Chapter 936 932【Cassava and Population】

  The doctor who advises farmers today is called Yang Banggui.

  He was ordered to arrange agricultural technicians to go to Nanpan Prefecture to teach the natives how to farm. After the matter was settled properly, Yang Banggui led another person to the Yingmin Hall to meet the emperor.

   Advise Nongsi to have excellent traditions, and bring some local products every time he meets the emperor.

  This time I brought a bunch of cassava, and it was cassava sent from Hainan Island.

  Yang Banggui said happily: "Your Majesty, Honglu Temple has brought back many crops from overseas, and the Secretary of Quannong has already cultivated and tested all of them for several years. This cassava is a good thing!"

  Of course Zhao Han knew it was a good thing, he smiled and said, "Tell me about your cultivation results."

Yang Banggui explained in detail: "Cassava is grown in several provinces in the north and south, but the growth in the north is not good, and it will even be frozen to death in winter. Cassava grows well in the southern provinces. It is drought-resistant, wind-resistant, and does not pick soil, but it is not easy to grow sweet potatoes. Cassava can be harvested in mountainous areas in the mountains. It usually takes two years to harvest cassava, but the experimental field in Qiongzhou matured in less than a year, with a yield of more than 18,000 catties of fresh potato per mu!"

   "How much?" Zhao Han thought he heard it wrong.

"The yield per mu is more than 18,000 catties," Yang Banggui repeated, and continued, "Moreover, cassava is resistant to wind. This summer encountered a typhoon, and other crops in the experimental field were destroyed. Only this cassava survived the typhoon! "

  Zhao Han praised again and again: "Good, good stuff!"

   Before crossing, Zhao Han only knew that the yield of cassava per mu was very high, but he really didn’t know that it was so high, and he didn’t know that cassava can shorten the growth cycle in Hainan Island.

   Is it related to the tropical climate?

Zhao Han instructed: "Then take this cassava to grow in Luzon and the southwest border. Especially in Cheli County (Xishuangbanna) and Pingnan Military and Civil Mansion, you can try to plant it. If it is successful, it will be vigorously promoted. go out!"

  Yang Banggui said: "Your Majesty, this cassava is poisonous. I heard that many people were poisoned to death in Africa. It must be soaked in clean water for six or seven days, and then cooked before it can be eaten."

  Zhao Han nodded and said: "This is the same as the kidney beans that were promoted a few years ago. You have to cook them before eating, and you have to warn the people repeatedly when promoting the seeds."

   Kidney beans, that is, kidney beans and green beans, were introduced to the coast of China decades ago. Today, under the official promotion of the Datong court, it has gradually spread to all provinces across the country.

   There are also Dutch peas, which are green beans and vegetable peas, which are slightly different from traditional Chinese peas. After the Datong Army recaptured Tainan, Dutch beans were also brought back to the mainland and have been popularized in the southern provinces.

   And the name is very nonsense. The Chinese call it "Dutch Bean", and the Dutch call it "Chinese Bean". Its origin is actually in Thailand and Myanmar.

   "How about trial planting of dates?" Zhao Han asked.

Yang Banggui replied: "Date palms cannot survive the winter in the north. Even if they are not frozen to death, they will be too frozen to produce dates. Even in the Yangtze River Basin, the planting conditions of date palms are not good. They can only be planted in Fujian, Guangxi, Yunnan, and Guangdong. , Guangnan planting. There are also islands in Taiwan, Luzon, Yecheng, Malacca and other places."

  Zhao Han sighed: "I still plan to plant in the desert of Hetao, it seems that it is too cold to do."

  …

  Winter Solstice Festival, Great Court Meeting.

  The civil and military officials wished the emperor a happy holiday, and the wives also entered the palace to congratulate the concubines.

  After the court meeting was over, Zhao Han held a banquet in the palace and invited the civil and military ministers to try cassava noodles dumplings.

  The ministers didn't care either. During the Winter Solstice and New Year's Day, the emperor would have given his ministers flat food (dumplings). This is a rule handed down from the Ming Dynasty.

  After sitting at 20 or 30 tables, Zhao Han raised his chopsticks and said, "Let's start, let's taste the difference in this year's flat food."

   Fei Ruhe dipped in vinegar and took a bite, but didn't feel any difference. But he knows the emperor, knows today's dumplings, it must be different.

