African Entrepreneurship Records

  Chapter 159 Experimental Base

   Looking at the thriving experimental base in front of him, which was built at a speed visible to the naked eye, Anton Perutz was quite satisfied.

  Anton Perutz and his party are the strange strangers in the eyes of the residents of Second Town.

  After all, compared with the immigrants, Anton Perutz and his party are all in suits and shoes, and there are people sent by the East African colonial government to follow them. They are incredible people at first glance.

  The second town was also notified to cooperate with the work of Anton Perutz and others. In order to build the experimental base of the East African Institute of Tropical Agriculture, the second town was full of people and places.

  Actually, Anton Perutz, who had just arrived in the second town, was taken aback at the beginning. From the moment he passed through the urban area of ​​the first town, Anton Perutz wondered if this was the overseas branch of the Kingdom of Prussia.

  The uniform Prussian military uniform shocked every researcher in Anton Perutz's team.

   Fortunately, there were accompanying officials from the East African colonial government as guides, which solved many doubts of Anton Perutz and others.

  However, Anton Perutz and his scientific research team were still shocked by Ernst's generous work in the East African colonies.

  It must have cost a lot of money just to dress a million people, which is absolutely astronomical for ordinary people in this era.

  This is indeed the case, except that Ernst bought a large number of Prussian second-hand military uniforms from the Prussian government in the early days, and later simply bought a factory to produce "monkey version" Prussian military uniforms for supply to East Africa.

After all, the Prussian army only has hundreds of thousands of people. There are so many second-hand military uniforms for Ernst to prostitute for free. In addition, he was not close to the Austrian royal family at the beginning, so Ernst did not expect to buy some second-hand goods from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Save some costs, and the big white military uniform in Austria is not resistant to dirt, can immigrants look at it when they go to work in the fields?

The "monkey version" of the Prussian military uniform has also made many modifications for the East African region. The weather in East Africa is like summer all year round, so there is no need for so much fabric, so save it; the weird pointed helmet of Prussia, let alone whether it is useful , Ernst didn't like it purely from the aesthetic aspect, so production was discontinued; what's the use of so many buttons? cut; belt? What kind of belt do you want, a unified hair root rope...

  The modified "monkey version" of the Prussian military uniform is completely unrecognizable, but it is still very conservative. After all, the strong ultraviolet rays in East Africa prevent it from becoming short-sleeved, and Ernst did not save these fabrics.

Therefore, the "monkey version" of the Prussian military uniform has a three-point overall appearance, and the appearance of the Prussian military uniform can be seen. In addition, the second-hand Prussian military uniforms of early immigrants are mixed in. Anton Perutz and others still saw the East African colonies at first glance. Almost all the people are dressed in Prussian military uniforms.

  In the past month, Anton Peruz and others have gradually gotten used to the dress of East African residents.

  Anton Perutz's experimental base was built on the east bank of the Little Rhine River, directly occupying a lot of cultivated land developed by the second town. In addition to the undeveloped land, the fertile land alone covers an area of ​​more than 700 mu.

   Covering the southern hills and the northern plains as well as the depressions along the Little Rhine, the natural conditions and topography are very favorable.

  The Little Rhine guarantees water supply, hills, plains, and depressions can provide a variety of terrain materials.

There are windmills on the bank to lift water, which can continuously supply water to the fields. According to the requirements of Anton Perutz, the fields are made of stones and soil to form water-retaining ridges, and are divided into plots of different sizes for convenience. Observe the growth traits of crops under different planting scales.

   There is also a gate for discharging water in the field to control the amount of water in the field, and to switch between paddy fields and dry fields at any time.

   Around the base, buildings such as laboratories, archives, warehouses and staff dormitories have been built. The equipment in the laboratory is all imported from Europe, including microscopes, petri dishes, calipers... everything is available.

   There are botanical gardens, vegetable plots and gardens, and a part of the land is also planned for tree planting.

   This is the main place for Anton Perutz’s work and research in the future. In fact, Anton Perutz’s team can take the initiative to conduct field research throughout East Africa.

  In Germany, although Anton Perutz has superior hardware facilities, East Africa is the paradise of Anton Perutz, a tropical botanist.

  Plants that could only be seen through materials and specimens can now be seen locally, and East Africa has a vast area, with rainforests, grasslands, mountains, deserts... various types of tropical climates.

  …

  Anton Perutz's experimental base has not yet opened, but it does not prevent him from giving lessons to the students first.

  “The local conditions in East Africa are very conducive to agricultural development. Of course, it is its shortcomings that determine the agricultural potential of a region.

  Agriculture and plant growth are inseparable from the four factors of land, heat, water, and light.

  Taking East Africa as an example, the short board that determines the agricultural potential of East Africa is the land in East Africa. Of course, the terrain in East Africa is fairly flat, and the main problem is the soil. "

  The trainees followed Anton Perutz, trying to record Anton Perutz's words.

   "The energy output of the land in the tropics is actually much higher than that in the middle and high latitudes, but this energy cannot be effectively absorbed by the soil, but is stored in the plants and animals in the tropics.

  This is why tropical areas have dense vegetation, but the soil fertility is not as good as that in temperate and frigid areas.

   Tropical lands are not barren, but these nutrients do not seep into the soil, which our crops need. "Anton Perutz said his own opinion.

   "Professor, since you said that the tropical soil cannot store nutrients, isn't this land still barren?" Some students questioned.

"This is what I want to tell you next. What is soil? In my understanding, it is 'sand' with impurities, but these 'sands' are more delicate than sand in the desert, and can be combined in At the same time, there are nutrients in the soil that we cannot see with the naked eye, and the amount of these nutrients determines the fertility of the soil."

Speaking of which, Anton Perutz grabbed a handful of soil from the ground and said in his hand: "Look, the soil here is dark red. Many places in the low latitudes are red soil, while the middle latitudes are white soil. The latitudes turn into black soil again.

  So the latitude changes, the soil color changes, and the soil fertility also changes, but we know that the vegetation at high latitudes is actually not as good as that in the tropics.

  This involves the factors of sunlight and precipitation. Plants need sunlight and water to grow. Without these two, most plants will die.

  The existence of tropical rainforest just shows that the nutrients produced in the tropics are much higher than those in the cold zone, but once we use the red land in the tropics to grow food crops, the effect is not as good as the black soil in the middle and high latitudes.

This shows that a large amount of nutrients in tropical soil have been taken away. This is definitely not the cause of vegetation, because there are still large areas of vegetation in high latitudes, and high latitudes cause many plants to fail to grow because of low temperatures. The temperature factor should not be the same. The main culprit can only be considered from the aspect of water.

  Early civilizations were born in areas where rivers were silted up. Agriculture like ancient Egypt thrived on the flooding of the Nile River.

  The rivers in the tropical rainforest are denser and the water volume is larger, but why there is no such effect!

  Because the rivers in the tropical rainforest hardly silt up the soil, but will take away the nutrients in the soil along the coast.

  East Africa is also tropical, but the precipitation is average, but this situation does not exist, so the study of soil fertility is less about the relationship between soil and water.

  Of course, this is just my guess, and we still need to verify its authenticity through experiments in the future.

   Only by mastering the law can we better prescribe the right medicine and improve the soil fertility in East Africa. "

  (end of this chapter)