Food is the most important thing for the people.
Luo Zhixue has always believed that a big country and a powerful country should have enough to eat and live a good life.
A country, no matter how good its economic data is, no matter how powerful its military, these things are important, but in essence these things are just a tool, a tool to make people's lives better.
Therefore, the core mission of the powerful defense industry of the Great Chu Empire and the powerful army of the Great Chu Empire after the Unification War is to make the vast number of people of the Great Chu Empire live a good life.
Specifically, it means external expansion and overseas colonization!
And what is the purpose of external expansion and overseas colonization?
It is to obtain more land for survival, to obtain more industrial raw materials and economic crops, not just to expand the territory.
Incorporating more land and foreign people into the rule of the empire has no practical significance. It will only satisfy your vanity... because the production materials you obtained from foreign wars have not brought any actual benefits to the people of your country. ...or aliens.
This is also the reason why the Chu Empire pursued more immigration-style expansion in its external expansion in Siberia and Southeast Asia.
The land acquired through war, diplomatic negotiations and other means is used to settle more immigrants and feed more people.
Use the guns and cannons of the Chu Empire to fight for more living space for the people of the Chu Empire.
This is the basic principle of the Chu Empire's external expansion.
This is extremely reflected in the series of immigration policies of the newly established Luzon Province.
After the preliminary preparations over the past year, the governor of Luzon appointed by the Chu Empire has arrived in Manila to take office. Subsequently, the administrative division of Luzon Province was also formally determined, consisting of one prefecture, three states, and a total of twelve counties.
These administrative divisions are basically based on the islands and are based on the colonial cities that the Spaniards previously opened and established on the Luzon Islands.
However, although the administration has been divided and there are even basic main officials, there are not many people.
Previously, the Luzon Islands were an area controlled by the Spanish. During the Spanish control period, although many people from the Chu Empire also went to the Luzon Islands to do business, there were still relatively few finalists.
After the Spaniards withdrew, the local personnel of the Dachu Empire were mainly military personnel and commercial and trade personnel who took over the defense. In fact, few people actually settled in the local area!
Under such circumstances, the Luzon governor's office followed the example of the previous Malacca province and formulated a series of policies to encourage and attract immigrants.
The most core one is that as long as self-financing immigrants want to settle in Luzon Province, they will be granted free land directly based on the population, and the amount of this land is very large.
In the Marani area where development is relatively mature and conditions are relatively good, 50 acres of land per capita can be granted. In some places where development is not very mature, as long as you settle down, you will be allocated at least 100 acres for free... and this is only the lower limit. If conditions permit, more free land can be obtained.
At the same time, you can apply for a certain amount of interest-free agricultural loans to develop and cultivate these lands.
It will also provide tax benefits of exemption from agricultural tax for five years and half tax for five years.
These are ordinary agricultural immigrants who are family units. If they are investment-oriented planting enterprises, they will also receive great preferential measures, and at the same time, armed force protection will be provided to ensure that the enterprise's investment will not be destroyed by the indigenous people.
In addition, precious funds will be spent to organize official immigrants. The cost of official immigrants is actually even greater, because official immigrants are basically penniless and can’t even afford boat tickets or food. .
During the immigration process, the government has to pay for food, drink and sleep.
However, because the cost of official immigration is huge, and at the same time, many places do not require this kind of official immigration with full government investment, so starting from the 18th year of Chengshun, official immigration classified organized immigrants.
One is the original immigration policy, which is that all expenses are fully covered by the official government. You only need to go there, but you have to go to places designated by the government, and these places are basically places that ordinary immigrants are not willing to go, such as Siberia and Nanyang. Some places are immature and have poor conditions.
Another option is to still officially organize immigration, but the corresponding expenses need to be borne by the immigrants themselves. Considering that the immigrants are penniless, they can bear it through interest-free loans. This interest-free loan will be repaid later through the income after immigration. The installment plan is about ten years, which is interest-free immigration. This method of immigration allows you to choose your own immigration area. Of course, this self-selection is actually limited in scope. Basically, although it is not a bad place, it is still not a good place.
It’s a really good place. People have sources of immigrants at their own expense, and there is no need for the government to spend money to organize immigration.
The two types of government-run immigration mentioned above are essentially the government paying to send some immigrants to not-so-good places.
But this time, Luzon Province has opened up a third immigration method, which is to provide boat ticket subsidies and settlement subsidies for immigrants who arrive in Luzon Province at their own expense to settle down.
