Traditional agricultural production is a labor-intensive industry. Whether it is planting staple foods such as rice or wheat, or growing cash crops such as cotton, mulberry trees, and sugar cane, a large amount of labor is required.
At the same time, the production tools of traditional agriculture are not very good. In rural areas, there are not even enough cattle and draft horses. Many farmer families can only rely on manual labor for farming, and few use cattle and horses to plant power.
Although the machinery industry in the Dachu Empire continued to develop, production tools such as hoes and sickles have been greatly improved, but the essence has not changed much.
Production relies on a large amount of agricultural labor.
In fact, this kind of problem is not a big problem in the provinces in Guannei, because many places have more people and less land. Even in places with relatively few people and relatively large land, such as several northern provinces, it is only relatively small. Word.
Agricultural production in these places basically does not suffer from large labor shortages.
But in several provinces in the Northeast, the situation is different. There are fewer local people and more land. Especially in northern Liaoning and Heishui Province, there are large areas of land to be developed, but the total population is not large. .
Even if horses are used for farming, the per capita grain production level has been greatly improved compared to Guannai, but the problem of insufficient labor force is still there.
Ordinary farm families don't have any intuitive feelings, because although they own a lot of land, this amount is only compared to Guan Nei. Generally speaking, a single family can only plant a few hundred acres of land. That's it. Extensive management methods such as horse plowing can be adopted.
But for a very large agricultural planting company like Liaohua Agricultural Company, the problem of labor shortage is very serious.
The endless rice fields ahead are the problem that troubles Hua Tianzhong!
Relying on manual harvesting is very time-consuming and laborious. A person can only harvest a few acres of land every day... But the area of rice planted by Liaohua Agricultural Company this year exceeds 100,000 acres.
Moreover, there is a time limit for grain harvesting. If you harvest it too early, the rice will not be fully mature. If you harvest it too late, the grain will be overripe and fall off.
It is not easy to harvest and thresh these grains in a limited time.
A lot of labor is needed in a short period of time!
Even if Liaohua Agricultural Company transfers manpower from everywhere, it is not enough, so it can only hire people temporarily at high prices.
If there could be a mechanical harvester, the situation would be different.
Hua Tianzhong didn't think much about it at all, and immediately said: "I want to see the people from Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company. By the way, if they brought the prototype, let them bring the prototype too. It's empty talk, can you? Use it and you will know if it works or not after you give it a try!”
Anyway, it won’t take long to meet people and look at the equipment, but if the combine harvester produced by Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company actually works, it will solve a big problem for their company!
The people from Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company were just waiting for a reply from Liaohua Agricultural Company, but the person who came to sell them didn't do anything at all and lived in the next town.
Because Liaohua Agricultural Company owns the largest single farm in northern Liaoning and even the entire Northeast region, which is larger than many purely government-run farms.
Winning an order from Liaohua Agricultural Company is crucial for an enterprise specializing in the research and development and production of agricultural machinery.
This is why as soon as they successfully developed the harvester, they couldn't wait to come to your door to actively sell it.
Soon, Hua Tianzhong, co-organizer of Liaohua Agricultural Company, met people from Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company.
The purpose of the meeting between the two parties was very simple and pure. One came to sell, and the other hoped to obtain a kind of agricultural machinery and equipment. Therefore, after a simple greeting, they went straight to the open space outside.
There are already several pieces of equipment brought over by Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company.
A representative from Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company came forward and introduced: "There are two harvesters we brought over today. One is a power-storage swing arm harvester. During operation, it only needs two horses to drag it forward and uses ground wheels as power. It provides power to the harvester and then harvests it. The harvested rice will be sent down through the conveyor belt and laid out in bundles on the ground!"
"In the future, we only need to arrange for people to take the rice into the threshing machine for threshing!"
"In terms of efficiency, a two-horse harvester like this can be operated by two people and it only takes four hours to harvest ten acres of land!"
"After we developed it this year, we have already conducted experiments on many small farms, and the test data is only a lot more!"
“The big guy next to us is a combine harvester that we have conducted in-depth research and development based on the swing arm harvester. After integrating the thresher, we created a harvesting and detaching combine harvester that uses twenty horses for pulling, which is more efficient! "
Hua Tianzhong looked at the harvester in front of him and listened while watching. After hearing this data, he said: "So, on the surface, it is at least many times better than manual harvesting!"
“But if you include the labor force of horses, I’m afraid the efficiency is not that high!”
