Chapter 1005 Ten Thousand Mu of Official Farmland
"Of course it's true. When you sent someone to find me just now, I was at his house." Luo Chong nodded.
"Then, what about him? What about his rice transplanter? Can it be promoted?" She Xin asked impatiently.
"Oh, that guy made a rice transplanter two months ago. He has been hiding it, wanting to wait until next year to change his title. As a result, I happened to find it when I was shopping just now.
"His rice transplanter is very crudely made, and the materials are not suitable. It is not suitable for promotion for the time being, and he has not actually experimented with it. It was already winter when he made it, and he had no chance to experiment.
"I have arranged for him to work at the Power Research Institute of Xingang County next month, specializing in the research and development of agricultural machinery. I have also ordered him to come up with an improved version of the hand-cranked rice transplanter before the beginning of spring. I have seen that thing, and there is no big problem with the improvement. It is very practical. The small version can be promoted next year, and the cost will not be too expensive. At least it will be cheaper than the plow and the curved plow, and every household can afford it."
Seeing that everyone was looking at him excitedly, Luo Chong immediately explained, and at the end he added a sentence.
"I have already arranged for this carpenter's matter. Don't interfere. Don't go to his house to see him for no reason, so as not to cause trouble to him. If it affects the research and development of agricultural machinery, I will not forgive you."
"Yes, yes, chief, can it really be promoted?" She Xin nodded quickly. As the head of a county, developing agriculture and population is his biggest job. She Xin certainly knows what kind of influence a new agricultural tool will bring.
"I have seen the rice transplanter. If I say there is no problem, then there is no problem. In terms of machinery, do you still not believe my vision?" Luo Chong glanced at him and asked back.
"Hehe, that's not what I meant. I'm just excited. If the rice transplanter can really increase efficiency by two or three times, then we can really find a way to plant more land." She Xin immediately said with a flattering smile.
"Oh? Plant more land? What do you think?" Luo Chong asked like a test.
You have to know that the number of acres of land for each of the people in the Han tribe is fixed, and no one can plant as much as they want. In this case, how can we increase new land? Because of this, Luo Chong would test him with this question.
"Of course, we should reclaim wasteland as official land. As for the problem of manpower, we can hire people to do it. If they have a rice transplanter, they can save half of the time, so the extra time can naturally help the official land to plant." She Xin imagined and said.
"Well, I plan to set up an official land, on the plain west of Liuyang County, but I don't plan to plant rice for the time being, but to plant wheat and corn, especially corn." Luo Chong nodded and then expressed his thoughts.
"Why is that? If the area of official fields can be expanded, wouldn't it be better to grow staple food? Why choose corn?" She Xin asked in confusion.
"Because there is no one. Didn't you say there is no one?" Luo Chong retorted.
She Xin was speechless after hearing this. Since you know there is no one, what is the difference between growing rice and growing corn? Anyway, you can't grow them. But he didn't dare to refute, and before he could refute, Luo Chong's next sentence came.
"The Power Research Institute has made new achievements. They have built a four-wheeled vehicle called a tractor. It is steam-powered and coal-fired. It can replace cattle and horses. It can be used to pull carts and plow the land. It is equipped with a new type of rotary tiller. The width of the soil can reach six meters at a time. It is very efficient. One such vehicle can replace hundreds or thousands of people.
"In our Han tribe, one acre of land is 600 square meters. You can calculate that the width of the soil is six meters at a time. Then you only need a tractor with a rotary tiller to walk a straight line of 100 meters, which is one acre of land. And it takes less than a minute to walk a hundred meters. What speed is this? "
Hearing Luo Chong's words, except for the two guards standing at the door, other officials and clerks were all dumbfounded. This thing called tractor and rotary tiller caused more excitement to them than the rice transplanter they heard just now.
If the machine can also be used to plow the land, and the efficiency is higher than that of ox plowing, then what is the use of oxen???
When did Xingang County, where no grass grows, quietly produce such a treasure?
"Then, chief, can the tractor and the new machine for plowing the land you mentioned be popularized?" She Xin couldn't help asking excitedly again.
