Chapter 15: The Tropical Crops Plantation

As he was feeling nervous, the three who had gone ahead on reconnaissance returned.

“How did it go?”

“It looks like a Weisuo,” Liu Zheng said. “We should leave immediately. This area is quite populated.”

Ye Mengyan was clearly unwilling to return so quietly. As was customary for the special reconnaissance team, they couldn’t go back empty-handed. “Why don’t we grab a prisoner to interrogate?”

“Forget it. Our mission is exploration, not combat. How would we travel with a prisoner? Besides, the purpose of this trip was to survey resources and train the team. Haven’t you seen that someone has already collapsed?”

“Tch!” Zhao Xue shot Liu Zheng a glare.

“How many days until we’re back at the base?” Bai Guoshi was more concerned about Zhao Xue’s injury. He had already given her some initial treatment.

“About three or four days. We’ll have to go slower today. We’ll try to camp far from the city so we can sleep more soundly tonight. After a good rest, we’ll get an early start tomorrow and try to get home sooner.”

“Wait, everyone, help me collect more ore samples from here. I’ve found something good.”

The group had no choice but to help him gather various stones from the ground. When they set off again, each person was carrying an extra seven or eight jin of ore.

The journey back was uneventful. On the eleventh day after their departure, the team was approaching Bairen City.

“Password!” a loud shout from the bushes beside the road startled Liu Zheng, who was on point. “Loli! Response!”

“Yujie!” A sentry, covered in a fishing net adorned with branches and leaves, jumped out from the side of the road. He was likely a hidden sentry, as he was armed with a steel crossbow. A pistol holster was strapped to his thigh.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you guys before. Which department are you from?” The sentry’s eyes kept darting towards the limping Zhao Xue—modern women were a rare sight in the camp.

“Department 7911,” Liu Zheng reported. Departments with code numbers were all classified units, referred to by their numbers when outside.

The sentry immediately became respectful. “Ah, a classified unit. You must have been on a long trip. Mission accomplished, I hope?” The sentry was probably trying to get some inside information by being friendly.

“It went well. How have things been here?”

“A few days ago, I heard a beautiful female pirate came to Bopu,” the sentry said with a look of longing. “They say she’s staying at the trading post, being treated to the best food and drink.”

“A female pirate?” This piqued everyone’s interest.

“Perverts,” Zhao Xue muttered with a disdainful curl of her lip, seeing the men’s drooling expressions.

“I heard she has a unique name, Li Huamei!” the sentry said with excitement, completely forgetting his duties.

…

The team changed their clothes at the outer base, swapping their full field gear for the training uniforms they wore before departure—these were less conspicuous. Liu Zheng dismissed the team and went back to headquarters first. He had a pile of administrative tasks to deal with: writing the exploration report and filling out reimbursement forms for the various consumables used during the mission. The others had their own tasks as well: writing reports, organizing specimens… and of course, taking a shower, eating a hot meal, and getting a good night’s sleep.

Bai Guoshi delivered the plant specimens to the Ministry of Agriculture. Strictly speaking, agriculture and biology were two different fields, but in the eyes of the Executive Committee, they were more or less the same. So the farm had now become an important center for 17th-century biology. For one thing, the only university student with a major in molecular biology in this timeline was here, growing vegetables and cooking with Wu Nanhai.

The others were no less impressive. Take Huang Dashan, for example. His job at the farm was to grow mushrooms and wood ear fungus, but his real expertise was in live animal bacteria/virus cultivation. In other words, if the Executive Committee wanted, he could start a Unit 731-style operation. Everyone who saw the thick, beer-bottle-bottom-like lenses of his glasses felt a chill. No one knew what he was concocting in the test tubes and culture dishes in his small, secluded hut, and no one wanted to know. Ever since they learned of his special skill, everyone gave his hut a wide berth.

“Is this Yizhi?” Fa Shilu looked at the specimens he had collected in his laboratory, his eyes shining with delight. “A very useful medicinal herb.”

“The Ministry of Health specifically requested it.” Bai Guoshi sat down with a plop and looked around. The conditions in the biology lab had improved considerably. The new glass factory had greatly expanded their equipment—although the new glassware was a bit crude and bulky, at least there was no shortage.

“The collection of seedlings and seeds has been going well recently, and the breeding work at the tropical crops plantation is also progressing smoothly,” Fa Shilu said. “Hainan has excellent conditions for tropical crops. Lingao is a bit less ideal, but we can overcome that.”

“What does Minister Wu think about tropical crops?”

“He’s a layman in this area.” A smile appeared on Fa Shilu’s dark, plump face. In terms of professional expertise, Fa Shilu was an agronomist. When he signed up to join, he brought a truckload of seeds and a miniature germplasm bank—the latter being a hard-to-come-by research resource. His current title was “Chief Agronomist of the Demonstration Farm.”

