Chapter 48: The First Fertilizer Plant

“You speak wisely, my lord.”

“Go and prepare. I might be late tonight. Keep the Jasmine Room reserved; I have some business to discuss.”

“I understand,” Chuqing nodded.

“Chief, let me help you!” Fu Buer, his face flushed, hurried to turn around after getting off the train and supported the slightly tipsy Wanli Huang.

“It’s nothing, I… I’m still fine!” Wanli Huang waved his hand, but his head hung low and he couldn’t lift it. At noon, several overly excited landlords had competed to toast him. The wine was a light and easy-to-drink fruit wine, and he had inevitably had a few too many cups. Now, he was more than a little dizzy.

Sitting behind them, Wu Nanhai was secretly displeased. Although Wanli Huang was a young man, he was still a Transmigrator—a “chief.” Besides, today was a workday. To be dead drunk at noon was truly unseemly. Especially since there were many Transmigrators from other departments attending today’s ceremony. It was a bad look for someone from the Agriculture Committee to be drunk at noon.

He quietly instructed his accompanying secretary to quickly take Wanli Huang to the station house to rest and to skip today’s opening ceremony.

The station sign behind them read “Maniao Industrial Zone Station,” but this group of people, who had drunk too much strong liquor at noon and whose heads were still not quite clear, looked at the completely different scenery before them. It didn’t match their impression of Maniao at all, and they immediately became excited.

In the center of the straight, cinder-paved road, four steel rails ran straight into the sea. On both sides were neat, empty plots of land, marked out with lime. In the distance, by the shore, stood several huge, box-like buildings. One towered into the clouds, a massive, gourd-shaped “chimney” spewing thick smoke. The roar of steam engines echoed continuously.

“They say that’s the chiefs’ ironworks!”

“I’ve heard that too. The big furnace in there can produce tens of thousands of jin of iron at once!”

“Really? No wonder they say the chiefs have the power of gods and spirits!”

Instantly, the group began to buzz with excited chatter, as if they too shared in the glory.

This group of people, standing at the end of the road, gazing at the miracle of modern industry, was composed of some Transmigrators from the agriculture department and naturalized citizen agricultural technicians, but the majority were activists from the Tiandi Hui. They included new landlords with experience in large-scale land collectivization, as well as middle and rich peasants who were successful in sideline businesses.

This autumn harvest in Lingao had been very fruitful. The Tiandi Hui had held a thanksgiving banquet. At noon, Ye Yuming had hosted them at the Shangguan Restaurant and then brought them all here, saying that a major project was officially starting today and inviting everyone to come and see.

Although the group had heard of the Maniao Industrial Zone, the station behind them was normally off-limits to ordinary people. Only those who worked in the Maniao Industrial Zone could enter and exit freely here.

The blast furnace in the distance was truly eye-catching. In comparison, the few newly built houses on the slope to their side were not so remarkable. The dozen-meter-high, thin chimneys were a common sight in Bairen City.

Dong!… Dong!… Dong!…

A series of loud bangs suddenly erupted, breaking the excitement and scaring a few of the landlords who had drunk too much at noon so much that they almost collapsed to the ground.

“Hehe, everyone, don’t worry, don’t worry. That’s the forge hammer at the steel mill starting up. It’s nothing,” Wu Nanhai said with a smile, waving his hand. He and a few other Transmigrators led the way towards a row of bamboo fences. Several naturalized citizens responsible for reception quickly guided everyone to follow.

Today was the opening day of the Lingao First Fertilizer Plant. After three months of infrastructure construction and one month of installation and debugging, this largest chemical project in this timeline, and also the Transmigrators’ first purely civilian chemical project, was about to officially start.

With the increasing number of immigrants in Lingao, although the trade department had been working hard to import grain from outside the island and expand grain reserves, and the grain price on the market was still relatively normal, importing grain was not economical. It not only consumed a large amount of funds but also took up a lot of transport capacity. Lingao’s sea transport capacity had always been extremely tight.

Therefore, tapping into the internal potential of agriculture was also put on the agenda. In the 43rd year of the Wanli reign (1615), the official “fish-scale registers” of Hainan recorded 3.835 million mu of land. After a comprehensive survey of the land in northern Hainan, the hidden fields in the northern region were roughly identified. Including the southern region, which had not yet been fully surveyed, the total developed wet and dry fields in Hainan were at least 6 million mu. If the average yield per mu increased by 10 kilograms, that would be 60,000 tons of grain, enough to feed 200,000 people. Even considering only the several hundred thousand mu of land directly controlled by the Agriculture Committee, the increase in yield would not be a small number.

New agricultural machinery, new seeds, new water conservancy, and new agricultural technologies were all being gradually promoted, but fertilizer was undoubtedly the most direct and effective technical means. The previous small-scale projects were naturally not enough.

So, as the overall person in charge of this agricultural production increase plan, Wu Nanhai, with the enthusiastic cooperation of Luo Duo and a group of people from the Great Library, and after repeated consultations with the Planning Commission and the industrial department, came up with this truly modern fertilizer plant plan: the first phase of the project was 10,000 tons of ordinary superphosphate and a supporting sulfuric acid plant with a 4,000-ton sulfuric acid production increase project.

Calculated at a usage rate of 30 kilograms per mu for grain cultivation, the total requirement for the 6 million mu in Hainan would be 180,000 tons. This 10,000-ton production was naturally just a small trial.