That is, subsidized immigration!
The main purpose is to attract self-financing immigrants.
After all, for the contemporary Chu Empire, although there are a lot of immigrants, most of them are actually self-funded immigrants... Speaking of self-funded immigrants, most of them are actually paupers. Many of them borrow money to buy ship tickets and then arrive at the place. Territory free land, and then apply for an immigration loan to spend the early stage.
Overall, the number of official immigrants is actually relatively small... After all, the places where government immigrants are located are either remote or dangerous.
Because many people would rather borrow money or take loans and freely choose where to immigrate.
However, whether it is borrowing money or taking out a loan, the burden is still relatively large for immigrant families. After all, ferry tickets are not cheap.
In order to attract immigrants, Luzon Province has introduced targeted immigration subsidy policies to reduce the burden on immigrants.
Coupled with other policies such as free land and agricultural loans, the burden on immigrants can be significantly reduced.
This immigration subsidy policy, coupled with the fact that Luzon is fairly well-known in the Chinese region and is also close, immediately attracted many people who planned to immigrate.
In the first half of the 25th year of Chengshun alone, Luzon Province attracted more than 20,000 self-financed immigrants. Coupled with the various immigrants attracted last year, as well as official immigrants, etc., the Luzon Province of the Great Chu Empire The settled population has increased from a few thousand to more than 30,000 in just two years.
It is expected that by the end of this year, the population of Luzon Province will reach more than 50,000.
This is already a good number for a newly occupied area.
With this base of 50,000 people and the strong support of the military, they can also carry out large-scale colonial expansion.
Why do you want the basic population in the early stage?
On the one hand, we need to solve the food problem locally. We cannot always transport large amounts of food from the mainland or other places.
On the other hand, only with a sufficient immigrant population can we select enough young people to form a militia, and then carry out expulsion and expansion.
Just like in Malacca.
How did the Chu Empire expand its colonial empire in Malacca Province?
First, the main regular army is used to carry out a devastating blow to the local indigenous organized forces. Whether it is indigenous state power, tribes, or large landowners, as long as it is an organized force, it is within the scope of the attack.
After the main regular army is used to completely destroy the local organized resistance, a large number of immigrants will enter the local area to open village-level and town-level settlements, and these settlements will set up militia teams for self-protection.
These militiamen are basically all equipped with flintlock guns and light artillery. When the regular army moves, these militia teams will cooperate with the military.
On weekdays, in order to protect themselves and prevent settlements from being attacked by indigenous people, the militia will also take the initiative to expel and eliminate the indigenous people in surrounding areas.
Such a settlement would not only protect itself, but also control the surrounding areas.
And there will be many such settlements, and they will be connected one after another along the main rivers and roads, gradually extending from the port to the inland.
Eventually, most of the places suitable for living and farming were controlled, and the original indigenous people were gradually expelled in the process.
Today, in the 25th year of Chengshun, there are already 300,000 immigrants from the Chu Empire in Malacca Province, almost completely controlling the main rivers and main roads in Malacca Province.
And because the immigration development in Malacca Province has been very mature and the security is far better than other colonies, although all official immigration has been stopped, and even self-financed immigrants are not subsidized, there are still a large number of self-funded immigrants pouring into Malacca.
If you go there, you can get a large amount of land for free and be tax-free for many years. This is an irresistible temptation for some poor families, especially farmers who dream of owning a large amount of their own land.
If this continues, it will not take a few years for the population of Malacca Province to exceed one million.
In time, Malacca Province will become, like the eighteen provinces in Guan Nei and other places, the core territory where the Chinese nation lives and lives.
The immigration expansion policy in the Malacca area was quite successful, and it naturally became a model for other colonies to learn about firefighting.
How to learn?
Very simple!
First, use regular troops to comb through the planned colonial areas several times to defeat any organized resistance.
Then the immigrants set out from seaside ports, built settlements gradually inland along rivers and roads, and organized the young men in the settlements into militia teams under the jurisdiction of the garrison headquarters.
Regular troops and militias worked together to ensure the security of immigrant settlements.
When immigrant settlements spread throughout the colony, the success of immigration expansion could be declared.
What Luzon Province is now following is this series of immigration expansion policies pioneered by the Malacca region.
Not only did Luzon Province do this, in fact, the Chu Empire basically did this in other overseas colonies, but some were larger and some were smaller, some were more drastic, and some were milder. .
