Chapter 371 - The Heaven and Earth Society
"What about capturing Malay natives from Vietnam and Southeast Asia? The distance is closer."
"The costs don't work out," Wang Luobin dismissed. "Unless there are ready-made slave trade suppliers, capturing and transporting slaves ourselves is too expensive."
"Let's learn from historical slave trade. The English shipped slaves to Cuba and Jamaica, exchanging slaves for sugar. We could do the same—let the English be slave traders. They're quite skilled at it. We'd exchange slaves for Leizhou sugar."
"Are we really bringing in African brothers—"
Seeing the discussion veer off track, Wu De rapped the table: "Be realistic! Let's focus on measures to reduce mortality rates." He reminded everyone: "Whether laborers or slaves, excessively high mortality hurts morale. Eventually it causes escapes and riots. Then we'd have to send troops to suppress—wouldn't that become a vicious cycle?"
"Accelerate population recruitment." Wen Desi turned to Wu De: "Is doubling immigration speed problematic?"
"Yes—grain." Before Wu De could speak, Wu Nanhai cut in unhesitatingly. "Grain collected locally and captured stores are nearly exhausted. Currently we're relying on Vietnamese rice from the Leizhou-Vietnam trade."
"But there's hybrid rice..."
"You think hybrid rice is a magic wand?" Wu Nanhai had been frustrated about agricultural issues for some time. "I tap it and produce tons of rice? What about irrigation? Pumps? Fertilizer? I've raised these issues in countless meetings!"
Perhaps because of his mild temperament and reluctance to contend, Wu Nanhai's Agricultural Committee consistently lagged in resource acquisition. Though the Executive Committee understood the primacy of agriculture and didn't skimp on investment—particularly in farm infrastructure—the squeaky wheel got the grease here too. Because Agricultural Committee investments were always enormous, the Executive consciously or unconsciously applied discounts to agricultural projects.
Developing Tiandu required a population surge. Population growth required increased agricultural investment to accumulate sufficient grain stores by October.
"Currently not all my rice seeds are planted—too few high-yield fields." Wu Nanhai complained. Only two hundred standard mu of soil-improved, irrigated high-yield fields existed. Wu Nanhai had standardized to modern 667-square-meter mu, replacing local varied measurements.
"Rice seeds have shelf life," Wu Nanhai reminded them. "Their characteristics don't breed true. If not fully planted this year, next year they're only good for eating."
So the Executive Committee decided to increase resource allocation in two directions: agriculture and shipbuilding. The former prepared for population growth through immigration; the latter enabled large-scale transport.
Wu Nanhai returned to the farm and immediately convened Agricultural Department personnel to discuss accelerated agricultural development plans.
"Mass grain production?" Fa Shilu was startled. "This isn't a video game—how do we mass-produce?"
"That's exactly the point." Wu Nanhai conveyed the meeting's spirit. "First: prepare sufficient reserve grain to support more non-agricultural population. Second: increase protein supply."
"The second point follows from the first. Without grain, where does protein come from?" Fa Shilu was somewhat dissatisfied. "To mass-produce grain, we must expand cultivated area. Did the Executive Committee promise additional labor?"
The demonstration farm had only fifty agricultural workers on staff—hand-picked by Wu Nanhai from immigrants and captives as skilled farmers and breeders. From his experience, in the twentieth century without any mechanization, one able-bodied worker with an ox or horse could cultivate over fifty mu. Southern paddy regions with intensive cultivation required less, but twenty mu of paddy wasn't problematic.
During irrigation construction, rush planting and harvesting, and land clearing, the farm mainly relied on Bairren Commune work assignments and military "labor duty"—essentially seasonal workers assigned daily tasks and earning work points. Poor farming skills didn't matter—mainly it was muscle power.
The farm occupied considerable suitable riverside wasteland, but clearing land in Lingao was quite difficult. There were distinct dry and rainy seasons; dry season required irrigation, rainy season drainage—demanding sophisticated water management. According to Agricultural Committee research, extensive cultivation wasn't effective here; intensive high-yield farming was necessary—constructing irrigation, improving soil—completing all agricultural infrastructure before achieving high yields. This development model required massive labor investment.
"Approved. I plan to expand high-yield fields to one thousand mu."
"One thousand mu?!" Fa Shilu asked skeptically. "Will Wu De really approve that much labor assignment?"
