Chapter 383 Introduction
Ernst was commanding the battle on the front line, while Constantine was serving as a tool in the rear. Enriching East Africa's industries has always been Ernst's career, and agriculture, as East Africa's advantageous industry, is also a top priority. Currently, there are only a few types of agricultural products in East Africa that are cultivated on a large scale and exported on a large scale. Sisal, cloves, pyrethrum, etc. are undoubtedly popular products, among which sisal has always topped the list of East Africa's exported tropical cash crops.
However, these economic crops can only be said to be niche or unconventional. Among them, the promotion of pyrethrum has a huge relationship with the mosquito repellent products launched by the Heixingen Daily Necessities Company. Pyrethrum is also actively planted in East Africa, making an important contribution to blocking diseases spread by mosquitoes in East Africa.
As for those well-known cash crops with broad markets, most of them have not yet left the market. For example, the first batch of coffee was planted in East Africa in 1867, and only a small amount can be harvested now, so it is not a profitable project yet. Rubber was introduced in 1868, and other non-native cash crops were basically introduced after 1865.
These introduced cash crops have a long growth cycle and are currently in the pure investment stage and have no profit value.
Tea is an economic crop that has already entered production. East Africa tried to promote its local black tea products to Central and Eastern Europe, but encountered serious problems.
"Your Majesty, this is the tea we brought from the East. This time we have selected a total of 23 excellent varieties, mainly green tea, but also some black tea. At the same time, we have introduced a group of 'professional' tea makers who can better contribute to the development of East African tea." Agriculture Minister Wiggins introduced the Ministry of Agriculture's achievements to Constantine.
The East African Ministry of Agriculture is a very embarrassing existence. As a native Austrian nobleman of declining age, Wiggins is very troubled about how to develop agriculture in the tropical region of Africa. East Africa is a major rice producing country, and Wiggins had never seen rice before coming to East Africa. Fortunately, the "wise and mighty" Prince Ernst pointed out the direction for him and he went to the East to learn from others. The Far East rice varieties were introduced under the leadership of Wiggins.
Wiggins once asked Ernst why he didn't learn from India. After all, India's agricultural conditions are not bad, and it is also a country with a long history. It should be considered a leader in the field of planting, especially tropical crop planting.
Ernst’s answer was that it was precisely because of this that we could not learn from India. As a British colony, although India had become the most productive rice region in the world, its technology all came from Europe. The British had built a large number of new water conservancy facilities in India and applied many new technologies, which East Africa also had. Modern agricultural technology could be introduced directly from Europe.
As for the remaining cash crops, Britain did not have much technological content. For example, it promoted cotton, poppy and tea cultivation on a large scale in India. These were also the three cash crops in which Britain invested the most in India.
There is nothing much to say about cotton planting, as it was entirely a need of British industry. But when it comes to planting technology, the first ones to come are the former slave owners from the plantations in the southern United States. Opium, such an evil thing, was banned in East Africa, and tea was stolen by India from the Far East.
Moreover, the lower-class Indians who believe in Hinduism are very casual and do things in a muddle-headed manner, especially the Indians under British rule, who have brought these character traits to the extreme. It is the same as the black laborers under East Africans who would slack off and never do much work. They are lazy to begin with, and they will become even less motivated if you whip them. What can you learn from such people?
Of course, Ernst was not belittling the natives of India and Africa, but this is true for the entire tropical region, especially for people living in a hot and humid environment. Sometimes they have no appetite, let alone activities.
This also reflects the superiority of East Africa's climate. Don't look at the East African natives as lazy. In fact, compared with all the black people Ernst had met in his previous life, the East African blacks were the most down-to-earth and hardworking. The best impression in East Africa is Ethiopia, which has been destroyed by Ernst. Of course, Ernst mainly came to this conclusion after comparing with Nigeria in West Africa. Ernst did not visit many other West African countries and did not know them well.
This is also related to economic and educational issues. South Africa was very good in the early days, but has been going downhill. After the black rulers came to power, they really aligned themselves with the United States in all aspects and learned the essence of zero-dollar shopping. Ernst was very disgusted by this social atmosphere of getting something for nothing. Not to mention colonial exploitation, Tanzania's economy is far worse than South Africa's, and its economic conditions are not ranked high in Africa. However, Ernst has seen that some Tanzanian farmers cannot even get enough food, and they are not like the South Africans. You must know that South Africa is an agricultural power, and its level of mechanization is even higher than that of China.