But Luo Chong shook his head, "This thing is too expensive and too efficient. Unless you are going to popularize trains to the extent of one locomotive per family, then you can try to popularize tractors. "
". "
All the officials in the room were speechless. This special brew was so expensive. From what the leader said, wouldn't it be the same cost as a train?
But think about it, it is also equipped with a steam engine. Let alone other parts, I am afraid that the common people can't afford that steam engine.
The suffocating atmosphere was dull for a moment, and then Luo Chong spoke again.
"But this thing is not unusable, and the common people can't afford it at all, and can't afford to buy it. Think about the efficiency of this thing. If one acre of land is plowed in one minute, a family has at most dozens of acres of land, and it will be almost done in half an hour. Then what? After using up this half hour, it will be idle for several months?
"So this thing is not that it cannot be popularized, but it needs to be used like the current official oxen. The county government offices can pay money from the fiscal revenue to buy tractors in Xingang County, and the tractors bought back belong to the public property of the government offices.
"When the people need to use it, they will rent it to the people for use, charging by acre, just like renting oxen now. The rent collected will be used for daily maintenance, including repairs and coal purchases.
"When the people don't need it, we can use it to cultivate the government fields. When the farming season is not over, this thing can also pull carts. The load capacity is not low. At least it can pull a train carriage. It is usually used to transport food. It can be rented to the people to pull bricks. At worst, it can be used to pull some soil to pave the road and the foundation of the house.
"In short, if this tractor is placed in the hands of the county government, the utilization rate will be very high. The people can't use it themselves, but if it is placed in the hands of the government, the use schedule can be fully scheduled, and there will be no idle time at all."
Everyone nodded when they heard this. If the leader's method is used and popularized, it is indeed the best way to promote it. So She Xin asked.
"Leader, do you have the tractor you mentioned now? When can it be popularized?"
After thinking for a while, Luo Chong said, "Half a month ago, I just participated in the actual vehicle test of the tractor. The basic functions are no longer a problem, but there are still some things that are not perfect in the appearance details. I think it is now ready, but this test vehicle has not been finalized, and further experiments are needed.
"But if you want to finalize it, there is no problem. You can finalize it first and then produce a batch. The subsequent models can continue to be improved, so that you can quickly equip a batch. Now there are more than three months before the beginning of spring. You can strive to produce a few first, and find improvement ideas while using them. We can use these machines to reclaim official fields in the beginning of next spring."
"Then, why did the leader say that we should plant corn and wheat just now? Can't we use this tractor to cultivate rice?" She Xin asked again in confusion.
"Because we don't have that technology for the time being. "After a pause, Luo Chong said again.
"We have tractors, which can be used to replace oxen. We also have rotary tillers, which can be used to turn the soil. Seeders are not a problem either. We can find design ideas on the existing plows, just enlarge them a little. This is not a problem for the institute. In other words, ploughing and sowing are not a problem, but.
"But there are still two problems to be solved. One is the problem of harvesting, and the other is the problem of tractors. We don't have a suitable automatic harvester yet. For spike crops such as wheat and rice, if we can't harvest them quickly when they are ripe, the grain will rot in the field. At that time, if there is no harvester, we can only hire people to harvest manually. However, you should also know the efficiency of manual harvesting.
"We can certainly use tractors to plant more official fields, but it won't work if no one harvests them. Corn is different. A corn can only produce two cobs at most, and even if it is not harvested immediately, the corn will just dry in the field. It won't rot or fall off the ears. At most, we can leave it there and clean it up slowly. Do you understand what I mean?"
"Then there is rice. Rice is more difficult to deal with than wheat. Wheat is just a matter of harvesting, but rice is not only a matter of harvesting, but also a big problem of transplanting rice. Our tractors are steam-powered, huge in size, and heavy. I doubt that they can go into paddy fields at all, and they may get stuck in the mud directly. Besides, large-scale rice transplanters have not been built yet. It is not realistic to plant rice mechanically in the spring of next year. It would be the best result if small hand-cranked rice transplanters can be popularized."
