Chapter 159: Meitaiyang

In practice, the chicks and feed provided by the Heaven and Earth Society could be obtained on credit, with the cost being deducted from the payment for the unified purchase later on.

Ye Yuming said, “This will allow us to greatly increase the number of chickens and ducks and the supply of poultry and eggs without expanding the farm itself. It will be a great benefit to the food supply—it’s like having the whole county raise chickens for us.”

“That’s a good idea. If it succeeds, it could solve the egg problem once and for all.” Wu Nan Hai was very interested. The supply of poultry and eggs had always been a headache for him. The chickens, ducks, and turkeys brought from the other timeline had adapted well to the life here and had begun to lay eggs normally. But in a completely free-range environment, without the special feed from the other timeline, the “green eggs” produced by Wu Nan Hai’s farm were pitifully few. And many of the fertilized eggs had to be kept to expand the flock. So, the actual number of poultry and eggs that could be supplied to the transmigrator group was very small.

The transmigrators, who had once paid high prices for “free-range,” “all-natural,” and “green” eggs in the other timeline, were now concerned about when they would have enough eggs to eat. Some even questioned whether the farm’s free-range method of raising chickens and ducks was too “bourgeois” and disregarded the needs of the masses.

“People are so hard to please,” Wu Nan Hai had to rack his brains every day over the poultry and egg rations. There were now a few families with children who requested at least one egg a day. Such a request was reasonable, and Xiao Zishan, who was in charge of internal affairs, could not refuse. But Wu Nan Hai could only supply two or three hundred edible eggs a day, which was barely enough for the canteen that served 500 transmigrators.

“The reason for establishing this Heaven and Earth Society,” Ye Yuming continued to explain his idea, “is to have it as a less official intermediary. Besides distributing seedlings and collecting products, it can also provide agricultural technical training to the local farmers, thus gradually cultivating a group of farmers who are highly dependent on our seeds and technology. Through them, we can gradually expand our agricultural influence throughout the county.”

“This Heaven and Earth Society is mainly for small landowners, right?” Wu Nan Hai said. “What about the big landlords? These people control more land and manpower. Since we are not carrying out land reform, we cannot ignore them.”

“For the landlords, there is another, more profitable option: to cooperate in establishing crop processing plants and food processing plants. With so many eggs and poultry being purchased, the establishment of processing plants is very urgent. If we rely solely on the Agriculture Department and the Light Industry Department, development will be too slow. If we can bring in some powerful landlords to provide manpower and resources, development will be much faster.”

Everyone nodded in agreement, thinking the plan was feasible. The transmigrator group could not do everything themselves, and promoting new agricultural production techniques would be of great benefit to the agricultural “Great Leap Forward.”

Wu Nan Hai said, “Overall, it sounds good. We can refine it further and then gradually promote it.”

Thus, the Agriculture Committee established the “Agriculture Committee Mutual Aid Group Preparatory Leading Group,” with Wu Nan Hai as the group leader and Ye Yuming as the secretary-general.

The next day, under the unified leadership of the Executive Committee, a vigorous “Create a Thousand Mu of High-Yield Fields” movement began. The plan was to expand the high-yield, stable-yield fields directly controlled by the farm to one thousand mu of paddy fields and five hundred mu of dry fields.

The key to making the fields high-yield and stable-yield was water conservancy engineering. Yan Quezhi, with his background in hydrology and water conservancy, was appointed as the commander-in-chief of this large-scale agricultural water conservancy construction. He and his students went to the construction site first with their surveying equipment and began the measurement work.

Wu Nan Hai and Fa Shilu led a team to the site and set up a temporary shed as a command post. The command post was located on a small hill half a kilometer from the riverbank. There was a small grove of trees there, and it was cooler to work in the shade. Wu Nan Hai had also brought Chu Qing along to take care of his daily needs. At this moment, the young girl was boiling water on a brazier to make tea.

Soon, genuine Ming dynasty Jun ware porcelain tea cups were placed on the folding table, and the aroma of new tea filled the air.

“It’s a pity there’s no iced tea,” Yan Quezhi said, setting up his surveying equipment, reminiscing about the bottled red tea he used to drink.

“If you don’t like it, sir, there’s kvass and kombucha at the farm. I’ll go and get some right away,” Chu Qing said eagerly.

“Forget it. It will be warm by the time you bring it back,” Yan Quezhi shook his head.

Chu Qing said, “There’s a spring here. We can cool the bottles in the water.”

“Don’t go to such trouble—” Yan Quezhi was at a loss. He had never been so meticulously cared for by a young girl before.

“I’ll go right now.” Chu Qing took a step back and ran down the hill.

“Nan Hai, what kind of life are you living? You’re like a landlord…”

Wu Nan Hai quickly cut him off. If this continued, he would soon become a public enemy of all men.

“Let’s talk about the plan.”

“To be honest,” Yan Quezhi said, “now is not the right time to start water conservancy projects.”