  Chen Xisong, who has been promoted to Zuo Shilang, of course knows what this is, and the officials who persuaded the agricultural department are all his old subordinates. But it can't be said for the time being, the emperor needs to announce it, and it can't steal the emperor's limelight.

  Dumplings were half eaten, and the guard brought in two baskets of cassava.

  All the ministers looked at it one after another, guessing what kind of crop it was, anyway, it must be edible.

Zhao Han finally smiled and said: "This thing is called cassava, which is produced in America. It was introduced to Africa by the Portuguese, and now it is planted in our dynasty. The noodles we eat today are mixed with cassava flour. Two catties of wheat flour mixed with A pound of cassava flour can be used to make dumplings."

  Zhu Shunshui cupped his hands and said: "Congratulations, Your Majesty, another new crop has been obtained, and all the people in the world can have enough food and clothing."

Zhao Han said with a smile: "This plant can be planted in the southern provinces. It is cold-resistant, wind-resistant, and does not pick the land. It can also be planted in barren mountains. Barren mountainous areas can also produce thousands of catties per mu. The soil is slightly fertile, and the yield per mu can be easily increased. Ten thousand catties. All the southern provinces are ripening once every two years, but in Qiongzhou, it can be harvested once a year, and the experimental field in Qiongzhou even produces 18,000 catties per mu!"

  Eighteen thousand catties per mu?

  The ministers were in an uproar when they heard that the sweet potato yield of several thousand catties per mu made them feel outrageous.

  Hundreds of years later, after cassava has been cultivated and chemical fertilizers are used, it is normal to produce 40,000 to 50,000 jin per mu, but 18,000 jin is really nothing.

   "Auspicious!" Everyone exclaimed.

  Zhao Han laughed loudly: "Let's eat Xiangrui, move chopsticks, move chopsticks!"

Chen Xisong finally spoke: "Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Guangnan provinces are all mountainous, and corn and sweet potatoes are often grown in mountainous areas. From now on, there will be cassava, and the people in the mountains will not be hungry. !"

   "Hahahaha!" Zhao Han laughed.

  The officials also laughed, and the banquet was full of joy.

   Cassava is the same as sweet potato, and you will get bloated if you eat too much. If the cassava skin is not properly processed, it will taste bitter. In the final analysis, it is still food for the poor.

  But it is undeniable that these high-yield crops from the Americas will make the Chinese population roll upwards.

  Qian Qianyi said: "The population of the whole country may have exceeded 100 million."

   "It's more than 100 million, I'm afraid it's 100 million or 20 million!" Zuo Xiaoliang laughed.

  Ouyang Zheng said: "I will know in two months!"

  The population census is held every five years, and the villages will urge the villagers to register for household registration if they have not registered at the age of twelve, and report to the county if they have died in the past two years. The Datong New Dynasty did not pay labor money, and there were no birth restrictions, and the common people did not object to this. It is often the village head who conducts the statistics, submits the data to the town, and the town head takes it to the county office for reporting.

   There must be omissions, but the approximate data is fine.

  Before and after the winter solstice, the provinces near Nanjing have already sent their population statistics, and at the same time sent the taxes payable to the central government. As for the provinces further away, it must be done before the end of February next year.

  Winter goes to spring, and New Year's Day and Lantern Festival are very lively.

  Officials from many provinces rushed to **** the account books and tax money to Beijing during the ten-day Lantern Festival holiday, and they were also able to enjoy the lanterns in Nanjing by the way.

  At the beginning of February, all kinds of statistics will end.

  In the seventeenth year of the Republic of China, the national annual income was 68.2 million taels of silver (including overseas territories). Much of such a terrifying financial increase came from customs clearance last year, a large number of foreign trade companies paid huge fines and paid back taxes (not yet over).

  The national population also increased sharply compared to five years ago, reaching 123.64 million.

  This data does not include children under the age of 12, overseas territories, or newly occupied Nguyen territory. However, Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Qinghai-Tibet, and northern Myanmar are included in the statistics. The statistics of these places are not accurate, but the data must be moderate.

  Jiangsu, Jiangxi, and Sichuan have a population of over ten million.

  In addition, Henan's population is growing rapidly, with an annual population growth rate close to 3%.

  The northern provinces are growing rapidly, but provinces such as Hebei and Liaoning have been receiving immigrants, and the population there is not a natural increase. The whole province of Hebei has a population of nearly 2.5 million (excluding Beiping Prefecture), and many farmers from Jiangsu have moved north on their own initiative.