Hua Tianzhong directly pointed out the problem. This kind of harvester, whether it is a simple swing arm harvester or a combine harvester, looks good, and it seems that the harvesting efficiency is much higher than that of pure manual labor. However, this kind of equipment still needs horses to pull it.
In fact, horses are also labor force, and the cost of raising horses is much more expensive than raising a person.
However, the representative of Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company said: "Although horses are also consumed, in our place, especially your company, there is no shortage of horses, but people!"
Hua Tianzhong didn't say anything after hearing this, because what the other party said was the truth!
To be honest, their company has no shortage of horses. Not to mention the daily draft horses, there are also a large number of draft horses in the own horse farm next door that can be used at any time.
What their company lacks is people!
To be precise, there is a shortage of people during the busy farming period, but in normal times there is actually no need for so many people.
During busy farming periods, it is a feasible way to use energy storage instead of manpower for efficient farming.
But in the end, whether this kind of thing is useful or not, we still need to try it before we can tell.
Immediately, two batches of draft horses were hitched to the small swing-arm harvester and began to be tested in a small field of mature wheat that was ready to be harvested. Their harvester could be used to harvest both wheat and rice.
Although the wheat planting area of Liaohua Agricultural Company is not large, the scale is not small, and harvesting is currently underway.
Now it is just used to test the situation of this harvester.
From the beginning of the experiment, it attracted everyone's attention, including Hua Tianzhong.
This efficiency is too fast.
I saw two horses dragging a rocker harvester. The harvester kept moving forward, cutting off large tracts of wheat, and then transported them and placed them in bundles at the back.
In this way, you only need to bring another carriage later, load the wheat harvested along the way, and then transport it to the thresher for separation.
The overall harvesting efficiency is greatly improved.
With the same manpower, it can be improved several times.
Such a harvester alone can completely solve the labor shortage problem currently faced by Liaohua Agricultural Company.
The next combine harvester was even more eye-opening for them.
This thing is more efficient in harvesting, and it can also directly complete threshing and packaging. After more than ten horses pull the combine harvester, the directly threshed wheat is conveyed up, and the workers directly pack it and tighten it, and then it can be sent directly to the side. transport carriage.
As for the cost of the many extra horses, this is nothing to Liaohua Agricultural Company, they have no shortage of horses!
After seeing the test, Hua Tianzhong asked about the price and finally placed an order on the spot.
They did not take a fancy to those swing arm harvesters, but only ordered a small number of them, and more of them were large combine harvesters.
A small swing harvester, you can tell at a glance that it is used on smaller farms or even family farms.
But the scale of their Liaohua Agricultural Company's farm is too large, with a planting area of tens of thousands of acres or more. It needs to be used in one step, using large combine harvesters pulled by dozens of horses.
Although the cost investment is relatively high, it is more efficient and can harvest more planting areas.
Yes, Hua Tianzhong is already preparing to further increase the planting area of wheat and rice next year.
After placing the order for the harvester, Hua Tianzhong asked people from Hekou Agriculture Company to deliver it as soon as possible. This year's harvest season is coming soon, and they are still waiting to use it!
The people from Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company just smiled and patted their chests and confirmed that their company's production line has been established and a batch of inventory has been produced. This batch of goods can be shipped as soon as possible.
Then he tried to ask Liaohua Agricultural Company whether it was interested in various agricultural machinery such as steam-powered harvesters. Their company was researching various agricultural machinery powered by steam engines. Would they like to place a pre-order or something?
Hua Tianzhong naturally said that if you come up with the research, take a look at it. If it is good, you will definitely want it!
This is actually just a polite comment. If the item is good, Hua Tianzhong will not hesitate at all and will definitely buy it.
If the stuff isn't that good, don't expect him to place any pre-orders, who knows what you will make by then.
Their company's money has been cultivated through hard work and will not be wasted casually.
Besides, the main customers of Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company are these large-scale planting companies or growers.
And Liaohua Agricultural Company is their largest customer, so there is no need to worry about keeping the good things they make but not selling them.
In this kind of cooperation transaction, Liaohua Agricultural Company, as the buyer, still has a great advantage.
Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company also wanted to maintain a good cooperative relationship with this large customer, and even kept the large and small harvesters as samples before leaving.
The wheat of Liaohua Agricultural Company is currently being harvested intensively, and the demand for harvesting equipment is very high. It would be better if the harvesting equipment could help, and it would be faster. After the wheat harvest is finished, they will start harvesting the rice.
