Chapter 160: Low-Yield Fields

A few months ago, Wu Nan Hai had bought this piece of land from the county yamen at a very low price without much trouble. As for why such a large tract of land near the river was uncultivated, the Agriculture Committee had assumed it was due to an abundance of land and a shortage of labor. However, when Wang Tian heard that the “directors” had bought this land, he rushed to tell Wu Nan Hai that they had made a bad deal.

This land had been cultivated by “shegengren” (migrant farmers) from Fujian, but they always abandoned it after a year or two.

“The yield is too low,” Wang Tian said. “They put in so much effort to grow rice, but the yield per mu is only seventy or eighty catties. If it’s not well-tended, it’s even less. Two harvests a year yield less than two hundred catties of rice, which is not even enough to fill their stomachs.”

“Seventy or eighty catties?” Wu Nan Hai was almost shocked. Seventy or eighty catties was just the weight of the unhusked grain; after husking, there would be a loss of twenty to thirty percent. He knew that the agricultural production level of the ancient times was not high, but from what he had gathered so far, the ordinary paddy fields along the Wenlan River could yield three hundred catties per mu per harvest, as long as irrigation was guaranteed.

“You don’t know, sir,” Wang Tian said. “Farming here is not easy. When it doesn’t rain, it’s a drought. When it rains for three consecutive days, it floods. But even without drought or flood, you can’t harvest much rice in Meitaiyang.”

Wu Nan Hai was puzzled by this phenomenon, but since he was unable to develop the land at the time, he did not investigate further. To avoid leaving a large area of land fallow, he had the farm workers plant some leguminous crops for silage and green manure in a low-intensity manner. Some of the seeds were brought from the other timeline, and some were found by the long-range exploration team. The results were quite dismal. Apart from the alfalfa, which had a barely acceptable yield, the leguminous crops were almost a total failure.

“It seems this land is severely deficient in phosphorus. We need to improve the soil.”

“So the low yield is likely due to a problem with the soil environment,” Fa Shilu said after hearing his description. “We haven’t carefully investigated the soil quality and moisture content of Meitaiyang.”

“Could the soil’s pH value be too high?”

Fa Shilu said, “It’s possible. Since we’re creating high-yield, stable-yield fields, it involves soil improvement.”

He picked up some soil from the ground and examined it. “If I remember correctly, the soil in Lin’gao should be consistent with the main soil types in Jiangxi and Guangdong, primarily lateritic red earth. In that case, it would be relatively easy to improve. Lime would do the trick. If it’s alkaline soil, we’d need gypsum.”

He rubbed it a little. “This red earth is developed from basalt, plus the sandy soil washed down from the upper reaches of the river over the years. Generally speaking, it’s quite sandy, but that’s not a big problem for paddy fields.”

As they were talking, Chu Qing returned with a large basket full of bottled kvass and kombucha.

“The canteen is out of stock. I got these directly from the food factory,” Chu Qing said with a smile. “I’ll cool them in the water first.” She then took the basket to a nearby stream.

These two beverages were already in mass production at the food processing factory, semi-automatically bottled and manually sealed. The bottles were provided by the glass factory and sealed with corks and wax. Due to the lack of preservatives, they could only be preserved with sugar and citric acid, so their shelf life was very short, and they didn’t taste very good.

But for the transmigrators who were tired of tea and plain water, these two drinks came at the right time and immediately became popular items in the canteen. Many natives who had bought a bottle out of curiosity also came to like the taste—some were simply imitating the transmigrators’ lifestyle.

Fa Shilu watched as she submerged the entire basket in the stream. The edge of this tianyang was dotted with many low hills. Unlike the sparsely vegetated tianyang, the hills were covered with dense vegetation, and there were many streams flowing between them, gurgling through the green grass and trees. Some converged into larger surface runoffs that flowed into the Wenlan River, some flowed into ponds between the hills, and some flowed on the surface for a while before disappearing underground.

“What abundant water resources!” Fa Shilu said to himself.

“Have you investigated the water source here?” he suddenly asked Yan Quezhi. Yan Quezhi, who had been staring at Chu Qing’s back, finally came to his senses.

“No, geological matters are handled by the long-range exploration team. I’ve been too busy helping with the construction of houses at the construction company.”

“Since you have a background in hydrology, you should know a little about it. Is the surface runoff here spring water?”

“It’s not mineral water, but the quality is very good. The water is clear and the temperature is low,” Yan Quezhi said with confidence. “It should be rainwater that has accumulated underground and then resurfaced.”

“I see.” Fa Shilu nodded. He called out to the others, “Come on, let’s go down and investigate the soil condition here.”

The group went down the slope together. Wu Nan Hai brought his apprentice, Lu Jia, who had been selected from the school. Lu Jia’s family were official tenants who specialized in cultivating school fields. The burden on official tenants was heavy, much more so than on ordinary private tenants. To reduce the number of mouths to feed, Lu Jia’s father had sent him and his brother, Lu Yi, to the transmigrator group, purely to get a meal.