The Planning Commission and the chemical industry department were quite supportive of the fertilizer project. However, both the Planning Commission and the chemical industry department were originally inclined to expand the production capacity of synthetic ammonia or ammonium bicarbonate fertilizer. Besides its use in agriculture, it also had great value in the chemical industry and for military explosives.

The chemical industry department had already expanded its synthetic ammonia production capacity to 2,000 tons per year by replicating and improving the equipment of the original 800-ton synthetic ammonia project.

However, the shortcomings in Lingao’s equipment manufacturing and materials made further expansion of the synthetic ammonia industry’s production capacity an difficult goal to achieve. The synthetic ammonia industry involved a variety of alloy steels, materials that were currently difficult for them to supply stably—both in terms of quantity and quality. In particular, a considerable portion of the alloy steels involved the mining and smelting of silver and chromium ores. The small amount of alloy steel, special steel, and non-ferrous metals they currently used, apart from a few types that could be self-produced, basically came from the inventory brought by the St. Ship. This inventory was very limited, and its use had to be very cautious.

The Planning Commission and the main technical Transmigrators from the machinery and chemical industry departments held multiple discussions and finally concluded that launching a larger-scale synthetic ammonia project was beyond the support capacity of Lingao’s current industrial system and industrial chain.

Ultimately, the Planning Commission adopted the technical route proposed by the Agriculture Committee: “promoting nitrogen with phosphorus” and prioritizing the construction of a phosphate fertilizer plant.

Phosphate fertilizer was historically the first industrially applied fertilizer. Phosphorus is an important soil element. Phosphate fertilizer not only increases the yield of common gramineous forage grasses but also has a very good yield-increasing effect on leguminous forage crops such as Chinese milk vetch. And planting leguminous green manure in winter increases soil organic matter and fertility—leguminous crops have a nitrogen-fixing effect, which acts as a natural application of nitrogen fertilizer. This is the so-called “promoting nitrogen with phosphorus.”

Leguminous crops can not only be used for oil extraction but also have a wider use as feed. The Senate attached great importance to the livestock and poultry industry and needed a huge amount of feed. The widespread planting of leguminous green manure in winter was a matter of killing multiple birds with one stone.

The fields in southern China are generally deficient in phosphorus, and Lingao was no exception. To increase phosphate fertilizer, besides applying phosphorus-containing slag, the Agriculture Committee also made extensive use of the by-products from seafood processing. But these fertilizers were just a drop in the bucket for the vast fields, far from enough. As for the guano mined from the Dongsha Islands, its effect was very slow when applied directly to the fields and could only be used as a base fertilizer.

The phosphate fertilizer production line of the Lingao First Fertilizer Plant used guano as raw material, treated it with sulfuric acid to produce ordinary superphosphate, the main active ingredient of which is Ca(H2PO4)2. Superphosphate is a fast-acting phosphate fertilizer, convenient to use, and can be applied in conjunction with modern agricultural techniques. Once the phosphate fertilizer plant is put into operation, the effect on yield increase will be immediate.

According to technical materials on modern fertilizers, calculated at a 25% utilization rate, each kilogram of phosphate fertilizer can increase grain yield by 4-8 kilograms. This 10,000 tons of phosphate fertilizer is equivalent to an increase in grain production of 4-80,000 tons. And this only requires a few hundred people.

“This is the magic of industrialized agriculture,” Wu Nanhai thought, looking up with a smile at the gate of the Lingao First Fertilizer Plant. Compared to the simple bamboo fence, the factory gate was quite luxurious, a stone memorial archway. This stone archway was originally carved by a local landlord for his family’s ancestral tomb. Later, this landlord was accused of “colluding with bandits,” and his entire family was forced to flee to the mainland. All his property was confiscated, and this archway became the property of the Planning Commission. The plaque on it was inscribed by Liu Dalin. Although this jinshi (a successful candidate in the highest imperial examinations) did not know what chemical fertilizer was, let alone phosphate fertilizer, he understood that it could increase production.

Since it could increase grain production, it was a great act of good governance, so Jinshi Liu did not hesitate to write these few large characters.

“Jinshi Liu’s calligraphy is really good. Hmm… like a dragon flying and a phoenix dancing…” Wu Nanhai was quite pleased with himself—he had been the one to request the calligraphy. Although he knew basically nothing about calligraphy.

Inside the factory, a crowd of people had gathered, and colorful flags were fluttering. Everything was ready, just waiting for them.

A group of Transmigrators, led by Ma Qianzhu, was already standing in front of the rostrum for the opening ceremony. Ji Tui Si, however, was smoking under the rostrum, watching with a smile as the increasingly portly Wu Nanhai walked over. He waved his hand dismissively at Wu Nanhai’s repeated apologies for being late.

“Old Wu, you’re looking well,” Ji Tui Si said, patting Wu Nanhai’s shoulder.

“Not bad, not bad,” Wu Nanhai said. He knew that Ji Tui Si had been a great help with the fertilizer plant. Of course, the fertilizer plant and the supporting sulfuric acid project were, in the end, still projects of the chemical industry department, so helping him was also helping himself. But this favor was still a heavy one. He repeatedly clasped his hands in a gesture of respect and said half-jokingly, “Great kindness needs no thanks.”

“Not at all, not at all,” Ji Tui Si said, feeling quite spirited due to the recent continuous projects of the chemical industry department. “We are helping each other. We will have to cooperate even better in the future.”