Everyone nodded again after hearing this, and understood Luo Chong's concerns. As the saying goes, you can't eat hot tofu in a hurry. Even if everyone is looking forward to it, it takes time for such a great invention to produce the final results. In fact, the Power Research Institute has worked very hard.
"So, before solving the problem of automatic harvesting, we can only plant corn first?" She Xin asked in summary.
Luo Chong nodded, "Yes, that's roughly what I mean."
"Then how many official fields does the leader plan to reclaim and plant corn next year?" She Xin asked again.
"Didn't I just say that we need to prepare food for 50,000 people in the north next year? How many corn fields do you think we need to open to produce so much?" Luo Chong did not answer, but asked instead.
"If we only grow corn, we can barely grow it for three seasons here, and it is best not to grow it continuously, otherwise the fertility may not be enough, and we can't use so much human and animal manure to fertilize the fields. According to the past corn output, the food for 50,000 people a year requires at least 20,000 mu of land, and three consecutive harvests to meet the needs." She Xin said with a quick mental calculation.
According to past experience, if one mu of corn is carefully cultivated and has sufficient fertility, the yield per mu in Liuyang County can reach 600 kilograms, or 1,200 catties. The yield in Tuohai County in the south is slightly higher, reaching 700 to 800 kilograms.
However, considering the large-scale mechanized farming, there are too few people, it is impossible to do intensive cultivation, and there is not so much fertilizer to supplement, so the estimate of the yield per mu should be conservative.
Let's calculate it as 500 kilograms per mu, minus 200 kilograms, that is 1,000 kilograms of corn per mu. This world has 14 months a year, 420 days. If one person eats 1,000 kilograms of corn a year, then he can get a little more than 2 kilograms of corn every day.
If you only eat corn, this amount is definitely not enough, especially for soldiers who need physical strength. Then it depends on the level of side dishes. In addition to carbohydrates such as corn, there must be sufficient protein supplements, that is, meat.
If only corn is counted, 50,000 people eat 60,000 mu of corn, which is just right.
In terms of meat, one and a half kilograms of grain can feed one kilogram of chicken, and three kilograms of corn can feed one kilogram of pork. Obviously, poultry meat costs less, but poultry meat is white meat, and pigs, cattle and sheep are all red meat. There is still a big difference. Red meat can supplement iron and other trace elements, and poultry meat is slightly worse in this regard.
"Twenty thousand acres of land, um. Six meters multiplied by one hundred meters is one acre, one kilometer is ten acres, ten kilometers is one hundred acres, and then multiplied by the width of six kilometers, it is ten thousand acres, so twenty thousand acres is a piece of land that is ten kilometers wide and twelve kilometers long." Luo Chong fell into deep thought while calculating.
It seems a bit too big!
The working width of the tractor with a rotary tiller is six meters. According to the maximum output power, if it can travel one hundred meters in half a minute, two hundred meters in one minute, and twelve kilometers in one hour, it can just run the length of the entire field in one hour. Then divide the width of ten kilometers by the working width of six meters per trip. In order to plow the twenty thousand acres of land, the tractor has to run back and forth 1667 times, one hour each time, which is 1667 hours.
That is to say, if you want to cultivate these 20,000 mu of land, even if you use a tractor, the driver will not eat, drink, poop or sleep, and it will take at least 70 days to turn the land over. This does not include the subsequent sowing and irrigation.
20,000 mu of land requires 70 days of cultivation, and it is a high-intensity operation that does not stop day and night.
If ten vehicles are working at the same time, the time can be shortened to seven days, and twenty vehicles is three and a half days. But if you want to do this, then each vehicle needs at least three drivers, which is the minimum standard.
In other words, 20,000 mu of land, 20 tractors, three and a half days of cultivation time, and 60 drivers are needed, including a 24-hour standby maintenance team.
And if he wants to complete this task, then Xingang County needs to build 20 tractors within three months, an average of more than four days to build one. There should be no problem with material reserves, but I don’t know if the institute can complete this task.
The more Luo Chong calculated in his heart, the more worried he became. This plan was too crazy for the Han tribe. Otherwise, the official field area could be reduced by half, to 10,000 mu. There should be no problem, right?
(End of this chapter)
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