As for what you can learn in the Far East, naturally you can learn traditional planting experience and agricultural product processing technology. In this regard, Far Eastern farmers are indeed the best.
Ernst was not praising at all. Instead, he put aside his Far Eastern identity in his previous life and believed that the characteristics of Far Eastern agriculture were intensive farming, maximizing the use of the soil and fertility of the farmland, and maintaining and restoring the fertility of the soil through various means.
This has been reflected in agricultural production in East Africa. While fallow is prevalent in Europe and the United States, it rarely occurs in East Africa. Because East African farmers come from a large number of the Far East, the land cultivation methods are mainly based on the patterns they are familiar with.
The only difference is that the land developed in East Africa is originally fertile land with favorable climate, water conservancy, soil and other conditions. Many areas can be used as arable land, but Ernst has not developed it on a large scale. For example, in Tanzania, Ernst currently has no plans to expand the scale of arable land, but turns to inland areas to develop new arable land.
Furthermore, farmers in the Far East are very good at accumulating agricultural experience. Although most of the landlord class do not engage in production, their written summary of the Far East's agricultural experience is quite complete. In addition, the Far East government is a typical agricultural-oriented government, and encouraging farming and sericulture is a thousand-year-old tradition. This has made the Far East's traditional agriculture quite developed.
Ernst used the word "developed" to describe it, but the emphasis was on the word "traditional". He was not really asking Wiggins to copy the Far East model, but mainly to let him learn from it. Even if he could learn only one-tenth of the good experience from East Africa, he would benefit greatly.
The Far Eastern tea varieties introduced this time were carefully selected by Wiggins himself after he led a team to visit several tea producing areas in the Far East.
Wiggins said to Constantine: "There are many kinds of tea in the Far East. There are more than a hundred kinds of tea in Anhui Province alone. However, my time is limited, so I can only select a few important tea-producing provinces for investigation. Among them, Anhui and Jiangsu tea-producing areas are adjacent to our 'Huaihai Economic Zone', so they are the key areas of my investigation. Later, I heard that the black tea in Wuyi Mountain, Fujian is also very good, so I went to Fujian on the way back. This time, the tea varieties are mainly obtained from these three provinces."
Wiggins was originally very interested in Zhejiang tea, especially West Lake Longjing, but he heard that there were only a dozen tea trees of the real West Lake Longjing, and they were supplied to the royal family. The Far East officials were keeping a close eye on it. Not to mention those dozen tea trees, even the surrounding tea was very precious. So forget it. Wiggins valued not only the quality but also the output, and he really didn't have time, otherwise he would have liked to go deep inland to the two lakes area to take a look.
The difficulty encountered in exporting tea from East Africa is that the varieties come from India, so they cannot compete with British tea merchants because the taste is the same, or even inferior. In addition, India has a large planting scale, high yield and low labor costs, so this market is completely monopolized by them, unless East Africa does business at a "loss".
And East Africa did exactly that. Tea from East Africa was exported to Germany at a half-sale and half-gift price. Fortunately, the labor cost in East Africa was almost zero, so they could barely make a little money in German Marks, Thalers and Austrian Rhine Guilders to cover their investment.
So this time Wiggins went to the Far East to select tea varieties in order to open up the European market. The first thing to do was to introduce green tea to avoid competition with the popular black tea in the European market. One important reason why black tea was popular in Europe was that the green tea introduced from the Far East in the early days did not taste as good as black tea. This was because the Far East was too far away from Europe, and the smell of green tea would dissipate after being stored for a long time, while the opposite was true for black tea. East Africa would not have this concern, as it was not far from Europe, and the use of steam on ships made the speed of today's ships incomparable to the old Portuguese tea-carrying ships a hundred years ago.
Another thing that the Hei Xinggen Group is best at is to discredit their opponents. When the time comes, they will create a tea authenticity theory in Europe to provoke a fight and increase the popularity of green tea. Let's not talk about how green tea tastes when it is brewed, but overall it is more pleasing to the eye than black tea. By adding some oriental allusions to improve the quality, and then supplying European courts, they can open the door to the high-end market. The Hei Xinggen Group is experienced in this regard.
Of course, East Africa will not give up the black tea market. This time, Wiggins brought back several kinds of Far Eastern black tea and planted them in Africa to broaden the taste of European black tea. Everyone has different tastes, and there will always be consumers who don’t like Indian black tea, but prefer East African black tea.
Although drinking tea can form a habit,
(End of this chapter)
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