When the time entered late December of the fourth year of Chengshun, when the year was coming to an end, Luo Zhixue also presided over an imperial development meeting.
The main participants in the meeting were senior officials from agriculture, industry and commerce, as well as officials from the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Public Affairs.
This development meeting is mainly to finalize the overall development plan for next year and even the next few years.
The development of an empire cannot be a matter of fooling around with a hammer here and there, let alone doing whatever comes to mind today.
Even the most basic agricultural development requires long-term planning and continuous investment, so that a good, cyclical and progressive development model can be formed.
"The Point Guard Is Here"
The purpose of this development meeting is to finalize the overall development plan for the next few years.
Before formulating various development plans, Luo Zhixue first made a request!
A development plan must have a goal, right?
"The core of the development outline for the next few years is still to solve the problem of food and clothing!" Luo Zhixue made a request directly at the beginning of the meeting: "Food is the first priority for the people, and having enough food is a big deal, so in the next few years In the coming years or even longer, our focus will still be on solving the problem of food and clothing!"
Nothing is more important than eating!
Only when you have enough to eat can you develop industry and commerce, fight wars, and pursue other things.
They don't even have enough to eat, and then they pursue one-sided pursuit of industry and commerce, world hegemony, etc. It's all nonsense.
This is also the reason why the Chu Empire has invested a certain amount of money and food in newly occupied areas in the past few years to restore local people's livelihood.
This is even more obvious in this year's Northern Expedition.
The Northern Expedition of the Great Chu Empire required the mobilization of the entire empire, the re-dragging of canals, the recruitment of tens of thousands of transport ships, and the gathering and transportation of millions of stones of grain to the north. This was not to supply the army.
In fact, the needs of the army are not that big. To put it more extreme, a simple military operation can collect food on the spot even if the rear food supply is not available.
But if the Chu Empire transported millions of stones of grain to the north during the Northern Expedition, plus the food consumption caused by hundreds of thousands of troops heading north, then several northern provinces would fall into a huge famine.
Under a large-scale famine, several provinces in the north will be devastated and starved for thousands of miles in a matter of minutes. The miserable situation will not be much better than that of Shaanxi and western Henan.
Therefore, during the Northern Expedition, the Chu Empire transported millions of dan of grain to the north for the simple purpose of avoiding large-scale famine in several northern provinces.
As a large amount of food is gradually transported north through canals and seas, and gradually put into the local market, although people in several northern provinces have difficulty living and have difficulty eating, starvation is still common.
However, no super-large-scale famine occurred, thus avoiding turmoil in several northern provinces and allowing the local area to quickly stabilize after the war, which in turn provided the possibility of quickly resuming agricultural production.
The issue of food will be the first priority for the development of the empire's internal affairs in the next few years, and Luo Zhixue feels it is necessary to emphasize this once again to his ministers.
In the face of the problem of food, the so-called industry and commerce are not worth mentioning, because these days you cannot import large quantities of food from the outside. When the internal food production is insufficient, no matter how much money you make, it is in vain. After all, money cannot be used as food.
There is no stability without farming, no wealth without work, and no life without business.
Among the three sectors of agriculture, industry and commerce, agriculture is the foundation!
Therefore, Luo Zhixue set this tone without hesitation at the development meeting.
But he was also afraid that his ministers would go to extremes and emphasize agriculture and suppress industry and commerce, which was also undesirable.
So he continued: "To solve the problem of food, the first priority is agriculture, but we cannot just look at agriculture, because industry and commerce can bring us more and better production tools and better resource allocation to improve production efficiency. , increase grain production capacity.”
"For example, the various agricultural tools provided by steel companies can effectively promote agricultural production and increase food production."
"Grain companies can allocate excess grain in some places to places with food shortages."
"At the same time, industry and commerce can provide more tax revenue for the finance, and these taxes can be fed back into agricultural production through the construction of various water conservancy, transportation and other infrastructure."
"At the same time, industry and commerce can also bring more jobs and increase people's income."
"But it must also be noted that the goal of industry and commerce is not to make more money, but to make the people fuller."
"Agriculture, industry and commerce should cooperate with each other to achieve spiral development and ultimately solve the problem of food and clothing."
Simply farming in the old way will not make enough food, and simply opening a factory will starve to death.
What Luo Zhixue needs is for agriculture and industry and commerce to support and cooperate with each other to form a good complementary mechanism.
The reason why we emphasize this is because the current Chu Empire is different from the modern countries of later generations: the current Chu Empire is a very typical domestic demand economic model, and it is basically impossible to import large amounts of food from the outside world.
Under such circumstances, if you want to feed the majority of the people, there must be enough food within the empire.
Therefore, no matter what method is used, whether it is developing industry, building water conservancy facilities, or directly subsidizing farmers, the core purpose is to increase food production.
So by this time, basically everyone understood Luo Zhixue's core purpose: to increase grain production!
In particular, Yuan Gaofeng, the Counselor in charge of the industrial and commercial economics industry, said directly: "Our core development goal in the next few years is to increase grain production, and this requires the cooperation of all industries!"
"In terms of industry, we can rely on the advantages of the iron-making and machinery industries to focus on developing and promoting a number of better agricultural tools, and develop a number of agricultural tools with better production efficiency to put into the countryside."