But essentially nothing will change.
The territories expanded by these immigrants, after a few years of operation, were soon able to import large amounts of cash crops or grains to the mainland.
Whether these economic crops or grains are imported into the local area, they can greatly reduce the local food supply pressure.
There is no need to talk about direct food import.
Even the import of cash crops can greatly alleviate the local food shortage.
Because cash crops also require land to cultivate, and with the import of cheap cash crops from overseas to the local area, the local side does not need to occupy a large amount of land to grow cash crops, but can continue to grow food.
The most typical one is cotton.
The demand for cotton in the domestic textile industry is very huge. In the past, due to the lack of sources of cotton imports, cotton could only rely on self-produced cotton, which pushed cotton prices higher.
This has led many farmers to grow cotton instead of growing food for more profits.
As a result, cotton production increased and farmers earned more income, but grain production decreased. The same thing will happen to raw silk cultivation.
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Once it reaches a very large scale, there will be situations where cotton cannibalize people and raw silk cannibalize people, which is roughly similar to the sheep cannibalism during the first industrial revolution in Britain.
This will inevitably lead to a decrease in local food production and a decrease in per capita food.
However, with the prosperity of overseas trade, the Chu Empire began to import large quantities of high-quality and cheap cotton from overseas. Although the scale of local cotton planting was still increasing, the growth rate was controlled to a certain extent. At the same time, the cotton imported from overseas was The low price makes cotton cultivation in some places where there is plenty of land cost too much and is not cost-effective, thus forcing them to re-grow food.
Generally speaking, the import of a large amount of cheap cotton has, to a certain extent, curbed the situation of domestic cotton cannibalism and prevented a large number of farmland from planting cotton instead of growing food.
It can be seen from this that the importance of importing large quantities of various economic crops at low prices is no less important than directly importing grain.
Of course, in order to prevent the domestic farmers' income from decreasing instead of increasing, the Chu Empire's support for local agriculture has never been reduced, and the construction of various water conservancy facilities has never been stopped.
Subsidies and preferential treatment for agricultural production tool companies have never stopped.
This increases food production to a certain extent and reduces the cost of farmers growing food.
But relying on this alone is actually not enough and it still cannot solve the food problem.
To solve the food problem, we still need a large area of arable land and large-scale mechanized planting.
This is also an important reason for the large-scale development of the Northeast Plains.
Taking advantage of the development of high-pressure steam engines today, the Chu Empire also tried to promote mechanized planting.
In the summer and August of the 25th year of Chengshun, we were on the banks of the Songhua River in northern Liaoning Province.
A plain is covered with green rice fields. This is the largest farm in northern Liaoning Province and directly belongs to the Liao'an Farm of Liaohua Agricultural Company.
Liaohua Agricultural Company has rented a large amount of land here and in surrounding areas, hired professional farmers to plant soybeans, rice, wheat and other crops, and at the same time grazed and raised a large number of cattle, horses, chickens, ducks and other livestock.
It is a comprehensive agricultural product enterprise that includes planting, breeding, and agricultural and livestock product processing. It is also the largest agricultural and livestock product enterprise in Northeast China.
The rice planting situation on their company's farm is very good this year, and they will have a bumper rice harvest as expected... But looking at the rice fields that have expanded by 20% compared to last year, subsequent harvesting is also a troublesome matter...
Because they don't have enough workers to harvest!
The Northeast region has a small population, and most of them are still concentrated in Liaodong Province and Donghai Province... As for Liaobei Province, which has a very small population, the total population is less than one million.
And large-scale planting and breeding enterprises like Liaohua Agricultural Company require a lot of labor. But in northern Liaoning, immigrants basically have their own land, and there is a lot of land, so they will not give it to your farm. Working part time.
The city's population is not large, and some of them are employees of those companies.
Liaohua Agricultural Company has long been troubled by a shortage of employees. Especially in the two links of sowing and harvesting, the time limit is relatively high and a large number of people are needed to work in a short period of time.
In the past, they relied on temporarily deploying other personnel, such as personnel from breeding plants, to help, and at the same time, they also went to other places to hire temporary workers to solve the problem of staff shortages.
But this year, their rice planting area has expanded by 20%, and they are even more short of manpower.
Now that everyone's life is gradually getting better and there are more job opportunities, it is not easy to hire enough temporary workers at the same price as before.
As for spending more money, this is easy to say, but the cost expenditure will increase... and the profit will decrease.
