Chapter 817 East African Granary
It is an important task for the East African government to update the agricultural situation every year, because agriculture is one of the main sources of tax revenue for the East African government, and East African agriculture has not yet been finalized and will continue to increase every year, so the data must be updated in a timely manner.
Ernst said: "Now that the war is over, the focus of East Africa's development must return to the economy, and agriculture is an important guarantee for industrial and economic development. Therefore, after resolving the security crisis, maintaining the stable and orderly development of East African agriculture is an important task for all agricultural departments."
There is no doubt that agriculture is one of the ballasts of East Africa's economic development, and if East Africa wants to develop industry in the future, it will inevitably have to obtain more funds and raw materials from agriculture.
The best way is to continuously increase agricultural production and export of agricultural products. As for causing a drop in international food, agricultural raw materials and other prices, that is not a priority for East Africa.
Just like the Far Eastern Empire's full-scale development of cheap labor factories from the late 20th century to the early 21st century, it was actually a completely helpless choice. If you don't even do the most basic labor-intensive industries, there are plenty of people doing it abroad, and their labor costs are cheaper.
Once the opportunity is missed, European and American industries will shift to India, Africa and other regions. At worst, the United States can also shift to South America and the Middle East.
In stark contrast to the 21st century, in the 19th century agriculture was still the main source of income for most countries and the only channel for primitive capital accumulation in non-colonial countries.
Therefore, the economic development of East Africa is bound to draw blood from agriculture, and the hard work that East Africa has put into agriculture over the past two decades is actually to cultivate its own domestic blood-making capacity.
Of course, East Africa also has other sources of income, among which mineral resources and agriculture are equally important, especially East Africa's precious metal resources, that is, gold mining.
However, this is mainly to supplement the economic development of East Africa. If East Africa continues to rely on selling mines as the main source of income, then its fate will be nothing more than those resource-based countries in the previous life.
Ernst's primary goal was to ensure that East African citizens were "mobile", maintain their production efficiency, deprive them of surplus production value, and thus ensure the orderly development of the social atmosphere of the entire country.
Therefore, East Africans lack the tens of thousands of "wealth myths" like the United States, but they can concentrate national power more to lead industrial development. As for the difference between national wealth and personal wealth, in Ernst's view, East Africans have no bargaining power.
Because East Africa is a monarchy country, the country's wealth does not mean Ernst is rich. The money is mainly controlled by the East African government and all invested in the national economic operations.
Ernst himself did not make money for the Hechingen royal family from state funds. This is the biggest example. Of course, with the support of the Hechingen Consortium, the Hechingen royal family is still as rich as a country, but the scale of the Hechingen Consortium is no longer comparable to the collection of state-owned enterprises under the East African government.
…
Great Lakes Region.
While Ernst was calculating his family's finances, Constantine came to the Great Lakes region for his third inspection. Since Constantine stepped down from his important duties, his favorite thing was to wander around East Africa, while inspecting and lecturing local governments.
"The Great Lakes are the sea on our East African Plateau. Building good water conservancy projects in the Great Lakes basin is a long-term plan for the entire Great Lakes basin." Constantine said, looking at a vibrant farmland.
The windmill slowly turned and creaked in the breeze, guiding the lake water to flow toward the shore, then flowing from the iron pipe to the gutter, into the aqueduct, and irrigating the land on the shore.
Today, the agricultural facilities in the Great Lakes region are more complete, the fields are in order, the rivers are crisscrossed, the houses are neatly built, and farmers and livestock are roaming in the fields, creating a magnificent scene of "a land of fish and rice".
Graham, an official from the Western Great Lakes Province, assured Constantine: "Water conservancy project construction has always been the key development direction of our Western Great Lakes Province. In the past decade, the Western Great Lakes Province has undergone tremendous changes, and most of these changes are guaranteed by water conservancy project construction."
In fact, as a major agricultural province, the government of Western Great Lakes Province can only focus more on agriculture, because East Africa's industry is mainly concentrated in the coastal and central regions, and Western Great Lakes Province, located deep in the interior, does not even have a chance.
Of course, the resource endowment of the Western Great Lakes Province is not entirely bad, and it has the ability to develop industry, but it pales in comparison with the central and southern provinces.
However, gold mining in Western Great Lakes Province is indeed ranked first in East Africa. The area around the Great Lakes region is an important gold mining distribution area in East Africa, so the two provinces in the Great Lakes region are currently the main gold producing areas in East Africa.
However, gold production is vertically managed by agencies directly appointed by important East African governments, and the Western Great Lakes Province does not benefit much from it.
"Throughout the 1980s, our province carried out meticulous management of 170,000 square kilometers of river basins within its territory, opened up more than 43.5 million mu of new arable land, built 2,923 kilometers of river embankments, dredged and repaired 3,451 kilometers of river channels, built 5,487 sluices, excavated 30,000 kilometers of artificial canals, and built 586 large, medium and small reservoirs. Grain production increased three times compared to the 1970s." Graham proudly recounted the construction achievements of the Western Great Lakes Province.
Constantine was also very interested in these. He said: "I am afraid that there are only a few countries in the world that can achieve such construction achievements in ten years. You have done a good job."
In fact, any famous power in the past developed well in the 19th century, but their development paths were different from those of East Africa. East Africa reflected the style of big government everywhere, and everything was promoted and led by the government. Germany was similar.
The opposite example is the United States. Its actual annual growth is more exaggerated than any other country in the world, but its economic data is scattered, with private economy and local forces playing a dominant role.
For example, in terms of water conservancy construction, East Africa focuses on large-scale planning and coordinated regional development, while each state in the United States develops independently, and occasionally the central government coordinates cross-regional engineering construction. Therefore, as long as the data is summarized, the United States is not inferior to any other country.
The weak power of the US central government in the national economy means that its economic data is not easy to reflect intuitively. On the contrary, the East African government is well aware of the development of the entire East Africa.
Graham continued, “Now the entire Western Great Lakes region has more than 205 million acres of cultivated land, ranking second in the country, second only to the Northern Great Lakes Province.”
By 1890, East Africa had opened up more than 1.8 billion mu of arable land, with 900 million mu in the provinces surrounding the Great Lakes region alone, accounting for half of East Africa's arable land. Food crop output exceeded two-thirds of the country's total.
Of course, the provinces surrounding the Great Lakes region are a relatively broad area. For example, the Plateau Province in the south is almost the main body of Tanzania in later generations, with a very large area, and the Northern Great Lakes Province in the north, which is Uganda in the previous life, also has considerable arable land area.
Moreover, the region is mainly based on food crops, so the area around the Great Lakes is the veritable "granary of East Africa", and its wheat and rice production ranks first in the country.
The second is the coastal plain area. The coastal plain area is not small, but in recent years, agriculture has mainly shifted to cash crop planting, providing production raw materials for eastern cities or directly participating in foreign trade.
The scale of cultivated land in other regions such as the central, southern, northwest (Somalia) and northern regions is too small to be compared with the three traditional grain production bases in East Africa.
(End of this chapter)
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