“Nowadays, the price of private iron products is still relatively high. Farmers who want to buy a good hoe have to cut down on clothing and diet. However, good quality hoe and other tools are sharp tools for land reclamation and farming, so the top priority is to make iron products. Increase the production capacity of agricultural tools and lower prices.”
Yuan Gaofeng was born in industry. Although he worked in some arsenals before, he also has his own understanding of industry as he has been in charge of the industrial and commercial industry in recent years.
He quickly grasped the key points from Luo Zhixue's instructions and proposed his own solution: "Starting next year, we can provide appropriate tax-free subsidies to manufacturers of agricultural tools to reduce the prices of agricultural tools. At the same time, we can also target Provide subsidies for certain specific agricultural tools, and the government will directly bear part of the cost, allowing farmers to obtain agricultural tools at a cheaper price."
As he said that, he smiled: "This will not only allow farmers to obtain a large number of iron farm tools that are cheap enough, but it will also further stimulate the development of the iron smelting industry and the machinery industry, which in turn will bring us more profits and taxes." , maybe the last part of the rising profits and taxes can be used to offset the financial expenditure of agricultural tool subsidies."
"If the operation is good, we may be able to provide farmers with a large number of cheap iron farm tools without additional financial support, and it can also expand the scale of the iron smelting and machinery industries. It will really kill two birds with one stone!"
After hearing this, Luo Zhixue nodded slightly: "The idea of supporting and subsidizing farm tools is feasible. We will make a detailed plan later."
At this time, Counselor Guo Quanshu also said: "To solve the problem of food and clothing, the first priority is to increase grain production. To increase grain production capacity, in addition to more and better agricultural tools, we also need complete water conservancy facilities."
Guo Quanshu was not only in charge of personnel, he was also in charge of water conservancy and transportation.
There are only five ministers in the civil service system, and basically everyone has to take care of a lot of things.
"Needless to say, I need to explain the importance of complete water conservancy facilities to agricultural production. There are obviously large areas of fertile farmland in many places, but due to the lack of water conservancy facilities, there are floods in the rainy season and water shortages in the dry season."
"Especially in the Lianghuai region, the flood situation is very serious. Last year, there was not much rain in the Lianghuai region, but floods still occurred in large areas."
"This is true even in some major grain-producing areas. The Jianghan Plain, the coast of Dongting Lake, the coast of Poyang Lake and even the coast of Taihu Lake, which are the land of plenty, are also threatened by floods, which have a great impact on grain production."
"I believe that funds and manpower should be allocated to renovate water conservancy facilities!"
"Water conservancy facilities can not only prevent floods and droughts, but also serve as irrigation facilities to turn more inferior lands into superior fields."
Luo Zhixue said at this time: "In agricultural production, the important role of water conservancy cannot be ignored. A complete water conservancy facility construction plan must be formulated!"
——
In a development meeting, the Da Chu Empire basically formulated the development direction for the next few years.
That is to solve the problem of food and clothing!
In order to solve this core problem, the Chu Empire will start from many aspects, rather than simply encourage land reclamation and farming.
It is a package covering agriculture, industry and commerce.
After preliminary demonstration, Luo Zhixue made a comprehensive decision and initially formulated a development plan for the next five years.
Some of the more important plans are among them.
Further encourage multiple planting and land reclamation, and provide preferential policies to exempt agricultural taxes for several years.
Support and subsidize the production and use of agricultural tools, and reduce the production costs and sales prices of agricultural tools through preferential tax policies and special subsidies for specialized agricultural machinery manufacturers to ensure that more farmers can buy affordable agricultural tools.
To support and encourage the development and production of new agricultural tools, such as threshing machines, Luo Zhixue personally instructed relevant teachers from the Royal Institute of Technology and asked them to build a pedal-type threshing machine according to his description, mainly used for threshing rice. .
This kind of threshing machine can greatly improve the efficiency of threshing, and the principle and process are also very simple. The frame is made of wood, and the only iron parts are gears and bearings.
Finally, water conservancy facilities will be built extensively in agricultural areas, mainly grain-producing areas!
The various plans mentioned above are all directly aimed at increasing grain production, and the budgets given are also very large!
It is expected to invest 15 million taels per year in the first three years, and another 20 million taels each in the next two years.
In the next five years, the Chu Empire plans to invest 65 million taels in agricultural subsidies in order to increase food production and avoid large-scale famine as much as possible.
As soon as this news came out, especially after it was spread all over the world through Di Bao, it immediately caused an uproar in the world!
After hearing the news, many gentry looked in disbelief: In order to feed a bunch of idiots, they spent 65 million taels of silver? Luo Ni is crazy!
Emperor Longxing, who was far away in Xi'an, was also shocked when he heard the news!
Sixty-five million taels of silver, that prodigal Luo Zhixue, this much money is enough for him to build temples all over Xi'an and raise monks all over the city!
After Sun Chuanting heard the news, he was silent for a long time, and finally sighed: "It's difficult!"
In the far northeast, Emperor Taiji, who was kidnapped by the East, heard the news and said, "Where did he get so much money? Sixty-five million taels, which is enough for us to spend for ten years!"
