cattle come here, which is only nearly one million taels of silver.
And the production of agricultural tools is very simple. Their respective military weapons and even engineering equipment are produced, and the production of these agricultural tools is even more like eating and drinking water, not to mention that because of the maintenance of ordnance production, the production capacity in this area is huge.
Farm tools can be made very cheap.
It's not easy to use.
There is no other reason. If it is just manpower, the efficiency brought by agricultural tools has its limit. Moreover, there is also a limit to the range of human resources that can be mined. Many times, this situation is caused by people thinking about it. Although this thing is very convenient to use, the land at home is so big, so it just needs more effort.
The strength of farmers is worthless.
As a result, these farm tools cannot be sold at all. No matter how cheap the farm tools are, they are not as powerful as farmers and they cost nothing.
But now, Yang Shiqi reminded him.
Because of Beijing, not to mention the entire Hebei region, it is estimated that no one would be willing to become a tenant.
Without him, it’s not cost-effective. As mentioned before, it is easy to reclaim wasteland. This is the attitude Zhu Yuanzhang has always adhered to. Support land reclamation. Secondly, the pay is not worthwhile.
There is a limit to how much land one person can take care of. The whole family came together and could only take care of about thirty acres. The yield per mu in the north is only over two dan, so more than 30 acres is only over 70 dan. The tax is only about two dan, but the expenses such as military service are not small. The total amount is estimated to be ten shi of food. The landlord collects rent, let’s not say more, just 50-50. In one year, that is a harvest of thirty shi. Eating five mouths a year, three stones a year, is already very little. That is fifteen stones.
This is still a good harvest situation, but the risk of farming lies more in uncertainty.
Just like this flood, no harvest at all? what to do?
A family must have at least two males.
In Beijing, even if they earn less, two men combined can earn more than ten taels of silver notes a year, because He Xi has fixed food prices. One tael of silver notes can be exchanged for three stones of food, which means that in terms of surplus, two people can earn far more in Beijing than digging in the soil.
What's more important is freedom.
Being a tenant does not mean that there is nothing else to do besides farming. Otherwise, why would the relationship between landlord and tenant be called a personal dependency relationship? But in the city of Beijing, in the city after all, I dare not say that there are no such dirty things. However, everyone dared not make too big a fuss. Otherwise, the Yamen was just a few streets away. I couldn't get one, so I went to file a complaint.
Even if someone above can handle it, it will still cost money.
Therefore, in terms of upper-lower relationships, things are better here in Beijing than in the countryside. After all, in the countryside, sometimes people die and people are killed, so if you tell them to cover it up, they will cover it up. In Beijing, it is difficult to cover up a person's abnormal death.
These can be seen by both He Xi and Yang Shiqi. But the following deduction is different.
Yang Shiqi felt that next, the land would become barren and no one would farm anymore. The food supply was in short supply, but from He Xi's point of view, it was something else.
That was the question He Xi asked Yang Shiqi.
Yang Shiqi felt that He Xi's thoughts were very meaningful, but he didn't know where to start, so he said, "Please make it clear."
He Xi said: "I always talk about productivity, and you know what productivity is, so in terms of agriculture, it is to enable everyone to cultivate more land and produce more food as soon as possible. This is necessary. I have always disliked the sharecropping model before. This is because the sharecropping model does not really affect the efficiency of food production. The landlord only collects rent and does not care how the tenants grow. If the tenants grow well, the grain will be harvested. If there is more production, the landlord may increase the land rent. It is best to oppress the tenants until they can survive for a breath. How can we improve the efficiency of food production in this case?"
"It's different now. There is no shortage of land in Hebei, but there is a shortage of people. It is impossible for landlords to cultivate the land themselves. So now is a good opportunity for the development of many self-cultivated farmers, and if these agricultural tools can be purchased by the people, it will also be of great benefit to the military industry. . Not to mention, only after getting feedback can we develop better agricultural tools. In the future, when people can cultivate dozens or hundreds of acres per person, will food in the north still be a problem?"
He Xi couldn't help but think of the mechanized large-scale production farms of later generations. The endless farms could be controlled by a few people. Of course, it is impossible to do this now, but He Xi attaches great importance to the reform of agricultural tools. With a few livestock, it is not impossible for a family to cultivate a hundred acres, or even more.
Yang Shiqi said: "Sir, you have never done farm work, have you? How is this possible?"
He Xi said: "How is it impossible? Is it just that they are not cultivating intensively? For example, you have never seen horse farming. And the most important thing is that these farmers are self-cultivated farmers and sons of good families."
Yang Shiqi's heart moved, and he suddenly remembered more.
If we say that from now on, the countryside of the Ming Dynasty will be dominated by family farms with a hundred acres of land. Even if each acre only produces one stone of grain, it will be one hundred stone a year. Not to mention that it is your own land and you don’t have to pay land rent. With a few dozen shi of food left over, you are a very well-to-do family.
The three words "Liangjiazi" made Yang Shiqi have infinite reveries.
The glory of the Han and Tang dynasties was built on these three words. In the Han and Tang dynasties, all the good men brought their own weapons to serve in the army. It was precisely with such a source of soldiers that the armies of the Han and Tang dynasties were so powerful.
What made Yang Shiqi deep in thought was the political changes brought about by these three words.
The imperial court and the scholar-bureaucrats jointly ruled the world because of the landlord economic model. The reason why the scholar-bureaucrats were powerful was the issue of land ownership. Even though Zhu Yuanzhang equalized the world, there were few landlords with more than 200 hectares in the world.
But the problem is, everyone can see that this model is unsustainable.
Because despite the increase and involution of the population, and the continuous pursuit of interests by the upper class, they will sooner or later take back the land from the peasants, turn the peasants into tenants, turn the land into the foundation of their families for generations, and the people are their serfs .
But things are different now.
If we say, not enough people are being exploited. We have to maintain the family farm model. Because even if the landlords and nobles acquire land, it will be of no use because there is no one to farm the land. So how will this situation be reflected politically?
Yang Shiqi couldn't understand for a while.