Although Liaohua Agricultural Company also has Liaodong official capital and occupies about 30% of the shares, it is a serious private enterprise and pursues profits.
The Hua family that controlled the company used to be a large grain merchant in North China... After the Da Chu Empire unified the local area, it also introduced the grain company to North China. Although the Da Chu Empire did not implement a grain monopoly system, the Da Chu Empire Grain General Administration The company is right there... In order to stabilize grain prices, they have adopted a policy of unlimited grain collection and unlimited grain release, which makes ordinary grain merchants' profits very thin when they resell grain.
Since that time, many grain stores have gradually changed their businesses. Some have started selling various non-staple foods, while others have begun to engage in grain processing.
For example, in the refined flour industry, there are actually quite a lot of flour processing companies that used to be various grain merchants... After they saw that reselling grain was not profitable, they began to engage in grain refining processing. This happened to coincide with industrialization and various technological breakthroughs. In order to obtain the machinery and equipment for large-scale processing of refined flour, many grain merchants directly switched careers and became grain processors.
The Hua family also switched careers and became a grain processor, and it grew bigger and bigger, involving all kinds of grain processing. In order to reduce the cost of purchasing raw materials, that is, all kinds of grains, they simply went to a place with a large area and a sparse population. Liaodong established large-scale farms to grow grain and raise horses, cattle, chickens, ducks and other livestock.
Liaohua Agricultural Company was also one of the first companies to set up large-scale farms in Liaodong. Liaodong officials also provided a lot of support, such as using land use rights to hold shares, providing certain guaranteed loans, and also provided considerable tax support. The preferential treatment reduces the enterprise's investment cost and experience cost as much as possible.
In this way, Liaohua Agricultural Company has become the largest grain planting and animal husbandry company in Liaodong and even the Northeast region, with a super-large farm with hundreds of thousands of acres of land.
They grow rice, mainly soybeans, but also grow corn and pasture to process it into feed for their own use; they also breed a large number of horses and cattle.
However, over the years of development, the company has been plagued by a serious shortage of labor. This is also because they sit on a large amount of land, but a lot of the land can only be used for grazing, because they do not have enough labor to cultivate more land.
Even though horses are used for farming, the labor force is still very tight.
After expanding the scale of rice planting this year, Liaohua Agricultural Company has another headache... How to harvest so much grain?
Co-organized by Liaohua Agricultural Company, Hua Tianzhong, the eldest son of the Hua family, frowned as he looked at the endless rice fields in front of him. Ever since he took full responsibility for the planting business within the company two years ago, life has not been easy, especially in sowing and harvesting. During the summer season, it’s even harder to sleep.
It’s uncomfortable when the harvest is bad, and it’s also uncomfortable when the harvest is good.
"It seems that the price for hiring workers will be increased again this year. If labor is more expensive, the loss will be even greater if the harvest season is missed!"
When Hua Tianzhong spoke, his heart was bleeding. With such an increase in hiring people, it seems that this year will be a bumper harvest, but the actual profit may not even be as good as last year.
At the beginning of the year, it cost extra to hire people during the sowing season, and now it costs more to hire people during the harvest.
Coupled with the costs of grain seeds, fertilizers, daily care, etc., increasing the sowing area this year will be in vain!
But there is no other way. If there is a shortage of manpower, we can only hire people at a higher price.
After Hua Tianzhong finished speaking, a middle-aged man next to him responded: "I will make arrangements now!"
After that, the middle-aged man said again: "Co-organizer, if there is a shortage of manpower, can we use machinery to replace manual harvesting?"
"Someone from Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company came to sell their equipment before, including a harvester that they said could save more labor costs than horse plowing."
Hua Tianzhong said: "Harvester?"
Hua Tianzhong thought for a while and then said: "Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company is the company that supplied us with threshing machines before, right?"
The middle-aged man next to him said: "It's them. The thresher we use now is produced by their company. It's relatively easy to use. There haven't been any major problems in these years!"
"Their thresher is indeed good, but are they sure they can harvest the grain directly using mechanical equipment?"
The middle-aged man next to him said: "They were very talkative when they introduced it. They said that their powered swing harvester only requires two people and two horses to harvest at least twenty acres of land in one day."
"And they are also developing a steam engine-powered combine harvester that can harvest and break away from baling at the same time. This is more efficient!"
"But they just said it nicely. My subordinates have never seen the real thing and dare not judge the truth or falsehood lightly!"