Wu Nanhai nodded: "It's an Executive Committee decision—he'll definitely prioritize it. Also, Director Ma promised some engineering machinery."
"Excellent!" Fa Shilu's spirits lifted. With machinery, land clearing and irrigation work would be much easier.
"One thousand mu all in rice—fifty farm workers won't suffice," Wan Lihui observed. This man was farm-born and knew farm work intimately. He'd studied electronics in college but never found related work after graduating. Life was unsatisfying, so in frustration he'd dragged his brother along to join the expedition. But in Ming-era spacetime, his electronics specialty was even more useless—Electronics Commissioner Zhong's promised electronics industry development never materialized. After months drifting in the Mechanical Department without prospects, he returned to agriculture. His specialty was animal husbandry—typical farm-kid work was raising livestock. Now the farm's animals except horses and donkeys were all under the two brothers' care—far better than Ye Yuming's era of raising rabbits from books.
"We need to recruit another batch of farm workers," Wu Nanhai said. "Besides paddy, dry fields must also expand, especially sweet potato cultivation—target one or two hundred more mu. Corn and alfalfa too—more protein requires increased livestock feed supply."
"Expanding livestock means expanding pasture area," Wan Lihui reported. "Also understaffed."
Modern commercial livestock—pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks—used intensive farming methods. But South Sea Farm employed low-density free-range methods. Land utilization was poor. This wasn't because Wu Nanhai favored "natural," "green," or "free-range" marketing gimmicks—it was forced upon them. Modern livestock farming heavily depended on animal vaccines, antibiotics, and disinfectants. The Wan brothers could only use lime. The pharmaceutical factory had recently sent some chlortetracycline and oxytetracycline for testing—nowhere near large-scale application. Under these conditions, intensive farming would cause massive disease deaths.
Ye Yuming spoke up: "I think we shouldn't only focus on our own cultivation. We should harness local farmers' production enthusiasm."
Wu Nanhai was interested. "Promote farming?"
"Yes." Ye Yuming nodded. "I have a proposal..."
Ye Yuming proposed establishing the "Heaven and Earth Society"—naturally unrelated to Chen Jinnan's future organization. Its full title was "Agricultural Committee Mutual Aid Group." It was called Heaven and Earth Society because agriculture depended on heaven (weather) and earth (land)—very vivid imagery.
The Mutual Aid Group's basic concept was crop and poultry promotion plus agricultural technical training.
"Farmers are still cold toward us. To win their goodwill—bandit suppression is one thing; providing high-yield crops is another."
When farmers harvested more crops, beyond personal consumption, they could only enter the market. The only organization capable of large-scale agricultural purchasing in Lingao was the transmigrator collective. This meant county-wide production increases, not just on the Committee's thousand-odd mu.
"I disagree. Setting aside variety diffusion issues—without proper care, we'd just waste seed resources." Wu Nanhai immediately objected.
"My idea is to promote sweet potatoes. Don't they accumulate toxins?"
Using sweet potatoes' degeneration characteristics: even if improved varieties spread, farmers lacking detoxifying techniques would see gradual decline. Farmers who saved seeds would find them worthless after two or three years. Only the Agricultural Committee with detoxifying technology could continue providing clean seedlings—effectively controlling seeds.
"That's feasible."
"Hybrid rice too—though we only have this one batch." Ye Yuming sighed. "If we could develop hybrid rice breeding, future mainland rice cultivation would be completely in our hands."
"Actually not impossible. Hopefully we'll succeed in experiments within our lifetimes." Fa Shilu was interested in this topic. He'd actually been conducting such experiments himself. In modern times, Lingao's agricultural pillar industry was hybrid rice seed production. Local abundant wild rice resources made Lingao a must-visit for hybrid rice researchers.
Everyone liked the sweet potato promotion idea. Ye Yuming continued:
"Not just sweet potatoes—livestock too. I think chickens and ducks can be dispersed to farmer households for free-range raising. Our own raising uses too much land and labor."
He proposed the "Poultry Promotion Plan"—essentially a factory-plus-household model maximizing the Agricultural Committee's professional hatching technology.
Simply put: the Agricultural Committee would centrally incubate eggs. Hatched chicks would be delivered to households on credit for raising. When mature, the farm would uniformly purchase eggs and meat birds. The farm would also supply earthworms, maggots, and other animal feeds as supplements.
(End of Chapter)