Lu Jia was older, knew more about farming, and was quick-witted, so Wu Nan Hai had taken him on as an apprentice.

The group dug several test pits at intervals in the wasteland and took soil samples for observation.

“Old Fa! It’s still lateritic red earth here. It’s everywhere,” Wu Nan Hai said.

“That’s right. It’s the most common soil in southern China,” Fa Shilu said, squatting by the pit. “The fertility of this soil should be good. It’s strange that you can only harvest less than a hundred catties of rice per mu on such land.”

But the next stage of digging quickly revealed the mystery of the low yield. They began to dig up a large amount of gleyed paddy soil. This type of soil was caused by long-term poor drainage, resulting in waterlogging in the soil layer. The soil contained a large amount of reddish-brown hydroxides, was highly acidic, had low nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium content, and had very poor fertility.

“Strange. This should be caused by long-term waterlogging,” Wu Nan Hai said. “But this place is far from the highest water level of the Wenlan River during the rainy season.”

“The groundwater level here is high,” Fa Shilu said, pointing to the hilly area. “The water from the streams all seeps underground. It looks like a plain, but it’s actually like a water-saturated sponge underneath, a typical case of internal waterlogging.”

Yan Quezhi set up his equipment and observed for a while. “Hmm, the terrain here doesn’t look like it, but it’s actually lower than the surrounding areas. Plus, the continuous supply of spring water from the hilly areas keeps the groundwater level high, resulting in a long-term hidden internal waterlogging situation.”

“That explains it. Otherwise, there’s no way to explain why there’s such a wide distribution of gleyed paddy soil,” Fa Shilu said. “Meitaiyang has not only been cultivated in history, but paddy cultivation was also quite extensive. It was eventually abandoned due to soil problems.”

He said this because paddy soil is essentially an artificial soil, developed from the annual irrigation and waterlogging of rice-growing areas. Such a soil structure does not generally occur in nature.

“Master, we call this ‘rust water paddy field’ here,” Lu Jia interjected. “The surface of the paddy field often has a layer of oily, red, rusty stuff. Actually, there are also some ‘rotten wet fields’ over there, by the small hills—”

“Rotten wet fields?” Wu Nan Hai’s interest was piqued. “Has your family ever cultivated them?”

“No,” Lu Jia shook his head. “Farming here is a losing business. Apart from the Hoklo people who come here to reclaim the land without knowing any better, no one in the county would farm here.”

“Let’s go and have a look,” Fa Shilu suggested.

They soon arrived at a piece of land at the foot of a slope. At first glance, it looked like an ordinary piece of wasteland, but upon closer inspection, they could see signs of cultivation. The ridges of the fields were still faintly visible.

“Hoklo people used to farm here, but the harvest failed completely,” Lu Jia said. “Water would just bubble up from the fields and flood the rice.”

They dug another test pit. The situation here was even worse than the other side. They hit water almost as soon as they started digging, and in some places, there were even springs. Due to long-term waterlogging, the soil was oversaturated, extremely dispersed, heavy and sticky, and paste-like, making it very difficult to cultivate. The soil layers were not distinct.

“The fertility of this soil can’t be good,” Wu Nan Hai said, fiddling with the mud. He separated many dead leaves and withered grass from it, all of which were intact and had barely decomposed. “The organic matter is basically not decomposing.”

“Because it’s too sticky,” Fa Shilu said. “Air can’t get in. It’s like a sealed environment. How can organic matter decompose?” He shook his head. “This kind of field is even harder to deal with.”

Wu Nan Hai took this opportunity to give Lu Jia a five-minute lecture on what organic matter is, why it decomposes, and the benefits of organic matter decomposition for planting. Whether he understood it or not, he would just drill the concepts into him first.

“The key is still drainage,” Fa Shilu concluded.

To change this situation, simply improving the soil was not enough. The fundamental problem had to be solved: internal waterlogging.

“To solve the internal waterlogging,” Yan Quezhi said, pointing to the survey map, “we need to expand the scale of the drainage channels. The groundwater level is too high. It needs to be lowered by at least 1 to 1.2 meters to be suitable for farming. If necessary, we’ll have to add another dedicated water pump. The five planned drainage branch channels may not be enough; we need to add three more.”

“In that case, your river levee project won’t be small either.”

“The river levee is already part of the Wenlan River basin renovation plan,” Yan Quezhi said. “According to Director Ma’s plan, the entire water level of the Wenlan River will be raised by 100 centimeters in the future to facilitate navigation. All the current riverside facilities are planned according to this scheme.”

According to the plan, a large riverside dam would first be built along the development zone to separate the river from the entire high-yield, stable-yield field area and to defend against possible floods during the rainy season. Sluice gates for the water channels would be installed on the levee. In addition, a steam pumping station would be installed, using steam engines as power for irrigation and drainage.