  The land in the south has begun to be tense, but it is still within the tolerance range.

  The rewarded fields obtained by the Xungui family no longer need to buy slaves to cultivate them. Farmers with many families and little land are willing to rent honorable land.

  There are also too many sons born to farmers, who leave the countryside after graduating from primary school and go to cities or towns to work as apprentices to provide sufficient labor for factory owners. In coastal areas, especially the four provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Zhejiang and Guangxi, more and more young people are going to sea to make a living.

  Going to sea has three modes:

  First, being a sailor and running a ship is very risky and the salary is relatively high.

  Second, big businessmen or overseas landowners are recruiting people to open up wasteland overseas, and Luzon and Coconut City are frantically reclaiming. Of the ten acres of cultivated land obtained from land reclamation, the organizers will get four acres, and the remaining six acres will be distributed to the land reclamation people. At the same time, the common people will also tenant the organizer's four acres of land.

  It is very troublesome to open up wasteland. The organizers provide funds and military protection, while the common people cut down trees, flatten the land, and plant in groups. In the first one or two years, it was all collective farming, which could improve the efficiency of land reclamation, and divide the fields after plowing the land.

  They also summed up the law of land reclamation, planting sugar cane in the first two or three years, and then switching to grain, which is the most profitable. This led to a large increase in sugar cane production in Luzon and Yecheng, and the rapid development of the sugar extraction industry.

  The big landowners overseas did not follow the path of the European colonists after all.

   Firstly, slaves are not easy to buy, and secondly, slaves are not easy to use. The output of slave plantations is far inferior to that of Han tenants.

  Large landlords also raised money to build ponds and irrigation canals. Ordinary farmers and tenants had to pay water rent to the big landlords for irrigation every year.

  Thirdly, based on their native place or clan as a unit, farmers raise funds to go overseas to develop. This method is very common in Taiwan, and there are many in Luzon and Yecheng. Often a village is all from the same county. Or a village, although they are of different origins, are all Hakka people.

   Probably the Qing Dynasty’s model for developing Taiwan.

  Historically, although the Manchu Qing regained Taiwan, they only opened one port, and they were not allowed to bring family members there.

  This kind of ban is just a dead letter, and people from Fujian and Guangdong provinces frantically went to Taiwan. However, it is difficult to cultivate overseas, and the family members really cannot take them there. Often there are several villages where there is not a single woman, and they are all young and vigorous young men.

  All young and strong guys, no family members, surrounded by fellow villagers, guess what will happen?

  In Taiwan in another time and space, there were constant uprisings during the Qing Dynasty. And it's very nonsense, it all went very smoothly at the beginning, and the Manchu Qing garrison was beaten to the ground, and then the rebel army split internally. Zhangzhou people, Quanzhou people, Cantonese people, and Hakka people fought each other, and were finally divided and suppressed by the army sent by the Manchu Qing.

  The name Chiayi County is the result of fights between immigrants. Inside the Tiandihui, due to the enmity of the native place, the local people sided with the imperial court, and were finally rewarded by the imperial court and renamed "Chiayi".

  What kind of landlord, what kind of government, in front of young and strong immigrants without the fetters of wives and children, they all belong to scum!

  But officials sent to Taiwan by the Qing Dynasty often failed to change their minds. No matter how the officials try to persuade them, the officials will follow the mainland's way of extorting and extorting in Taiwan. As soon as exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes are collected, they will explode, and if they are too harsh, they will directly kill officials and rebel! The shortest is a riot every few years, and the longest is a major uprising in the past 20 or 30 years.

   Today's Datong New Dynasty, overseas development has that flavor.

   There are also more men than women, and the same village group. Even the big landlords have to be polite to them. Young people who have nowhere to exert their energy are prone to trouble.

  In the past two years, more and more young people have gone overseas to pioneer, and the overseas governors are both happy and headache. The key is to find wives for them. As long as they have wives and children, these young adults can be stable. So the governors applied to the imperial court to withhold part of the tax money and buy young women from the local chieftains.

  The natives also fight among themselves, and now they are fighting more fiercely, robbing women and selling them to the Han governor.

  Especially in Java Island, several sultans existed at the same time. He has already played a dog's brain, and once who wins, he will immediately send troops to plunder. In addition to robbing goods, he will also rob women. Transporting women to Coconut City can be exchanged for wealth.

  (end of this chapter)