"Popularity is gradually becoming more prosperous. (  .   .    )" Walking outside Hexi Township, Wang Dazhuang looked at the golden wheat fields on both sides of the road, and the large row of adobe houses behind the fields, and said with a smile.

It was December (1687), and it was the harvest season for wheat overwintering on the east coast. The closer it was to harvest, the more nervous the farmers were. They should pay attention to the weather and hoped not to encounter bad weather during the harvest days; they should also pay attention to whether there were savage Indians coming to steal their food, so that they would not hesitate to run to the village committee and ask the militia director to open the arsenal and fight against the barbarians; they would pay more attention to the Spanish colonial officials in beautiful clothes and boat-shaped hats, who always rode high-headed horses, pointed at them, and then retreated after the village chief handed over a dozen silver coins, as if they had never been there.

In fact, due to the great convenience of transportation, Hexi Township, located on the right bank of the Paraguay River, is actually not short of food, and can be transported from Hejian, which has become one of the most important grain-producing areas on the east bank. But the problem is, what are you not letting these farmers cross-border farming? Do you open a factory? Grazing? That is not realistic! The most stable way to absorb the population is to open up land and grow grain in the local area, open up one piece of stable one until you occupy it all. This is the safest way, and it is also a way that the East Coast people have used for decades and have proven to be very effective.

Similar to the core area of ​​the east coast, the people on the east coast who reclaimed the land on the Chaco Plain on the right bank of the Paraguay River also implemented a three-crop rotation system, mainly winter wheat, rice, alfalfa, soybeans, corn and other crops, and also raise some poultry, white pigs, horses and other livestock to subsidize their household income.

According to the preliminary plan of the Ministry of Agriculture, the relatively humid eastern half of the Chako Plain will be used as an important grain production in the future, just like the Hejian and Pampa Plain. As for those old agricultural areas, due to the rapid economic and social development, grain production is gradually decreasing, and fewer people are growing grain. Especially near cities, farmers have basically switched to vegetables, fruits and horticulture and nursery industries, and no one has grown food, which has led to the increasing lack of grain production in the developed eastern coastal areas, and they have to rely on operation and maintenance of consumption from internal areas.

In recent years, some people in the Ministry of Agriculture have proposed to discuss whether farmers in some developed counties are allowed to pay land tax in the form of currency. Currently, land tax is levied nationwide, with a tax rate set at 10%, that is, each land-owned farmer must pay this tax, and the township and village levels will be inspected and collected separately. In other words, even farmers who no longer grow grain in developed areas will have to pay land tax every year, which is the so-called "payment of public grain". Therefore, farmers in these places have to find ways to purchase enough grain from the market every year, so that they can pass the test.

Based on this consideration, the Ministry of Agriculture has been planning to allow some areas to pay the land tax in currency to reduce the unnecessary consumption of procurement, transportation, and reduce the cost of the entire society. Anyway, there are large areas of good land in the East Coast and neighboring Spain. It is arranged to open up every year, and the reclaimed wasteland can always fill the gap. What's more, because of the large amount of meat and fish consumption, the people of the East Coast Republic are not very huge, so there is a lot of surplus of grain every year, so they have to find ways to export it, so there is no need to worry about insufficient grain production.

From these aspects, the main grain-producing areas of the East Coast Republic of China are mostly concentrated in the so-called "underdeveloped areas", namely the inland hinterland of the eastern coastal areas, the Hejian, which is known as the hometown of fish and rice, the Pampa Plain east of the Yanbu Railway, and are also newly reclaimed areas in China and some cross-border reclamation areas. Their economic strength is weak, their population is not large, and technology, capital and other things do not exist. Therefore, they can only rely on agriculture to slowly accumulate capital, and then explore other aspects of development.

"Pay attention to the weather, pay attention to the maintenance of the agricultural machinery you rented, don't wait until it is used, and suddenly I can't drive it. Then I will get angry." Wang Dazhuang, who had just been promoted for a few months, breathing the fresh air in the countryside, reminded his subordinates, and he said again: "In addition to self-use, the grain produced here must also be exported to other places in exchange for various materials needed for development. Now our country has more than 6.5 million people, and the economy is developing so fast, and farmland in some places has been abandoned. This is really unreasonable. Is there enough grain produced in our country? No matter what the economically developed regions are, we are poor and we are still hope to use the surplus to exchange for some daily necessities, construction materials and labor tools in the eastern region."