Wu Nan Hai was puzzled. “Why?”

“We don’t have enough hydrological and meteorological data,” Yan Quezhi said.

Although weather recording and simple weather forecasting had been ongoing since D-Day, the transmigrator group had only consciously started collecting local hydrological and meteorological data since the late autumn of 1628, which was less than a year. They had no accurate data on the average annual temperature, humidity, precipitation, sunshine hours, or the flow of the Wenlan River in this era. And for water conservancy construction, these were all basic data.

“Can’t we use the data from the 20th century?”

“The error would be quite large.” Yan Quezhi opened a thick volume of the 1925-1949 Lin’gao Hydrological Records that he had brought with him. “This is the closest scientific and systematic hydrological record to this era, but there’s a three-hundred-year gap. Although the climate change in three hundred years may not be drastic, a temperature difference of a few degrees is enough to have a great impact on the climate.”

The biggest problem was the temperature. In the 20th century, the extreme minimum temperature in Lin’gao in winter never dropped below 10°C. But in this era, Yan Quezhi had recorded a week of temperatures between 3°C and 5°C. However, considering that it had snowed on the Leizhou Peninsula in the late Wanli era, it was not bad that Lin’gao had no frost. The Little Ice Age of the late Ming dynasty was no joke. The people from the Foreign Commerce Committee had seen people in Macao wearing sheepskin robes when they went there to do business.

If the temperature was lower, the precipitation would be less. According to historical records, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, Lin’gao had a major drought roughly every ten years and a minor drought every five years. And the rainfall in Lin’gao was mainly concentrated from May to October each year, with the winter and spring being almost completely dry. The distinct alternation of dry and wet seasons required a high level of drought resistance and flood control.

Yan Quezhi could not infer several key data for water conservancy construction—annual precipitation, maximum precipitation, longest rainless period, etc.—from less than a year of simple records.

“For now, we can only rely on the 20th-century Lin’gao hydrological records and make inferences based on the general conditions of the Little Ice Age,” Yan Quezhi said. “If we had a mathematical model, we could probably calculate the current hydrological situation, but unfortunately, I don’t have one.”

“The bottleneck of Lin’gao’s agriculture is in water conservancy. Whether it’s drought or flood, it’s not a problem if the water conservancy is done well. It’s a pity there’s nothing here,” Fa Shilu said, squatting on the small hill, looking at the vast expanse of wasteland by the river that was about to be turned into new high-yield fields.

Lin’gao had ample sunshine and sufficient rainfall, which were very favorable conditions for grain cultivation. But the shortcomings were also obvious: there was often no rain during the spring planting season, resulting in a severe water shortage, and nine out of ten summers were flooded, which greatly affected the grain yield. The Wenlan River was nearby and had a large enough flow, but throughout the ancient period, Lin’gao had no water conservancy facilities except in a very few places. Only a few landowners used waterwheels for irrigation and dug simple, small irrigation channels themselves.

“It’s probably because the small-scale peasant economy is too weak,” Wu Nan Hai said.

“You could say that,” Yan Quezhi nodded. “The investment in water conservancy projects is too large for individual farmers to handle. Even the largest landlord in Lin’gao couldn’t do it.” Yan Quezhi recalled hearing from his seniors who had worked on water conservancy projects that even a simple village-level irrigation canal would require the mobilization of several hundred able-bodied laborers during the slack farming season. For slightly larger projects, the entire county had to be mobilized. In the era before engineering machinery, it was common for a water conservancy project to involve several thousand people.

This was obviously impossible for the remote and sparsely populated Lin’gao. If the transmigrator group had not had enough labor and engineering machinery, creating such a thousand-mu high-yield, stable-yield field would have been a pipe dream.

The place where Wu Nan Hai planned to build the high-yield fields was on a piece of riverside wasteland called “Meitaiyang,” which was five to six thousand mu in size. This kind of flat, open land near a large river was called “tianyang” by the locals. Apart from the sandy soil along the river, most of it was brick-red soil rich in organic matter. It was easy to irrigate and was good agricultural land. The main grain-producing areas in Lin’gao’s history were the so-called four “tianyangs” in the north of the county seat: Bohou, Tiaosu, Bolian, and Jialai. At this time, these four tianyangs had been developed to a certain extent, but there was still a lot of wasteland.

Although Wu Nan Hai had no hydrological data to consult, he knew from the flood line, the distribution of sandy soil, and the vegetation that most of Meitaiyang would not be flooded even during the highest water level of the Wenlan River. It was relatively safe to develop high-yield fields here.

Another main reason why the Agriculture Committee was interested in Meitaiyang was that it was a piece of barren land with no fields or villages, making it easy to acquire. Neither Wu Nan Hai nor Wu De had any intention of carrying out demolition and land acquisition work in the ancient era. Such matters were difficult to handle and could easily arouse public resentment.