The weather is getting colder in mid-June.

Zheng Bin, deputy minister of the Ministry of Agriculture, hurried into his office and sat on a large backrest chair decorated with a bearskin mattress. The secretary brought him a cup of freshly brewed tea. The tea was transported back from the Far East by the Navy and had almost no cost. If you ask the Dutch or Portuguese to buy it, the price would go to sea. Therefore, Europeans basically had no habit of drinking tea. For example, in London, tea was sold as medicine, and the price ranged from 6 pounds to 10 pounds per pound. This price was obviously too luxurious on the east coast where thrift was prevalent.

Zheng Bin first lit a pipe for himself, and the gas produced by the burning of the upper tobacco from Virginia soaked his lungs well, making his groggy head clear.

"The tea planting in the northern part of Xinhua Port failed, the tea introduction in Ping'an County failed, and the Jinjina tree trial planting was not ideal, and they were requesting that special subsidies be added for agricultural projects. All the money is needed, so we can't help save some fun..." Zheng Bin crossed his legs and looked through the documents submitted by the secretary page by page. He now has four full-time secretaries. Except for one of the secretary in charge of agricultural technology who was a farmer and later studied at the county agricultural cadre training school, the other three were from the Capital Agricultural College opened by the Ministry of Agriculture, and they are the best among the graduates, responsible for the sorting of documents and information in one aspect.

"Onuma Township, Heyang Fort requested an additional allocation of 30,000 cattle, ten horse-drawn grass harvesters, and twenty horse-drawn wheat harvesters? When our Ministry of Agriculture is an ATM..." Zheng Bin muttered, and then wrote a pen to comment on the document: "It is good to allocate 15,000 Andalusian black cattle seized from La Plata. The number of various types of harvesting machinery should also be reduced by half. During harvesting, each village can coordinate the time and use it staggeredly. Now the output of Dafeng Agricultural Machinery Factory is limited, and I hope that the local agricultural commissions will try their best to overcome the difficulties."

"The New China Development Team requested the establishment of a botanical garden on St. Mary's Island and exchanged with Portuguese East and West African colonies to introduce various tropical economic crops. This looks quite decent. Isn't it just a species cultivation base? What, it requires 30,000 yuan of special funds?" Zheng Bin knocked the ash in the pipe in the wooden ashtray, then picked up a pen and wrote in a curse: "The 30,000 yuan requested funds are not allowed. The Ministry is short of funds, and the special funds for the construction of the botanical garden are temporarily allocated 2,000 yuan, and the bank acceptance bill is 8,000 yuan. For the remaining shortcomings, please pay the New China Development Team as appropriate."

Naturally, bank acceptance bills cannot be used when trading with the Portuguese. Therefore, the Ministry of Agriculture actually only allocated 2,000 yuan to the New China region for the purchase of plants. As for how the other 8,000 yuan bills can be used, it depends on the coordinated digestion ability of the New China colony.

The so-called construction of a botanical garden mainly refers to the opening of a piece of land on the island of St. Mary, which has beautiful scenery and suitable climate, and then introduce many plants in the Americas, Africa and Asia - generally crops with important economic value, such as: tobacco (Ornorico, Florida species) - Virginia introduced this type of variety; chili, vanilla and sweet pepper (Peruvian species) - these three are seasonings; pepper (Indian species), cloves and nutmeg (Moluo) - At this time, the latter two spices are controlled in the hands of the Dutch, so it is difficult to obtain seeds.

In addition, there is sugar cane - this requires an expedition to go to the Pacific Ocean. Because at this time, whether the Portuguese were in Madeira, Sao Tome, Brazil, or the Spanish planted sugar cane in the West Indies and Canary Islands - Creole species, they are all low-sugar and low-product species. Europeans have high-sugar and high-product species, and they have to wait until Bougainville was on a global voyage in 1768 to bring Tahiti sugar cane to Mauritius. Later, this sugar cane was quickly introduced to Bourbon, Martinique, Jamaica, and eventually became popular in the entire tropical region.

As for coffee and cocoa, coffee (Robusta coffee beans) have been tried and planted in three sites in the New China Colony for almost two years, and it will take time to observe the effect. As for cocoa, there has not been any introduction. Unlike the huge demand for coffee in the Islamic world, the demand for cocoa is currently limited in the East Coast and Europe. Therefore, only a few reserved seeds are planned for the time being, and not for large-scale industrial planting.

After all, it may take a lot of money to purchase seeds, seedlings, and land reclamation. Not to mention the planting, maintenance, cultivation of new seeds in the later stages, etc., in short, it is an extremely cost-effective, time-consuming and labor-intensive task. The 2,000 silver dollars allocated by the Ministry of Agriculture is probably only enough to buy some plant seeds in the early stages. As for the massive expenses required in the later stages, we can only wait for the next year. After all, the country is in financial difficulties now.