"But this country's policies also need to be fine-tuned, right? The grain purchase protection price that has been implemented for so many years, and with the sharp increase in military expenditure, it has finally been cancelled. The direct impact is that the funds flowing into agriculture have decreased greatly. The average grain price of more than 20 yuan that has stabilized for twenty years has also fallen below the integer mark. It has reached the historical status of 19.9 yuan, which is really disheartening." Wang Dazhuang continued to complain: "Now our country's main purpose in expanding territory is to reclaim land, and the current grain market price is

If you are not in a good mood, you may be to slap people's enthusiasm for land reclamation in the long run. You can't all people in the real border cut down trees and mine, right? There are not so many jobs! When owning 30 acres of land is no longer a glory, but gradually becomes a burden, I think the land reclamation policy that was originally implemented well will not be implemented? What do people in the State Development Administration do for food? In this case, it is not fierce to ask the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Finance to restart the minimum purchase price of grain, alas!"

By August 1687, the total population of the East Coast Republic of China was estimated to have reached more than 6.55 million. The number of Ming people accounted for about 28%, the second generation and third generation nationals accounted for about 59.2%, white men accounted for about 6.8%, and white women accounted for about 6.1%. In addition, there is a group of non-national labor workers with a total of about 208,000, blacks and whites accounted for 9.4%, and the rest are Indians of all ethnic groups. Overall, the number of people in this group is declining year by year, reflecting the increasing difficulty of East Coast people plundering population from overseas.

A total of six or seven million people consume a lot of food every year, not to mention that people on the East Coast like to drink alcohol as a whole, and spend a lot of grains to make wine every year, so agricultural security is still very necessary. But on the other hand, the climate conditions on the East Coast are really good. After many years of cultivation, the soil has become very suitable for planting. With some simple fertilizer promotion and use of good varieties, the grain output has always been very high, resulting in great pressure on price downward pressure. However, in order to maintain the so-called border policy of immigration, the East Coast government has been purchasing grain and grain at a protective price (a quota of one million tons), which forced a large amount of fiscal funds to be subsidized to this side. Almost 20 to 3 million yuan of funds are allocated every year, which has almost become a big hole in the finances.

Even though the purchased grain government has carried out deep processing and put it on the market, or found ways to export it to Brazil and the Galle, or found ways to export it to other places, recovering a considerable amount of losses, the annual subsidy of funds in the agricultural sector is still more than one million yuan. This money may not be anything in the past, but since the government invested heavily in the navy a few years ago, resulting in a surge in military spending, it felt a little difficult. Therefore, the policy was finally cancelled after a debate, and the price of grain fell to 19.9 yuan/ton last year. This is the data when some grain harvests in some areas last year were somewhat poor, otherwise it would be cheaper.

Wang Dazhuang is now a government official in the Hexi region (although the law here is still the territory of the Spanish Kingdom), so he is very sensitive to this issue. He is worried that once this situation continues, it will become unprofitable to farm in the frontier. So will anyone still come here so actively? Wouldn't they be sailors, explore the Brazilian plateau, search for bison in the southern cone, and search for silver mines in Chile? That's the benefit may be much higher, although the risks will be much higher.

He asked himself that if he was in charge, he would have wanted to destroy all the grain planting industries in the developed eastern coastal areas, switch to economic crops or simply drive these people into factories to create more wealth. What? The market is limited and the production cannot digest so many commodities? Grandma's, there are too few people on the east coast, too many land, too rich resources, and too fertile soil, making it look like this. If the densely populated Indians or Chinese people see it, I don't know what they will feel! Especially when the farmers in mainland China saw that the model of 30 acres per person on the east coast could not continue to operate (not that they lacked grain, but that they produced too much grain).

"Guard Wang, there are not many people who are willing to buy more than ten acres of land now. They would rather spend their time doing odd jobs or doing handicrafts, and the income would seem to be much higher. Or even if someone buys twenty or thirty acres of land, they will try to grow some cash crops such as tobacco, hops, sunflowers, peanuts, sesame, and so on after harvesting the staple food for a season, so as to make money by simply growing grains. I want to say that the purchase price of the state giving up the protection of staple food is nothing. Originally, more than 6 million people did not need so much food, and the number of farmers in our country is too many, which is not right. Moreover, what I want to say is that in the past, the annual protection and purchases were protected and purchased.

The amount of only one million tons is only as strong as we imagined. "A escort official said: "It is a widely known fact that farmers' incomes are lagging behind workers and have lasted for many years. Farmers are no longer a glorious class. I would rather call them lower-income groups. The appeal of immigrants in the countryside is getting lower and lower. Many people are even more willing to go out to sea to find more opportunities, which makes the Nanhai Group almost laugh. They finally no longer have to worry about the lack of enough sailors. The country's maritime industry has unexpectedly become more prosperous and developed."
Chapter completed!