Of course, these two harvesters were not given away for free, but were purchased directly by Liaohua Agricultural Company, and were included in the first batch of orders.
Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company acted very quickly. In order to pry open the pockets of Liaohua Agricultural Company, a large customer, and at the same time, they wanted to use Liaohua Agricultural Company's order as a breakthrough point to open up a larger market, so they promoted this contract. Very hard at times.
While working overtime for production, the equipment in stock is shipped first to try not to delay the harvest season of Liaohua Agricultural Company.
These equipment will be dismantled into the state of main components, then packaged and sent upstream of the Liao River on steam ships. After the Liao River waterway can no longer be used, they will be transported by horse-drawn carriage.
In order to speed up the transportation, they also paid a large sum of extra money for expedited transportation, so that this batch of harvesters could be delivered to the farm of Liaohua Agricultural Company in time, and then assembled by technicians.
They actually didn't make much money from this order, but Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company valued not the order itself, but more subsequent orders.
Not only the follow-up orders from Liaohua Agricultural Company, but also orders from other planting companies and even those major planting households.
This order is for advertising, to make their harvester an instant hit!
And this is indeed the case!
When this batch of harvesters arrived at the farm of Liaohua Agriculture Company, it caused a sensation instantly!
Liaohua Agricultural Company is the largest planting company in the Northeast and has the largest farm. Naturally, many of their actions have attracted attention from various colleagues.
Previously, many colleagues heard that Liaohua Agricultural Company had expanded its grain planting area, and they all laughed and waited to see the joke.
In the Northeast, it is easy to expand the area of food cultivation as long as you are not afraid of losing money... Land is basically free of charge. The government has a large amount of developable land. As long as you dare to invest in development and planting, the government will give it to you for free. I’ll give you the right to use it for twenty or thirty years.
But land is easy to get, but labor is hard to find!
Whether it is sowing or harvesting, the grain planting industry requires a large number of manpower, and in this poor place in northern Liaoning, how can there be any idle labor for you to hire?
Besides, when the farming season is busy, local farmers are basically busy working on their own land and have no time to do odd jobs on those large farms. As for urban residents, there are not many of them, and some are employees of factories and companies.
Therefore, for many large farms, they basically maintain a group of employees for a long time. These employees are also professional farmers. They farm when the farming is busy and breed cattle and horses during the slack farming.
When the farming season is busy, a group of odd workers need to be hired from outside the field.
This model has lasted for many years, and has even spawned a group of people who specialize in helping large farms during busy farming periods. The wages of these people are very high.
But this year, after Liaohua Agricultural Company increased its sowing area, it did not hire a large number of temporary workers, which puzzled many people.
After some people inquired carefully, they discovered that these Liaohua Agricultural Companies actually used a new type of mechanical equipment to harvest directly.
After adopting mechanical harvesting, their own permanent employees can complete all harvesting operations, and there is no need to hire a large number of temporary workers from outside.
And I also heard that even if they used their own employees, the work was completed in advance during this busy farming period, freeing up more manpower for other work.
This surprised other colleagues.
What kind of harvester can have such a great effect?
At this time, without them needing to inquire further, the sales staff of Renjia Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company have already begun to find many planting companies and those ordinary large-scale growers!
What else are you looking for? What else can you do, sell their power-charging harvester!
This advertisement is loud and clear. If you don’t take advantage of this opportunity to make a big profit, how can you raise money to develop a steam combine harvester?
When it comes to this steam harvester, the people at Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company feel a twinge of pain. After the high-pressure steam engine appeared a few years ago, their company's executives thought that steam engines could be used in agricultural machinery, so they jumped into the steam industry. Harvester research.
But I didn’t expect that the technical difficulty of this thing would be so high!
It has been going on for several years, and R&D funds have been spent one after another, almost draining the company of its flesh and blood, but it has not been completed yet... At least it has a harvester structure.
In order to regain their blood, they thought about it and simply dismantled the harvesting equipment originally used on the steam engine, and then used the power to make a power-charged harvester to sell first...
Fortunately, the market acceptance is quite high, and we took advantage of this opportunity to sell a lot.
Relying on the power-charged harvester to regain some health, the people from Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company looked at the half-finished steam combine harvester, gritted their teeth, and poured the money into it again...
In their words, success or failure is a success!
In fact, after spending so much money on the development of steam combine harvesters in the past few years, the huge sunk costs have made it impossible for them to withdraw.