Fa Shilu continued, “I don’t know much about tropical crops either, but I know a little. With the information from the other timeline, we roughly know what can and can’t be grown in Lingao. That saves a lot of effort.”

“Can we grow pepper?” Bai Guoshi had read many half-baked history books and had a vivid memory of the immense profits from the spice trade.

“Yes, pepper is well-suited to Lingao. But the main production areas for spices are Southeast Asia and India. We don’t have much of a competitive advantage.”

“Oh.” Bai Guoshi was slightly disappointed.

“Let’s go see the tropical crops plantation at the farm.”

The farm had expanded significantly. The newly cleared land had been developed into paddy fields. The land was carefully leveled and equipped with permanent irrigation and drainage systems, up to the standards of an experimental field. Each field was even enclosed by a bamboo fence, and wind-powered bird scarers were scattered throughout. Signs marked each plot with a number, crop type, and the person in charge. Bai Guoshi knew that these fields were planted with high-yield seeds brought from the other timeline—no wonder they were so careful.

The tropical crops plantation was also heavily protected by deep trenches and barbed wire fences, with watchtowers. Only personnel from the Agriculture Committee and a few authorized local workers from the farm were allowed to enter with a permit. The crops here were the only ones of their kind in East Asia. If they were damaged, finding replacements would mean a trip halfway around the world.

The seedlings of coconut, rubber, coffee, cocoa, coca, quinine, poppy, and various fruits planted a few months ago were all growing well. Some of the hardier varieties had already grown dense branches that swayed in the breeze, looking very pleasant.

“No wonder people say the farm is a paradise. It’s so beautiful,” Bai Guoshi said. It was his first time here, even though he had personally collected the samples and seeds for many of the varieties in the plantation.

“The jackfruit you brought back is also growing well.”

“It’s a pity they’re still small trees. It’ll be another four or five years before they bear fruit.”

“If it’s just for us to eat a few jackfruits, Xuwen, across the strait, is one of China’s largest producers. It’s not rare at all,” Fa Shilu said ambitiously. “Since we have advanced technology, we should focus on cultivating improved varieties.”

The 50 coconut saplings were growing very well. Bai Guoshi knew that coconuts had many uses, and the Executive Committee placed great importance on them. Every part of the coconut was valuable, and it was a relatively stable source of oil in the short term.

“The Executive Committee says that all future greening projects will use coconut trees. They look good and are useful. It’s just that we’ll have to wait several years for these coconuts to bear fruit—”

A thought struck Bai Guoshi. He thought of the jackfruit again. These resources weren’t exactly everywhere, but they weren’t scarce on Hainan Island either. While they were being self-reliant, they could also send people out for large-scale collection. He himself had seen patches of wild economic crops during his explorations, completely untouched and left to grow and die on their own.

With enough manpower and equipment, they could form a “resource collection team.” If nothing else, it would greatly enrich the lives of the transmigrators. But this would require coordination from the Executive Committee—he would have to mention it during his report tonight.

Fa Shilu had been in charge of tropical crops recently. Besides the seedlings planted shortly after their arrival, the Agriculture Committee had a considerable number of other tropical crop seeds. Lingao’s water and heat conditions weren’t the best, and it was currently the Little Ice Age, so he didn’t dare to rashly plant all the seeds from the seed bank. He had consulted a lot of data. In the other timeline, the tropical crops successfully cultivated on a large scale in Lingao were: rubber, pepper, lemongrass, sisal, coffee, clove basil, and vetiver. Although several of these were not sustained, it was mainly due to market factors; the cultivation itself was not a problem. The real failures were oil palm and cashew. Fa Shilu was quite disappointed about the failure of oil palm. After all, it had the highest oil yield in the world. On a large scale, it could satisfy most of the transmigrator industry’s demand for oil.

“There are so many things we can plant. The seed bank has almost everything. I’m just afraid that if we plant them and they fail,” he sighed, “the loss will be huge.”

“We should plant more sisal and jute. I think the industrial sector will have a great demand for fiber crops,” Bai Guoshi offered his opinion.

Fa Shilu nodded. “That makes sense. But the industrial sector hasn’t mentioned it themselves.”

“That’s because they can import jute, so there’s no sense of urgency. In my opinion, it’s better to plant sisal. It has a high utilization rate; even the waste pulp and juice are useful.”

The long fibers from sisal were raw materials for making ropes for mining and shipping. The processed pulp could be used as a raw material for paper, alcohol, and vinegar. The short fibers produced during processing could be used to make ropes for general use, shoe insoles, reins, and other daily necessities, as well as stuffing for furniture. The leaf juice could be fermented to produce biogas, and sugar and fodder yeast could also be extracted. The large amount of leaf residue after processing was excellent fodder, and the pulp was a high-quality organic fertilizer.