However, such things as the botanical garden are of great importance and cannot be careless. It is inevitable to invest huge amounts of funds every year in the future. For example, the only botanical garden in the local area, the Northern Botanical Garden built on the opposite bank of the Dingxi Fort River (later San Geronimo, Brazil), has introduced many varieties of plants such as cassava, sorghum, corn, cowpeas, tomatoes, bambara peanuts (West African species), and red rice. The technicians studied plant habits in it while cultivating good varieties. The botanical garden now has more than 200 technicians and workers, covering an area of ​​more than 3,000 acres. The Ministry of Agriculture has an average of more than 5,000 yuan in funds every month to maintain various production and scientific research activities.

In addition to these two botanical gardens, it is said that a botanical garden is also wanted to build in the Blackwater area in the Far East, mainly used to cultivate cold-resistant crops, such as oats, rye, potatoes and other foods. Especially potatoes, because potatoes grown in high-altitude areas have low-toxic and non-toxic properties, and the varieties are not easy to degrade and are not prone to diseases, it is particularly suitable for cultivating good potato seeds. The cultivated good varieties can be sold to farmers for large-scale planting, and the economic benefits generated are undoubtedly huge.

After approving these documents, Zheng Bin changed himself to a more comfortable position, and then grabbed another stack of documents to read. This stack of documents mainly talks about the sowing area, yield and total yield of various crops planted this year. Zheng Bin roughly swept it. The grain sowing area in the southern region (Yihe area, capital area, and Xiling area) further expanded last year. When the autumn sowing last month, the wheat sowing area reached 200,000 mu, of which the capital Dongfang County was the leader. The county has a total of 100,000 mu of wheat sowing in autumn, accounting for half, and there are 50,000 mu of miscellaneous grain fields.

The grain sowing area in the northern region is a bit scary. More than 300,000 mu of wheat fields were planted in the four towns in Xihu (Xihu Town, Dafeng Township, Wucaoling Township, and low bunker) in Guanghuxi (Xihu Town, Dafeng Township, Fortune Township, and Low Bunker) in Guanghuxi (Xihu Town, which will be officially integrated into Xihu County next year, is worthy of being the large granary of the East Coast Republic. It almost feeds seventeen township settlements in the north (Ping'an County and Zhenhai County cannot be self-sufficient in grain), which is arguing against the will.

Currently, there are about 90,000 cattle, 4,000 goats, 2,000 pigs and more than 300 horses in the county, and the per capita cultivated land area is 26 mu. Every winter, the State Council and the Ministry of Agriculture organize a large number of people to build a large number of reservoirs, water lifting stations and irrigation canals within the jurisdiction of Xihu County. The agricultural machinery produced by Dafeng Agricultural Machinery Factory is also given priority for supplying here, and even the cattle snatched from La Plata are sold to the people here at low prices. This time, the Ministry of Agriculture is preparing to allocate the newly collected 20,000 Andalusian black cows here, which can almost make up for one-third of the county's livestock gap, which will make Xihu County the first county in the country to complete the reform of the three-cross rotation system.

"It's still a good time to see the data of Huxi Agricultural Zone." Zheng Bin stayed for a long time on the report on Huxi Region, and then whispered in a low satisfaction: "The autumn harvest was 10,000 tons of soybeans. It's really a treasure land, and it's not in vain that the country has invested huge amounts of money in the construction year after year. Moreover, the next county magistrate is mostly from our Ministry of Agriculture. Well, it's worth allocating more funds. It's winter now, and I guess the river channel is being dug and water conservancy is being built there. I have to go and see it. Unfortunately, many people have been dispatched across the country to fight in La Plata. The already scarce labor force is further tight. This year's winter operation will not go too smoothly."

Now the battle in La Plata is entering the decisive stage of mid-square-setting victory. Although the Spaniards' decline is as always, the East Coast people are far from being able to win and withdraw their troops back to the North. In this way, a large amount of troops and manpower are dragged into this quagmire, not only is it consumed a lot of materials and money every day - these will lead to an increase in public grievances, but the ability to create new wealth in the country is also declining - because a large number of farmers and workers are drawn to the front line.

The available human resources are reduced, and in order to maintain the original productivity, it is inevitable to improve production efficiency. As for agriculture, the development of water conservancy, the promotion of advanced agricultural production technologies, the cultivation of more species of animals and plants, and the improvement of soil fertility have become the only way to improve agricultural production efficiency.
Chapter completed!