In order to engage in these two things, they not only invested all their profits in the past few years, but also invested their past capital. For this reason, they also owed several bank loans.
If they stop at this time, they will not go bankrupt completely. After selling some assets, especially some patent assets, they can still pay off their debts and get back to work lightly.
But the problem is, they are unwilling!
We have been doing this for so many years, so much money has been invested, and now we are going to stop doing it if we don’t want to do it? What a joke.
The people from the Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company, after fishing hard, turned around and continued to toss their steam combine harvesters.
Coincidentally, Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company is not the only manufacturer that values steam agricultural machinery these days, but there are also other manufacturers.
In fact, there are many domestic manufacturers researching agricultural machinery and equipment, even for things like harvesters. There are actually many, but everyone has different technical routes and different efficiencies.
Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company is only doing well in the field of agricultural machinery in the Northeast, but as the empire grows, there are companies in other places that produce various agricultural machinery and equipment.
Tangshan Machinery Company is such a company that specializes in the production of agricultural machinery and equipment. In fact, they are also producing agricultural machinery and equipment powered by steam engines.
Their research and development focus is not on harvesters, but on steam plows, and their research and development progress is also very bumpy. Over the past few years, they have spent a lot of money, but they have not yet come up with a practical steam plow. , either there is a problem here or there is a problem there.
It was very uncomfortable to toss.
Both agricultural machinery companies are trapped in the dilemma of research and development of steam agricultural machinery. This is not an isolated situation, or even unique to the agricultural machinery industry, but a common problem faced by many contemporary machinery industries.
That is, as technology becomes more and more developed, the threshold for new technologies becomes higher, and the corresponding R&D investment also becomes higher and higher.
This is actually very unfriendly to some companies, especially companies that lack R&D capabilities and do not have enough capital to acquire new technologies through acquisitions.
When technology continues to advance and innovate, it is often difficult for them to keep up with the times, and eventually they gradually decline.
But in turn, continuous technological progress and innovation will give some companies huge opportunities to become bigger and stronger.
Benefiting from the perfect patent laws of the Dachu Empire, when some companies develop some new technologies, they can actually survive very well relying on the patent of such a new technology. If they develop several patented technologies with huge profit potential, Come on, we will become bigger and stronger in minutes.
The most typical one is Guangzhou Machinery Company.
Although Guangzhou Machinery Company was considered a large enterprise in the past and had many employees, in fact it just had a nice name and its products were not that good.
Their various types of machine tools and equipment are only second-rate. Although they have orders, they are basically just making some hard money.
Most of them still rely on all kinds of cheap agricultural tools and products to make a living.
To put it bluntly, before developing steam engines, the Guangzhou Machinery Company only sold hoes.
But later, with the support of the local government, they obtained the patented technology of low-pressure steam engines and became the first domestic low-pressure steam engine manufacturers.
Now life is getting a little better, but it's just a little better.
Because the low-pressure steam engine does not belong to them, but to the Institute of Steam Engines of the Royal Institute of Technology. In order to promote the rapid and large-scale application of steam engines, the entire set of basic patents on low-pressure steam engines have been opened for authorization.
Up to now, it is estimated that hundreds of manufacturers across the country have obtained patent authorizations for low-pressure steam engines... In the future, it is estimated that they will also be authorized directly for free.
Guangzhou Machinery Company only took advantage of the relatively early date of obtaining the patent and became one of the three major steam engine manufacturers in China. However, even so, their technology was the most backward, otherwise they would not have been able to produce small steam engines in the early days. Famous...because their technology can only produce these small low-pressure steam engines.
In the era of low-pressure steam engines, Guangzhou Machinery Company was nominally one of the three major steam engine manufacturers, but in fact the money earned was less than one-tenth of that of Tianjin Machinery Company, which made large steam engines.
Some competitors sometimes scornfully say that they are just sales hoes...
Very frustrated!
In order to change this situation, Guangzhou Machinery Company made up its mind to engage in technology research and development.
Almost all the money earned from the production of low-pressure steam engines and hoes was invested in the research and development of high-pressure steam engines. At the same time, it also received support from friends, especially the shipbuilding industry and even the navy.
In the end, they succeeded in developing a high-pressure steam engine, and it was a high-pressure steam engine with a complete set of patents of their own!
Relying on high-pressure steam engines, it became the largest steam engine supplier in the country and the most profitable machinery company.
This is a typical case of the weak defeating the strong and eventually gaining the upper hand.
(End of chapter)
