Chapter 80 Agriculture
With the vigorous development of the "rectification" movement, a large amount of land has been vacated. With the increase in immigration in the future, all of it will inevitably be developed.
The current agricultural system in East African colonies is still relatively chaotic. Because the colonial population is too dispersed, there are huge differences in crop planting.
The staple foods include wheat, rice, and corn. Recently, the East African colonies have also been trying to introduce millet cultivation in Kenya. This was emphasized by Ernst. After all, the climate in Kenya is drier, especially as you go north, and millet is a very drought-resistant crop.
In the past, East Africa was an important millet producing area. This place is very suitable for millet cultivation. After all, East Africa has a tropical savanna climate, which is most suitable for growing "grass", and millet is the result of the domestication of foxtail grass.
These are food crops. Cash crops are even more confusing. East African colonies are located in the tropics, and basically all tropical plants can be grown, including sisal, coffee, rubber, cocoa, and all kinds of vegetables and fruits...
If the East African colonies only considered the problem of food and clothing for the local people, then they could grow anything they wanted. However, as the region that Ernst wanted to develop vigorously in the future, the East African colonies had to prepare for industrialization after all.
If agriculture wants to pave the way for industrialization, it must first undergo modernization reforms and give full play to its scale advantages.
To put it bluntly, East Africa's agriculture has to fight in the market and earn a lot of real money to accumulate East Africa's original capital.
At present, the best template Ernst has is Argentina, which is a typical country that started out as an agriculture country, not to mention the various problems it has faced in subsequent industrialization.
Argentina has achieved great success simply by developing agriculture. East Africa and Argentina also have similarities, with both being vast and sparsely populated, and covered with grasslands.
It's just that one is located in the temperate and subtropical zones, and the other is located in the tropics, and the land in the East African colonies is only slightly less fertile than the black soil in Argentina.
The precipitation in the two regions is almost the same, with rainfall in northern Argentina reaching about 1,500 mm and only about 600 mm in the south. In East Africa, the rainfall decreases from east to west and reaches a peak in the Great Lakes region, with the level in the entire region ranging from 600 mm to 1,500 mm.
This level is not bad in the world. Here is some intuitive data: the annual precipitation in the North China Plain is about 600 mm, and it is concentrated in July and August.
East Africa has two rainy seasons: the light rainy season from November to December and the heavy rainy season from April to May.
The main reason why the East African colonies insisted on developing agriculture was that the cost of developing agriculture was relatively low. As long as the land was reasonably planned and some production tools were improved, the requirements for technology and personnel were not as high as those for industry.
If you want to develop agriculture, the "small peasant economy" is definitely a dead end in this era of the survival of the fittest. It is capable of self-preservation but lacks the ability to explore new areas, and will eventually be defeated by the low-cost advantages of large-scale agricultural production.
The most notable feature of capitalist agriculture is the centralized management of land. The most prominent contemporary models are the "Prussian model" and the "American model".
The essence of this is to concentrate the land in the hands of a few people, manage it in a unified manner, use the advantages of scale to impact the market, occupy the market and obtain huge profits.
The land ownership of the East African colonies was directly in Ernst's hands, so there was no need for top-down reforms like in Prussia.
But Ernst himself did not abuse black people, so it was different from the American estates.
In this case, Ernst might as well adopt the large farm model.
All the land in East Africa was Ernst's private property. The immigrants had no property rights and were essentially agricultural workers on the farms.
The way to get paid is naturally, the more you work, the more you get, and the less you work, the less you get.
Currently, the East African colonies are directly divided into several large agricultural areas according to climate and rainfall, and the same crops are uniformly planted in the region.
Wheat is the main crop in the Great Lakes region in the west, the Solon Lake region, the northern Lake Malawi region, the eastern Lake Malawi region, the central plateau region, and southern Kenya.
It is determined by the immigrants' eating habits and market demand. Whether they are immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire or immigrants from the Far East and North China, they all have the habit of eating pasta, and the main market for grain, Europe, is naturally dominated by wheat.
Rice cultivation is the main crop in the three coastal regions in the east and the coastal plains of eastern Kenya.
Millet and animal husbandry are developed in the savannah and lake regions to the east, in the northern plateau region, and north of Kenya.
Among them, wheat and animal husbandry were the main means of income generation in the East African colonies besides cash crops.
Both of these have a huge market in Europe. Even if Europe cannot squeeze in, the Arabs will still eat them. After all, most Arabs survive on business and nomadism, and their own output is too little.
The Far East was not within Ernst's consideration, mainly because the Far East is not rich at present, and it is a purely agricultural production area, poor, and has fierce market competition.
In the past, the most popular crops in East Africa were probably corn and cassava, but Ernst chose wheat to develop East Africa.
Although corn and cassava are high-yielding, they both have certain defects and require higher processing costs than wheat. In addition, due to the dietary habits of immigrants and the European market, they still focus on wheat cultivation.
Cash crops. The largest cash crop in the East African colonies at present is naturally sisal.
In addition to sisal, Ernst plans to plan five important cash crops: oil crop planting, rubber plantation planting, tea planting, cotton planting, and coffee planting.
In addition to these major economic crops, there are also other advantageous crops such as cloves and pyrethrum.
In the past, East Africa was an important cotton producing area in Africa. All East African countries planted cotton, so cotton planting was not a problem, and the market was also easier to find. With the support of Germany, it was still possible to digest the cotton on the small piece of land in the German region.
There are more choices for oil crops. Traditional oil crops such as peanuts, sesame, soybeans, etc. can all be grown. There are also castor beans and sunflower seeds native to East Africa.
Rubber plantations are mainly planned in coastal areas and around large lakes, areas with abundant water supply.
Tea is mainly grown in some mountainous and high-altitude areas. It would be sufficient to just grow black tea in large quantities as in the previous life. Europeans can't tell any difference anyway.
These are the crops that need to be produced intensively, and I will not go into details about the rest, as the land and climate conditions in East Africa are really too superior.
In the past, East Africa also had a flower industry and various tropical fruits and vegetables, which Ernst certainly coveted, but the current level of technology was not enough to achieve large-scale short-time transportation.
As for animal husbandry, Ernst has no way to develop it on a large scale directly in East Africa. The entire East African region is suitable for the development of animal husbandry, but the problem is that the preservation technology is really poor.
Unless Ernst initially processes the meat in East Africa and makes it into various preserved foods, all this will take time.
(End of this chapter)
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