Expedition to Europe

Half a month later, if residents near Sishui chose wheat after a day's work, they would directly receive flour.

After two months of hard work, a flour mill was finally completed and successfully put into production.

What was unexpected was that this was originally a move to benefit the people, but it became a "political disorder" for the residents.

For the Chinese living in the north of the Republic of China, wheat is not only flour for people to eat, but also feed for raising poultry and livestock. If it is a famine season, even bran and chaff are food for people, and there is no waste at all.

Uh... this description is inaccurate.

The Chinese diet during the Republic of China was mainly composed of grains such as corn, sweet potatoes, and potatoes. There was not much flour. Even the landlords could not eat flour every day. Every year, except for the New Year and the busy farming season, they were mostly based on grains.

It was really not happy to live in the Republic of China. In addition to natural disasters, there were more man-made disasters. In the land of China, except for those bureaucrats and compradors, ordinary people really didn't have a good life.

It really fits the saying: The landlords don't have surplus food!

The government of the Grand Duchy of Lanfang, where even the "relief grain" is fine grain, is unique in Asia, not to mention the Republic of China.

If this news spread back to the Republic of China, this alone would probably attract most of the Chinese in the Republic of China to immigrate to the Grand Duchy of Lanfang, and even those small and medium-sized landlords would sell their property and move their families.

It would be nonsense to say that the landlords of the Republic of China at that time did not rob and plunder, but more landlords relied on hard work to set up their next family business. During the busy farming season, even landlords had to work in the fields.

And hardworking and down-to-earth people, even in the Grand Duchy of Lanfang, would set up their next family business with their own hands.

Successful people naturally have reasons for their success, and they are not necessarily as unreliable as described in film and television works.

Half a month after the start of work-for-relief, the civil officials responsible for distributing supplies found that the nutritional status of the Chinese who worked had not improved, and many people were still weak and frail.

It doesn't make sense?

Although these Chinese were generally malnourished when they arrived at the Grand Duchy of Lanfang, after more than half a month of recuperation, they ate well and slept well every day. Even if they did not gain much weight in a short period of time, at least their mental state should have improved significantly, and it should not be like this.

After careful questioning, the civil affairs officials got a ridiculous answer.

Although these Chinese received enough food, they were reluctant to eat. Except for women and children who could eat half full, these adults had very low material requirements, as long as they did not starve to death.

How could that be possible?

After the problem was fed back to the cabinet, the cabinet immediately made a decision to continue to give food, wheat for wheat, rice for rice, and flour for flour. At the same time, cooking began on the construction site, and they could eat whatever they wanted every day.

Even if they could eat whatever they wanted, these adults were still reluctant to eat. They would rather take the prepared meals home than fill their stomachs.

So the cabinet made another decision that the meals on the construction site were not allowed to be taken home.

This was a big deal. The Chinese ate desperately, and many people even had to be sent to the hospital because they ate too much.

So the cabinet once again issued a regulation that meals must be eaten at regular times and in fixed quantities.

At this point, the problem was finally solved.

Do these new immigrants seem to be unusually cunning and slippery?

In fact, they are not. They are just afraid of being hungry.

The uncertainty of the future, the lack of understanding of themselves, and the distrust of social security have caused the Chinese to have a very obvious sense of crisis. As the saying goes: Born in worry and die in comfort.

This sense of crisis has been deeply rooted in the bones, and it is more obvious when living in a foreign country.

Statistics show that the Chinese are the most savings-oriented people in the world.

For Chinese farmers, whether it is a good year or a bad year, they always have to store enough food at home for several years to feel a little safe, otherwise they feel that they are in danger of dying.

The same is true for the Chinese in the Grand Duchy of Lanfang.

In fact, many people already have a lot of food stored at home, and they want wheat instead of flour because wheat is easier to store than flour.

Although there was food at home, people still felt it was far from enough, so the small bags for storing food were replaced with large bags, one bag became two bags, then three bags, four bags...

The Chinese were like squirrels in winter, desperately storing more supplies in the cave to cope with the cold winter.

These grains were treated much better than people. They were placed in the best rooms, not touching the ground to prevent moisture, and not seeing the sky to prevent rain. Even if people slept in the yard, they had to ensure that the grain was perfectly stored.

This was the experience passed down by our ancestors for thousands of years to fight against natural disasters and man-made disasters. No one could reverse it, unless one day, there was no place to store the grain in the farmers' homes, and the annual increase in grain far exceeded the consumption of grain, which would allow farmers to take the initiative to reduce the grain stored at home.

While using work-for-relief, the work of allocating land to new immigrants was also in progress.

Before the establishment of the Grand Duchy of Lanfang, most of the land in Borneo was in the hands of plantation owners such as Huang Bohan. In order to better control the economy of Borneo, the Dutch colonial government forced the development of plantations and implemented a "forced planting system" to force farmers to use the best land to plant crops designated by the colonial government, mainly coffee, sugarcane, tea, tobacco, pepper, etc., and stipulated that the planting area of ​​such crops should account for at least 1/5 of the total cultivated land area. Of course, the actual proportion is much higher than this.

Borneo has therefore become a base for providing tropical cash crop products to European countries.

After 1870, the Dutch colonial authorities began to implement the "plantation" policy. At this time, the crops planted had become sugarcane, palm trees, rubber trees, etc., and the export products had also become sugar, palm oil, palm kernels, natural rubber, etc.

It cannot be said that planting cash crops is a wrong practice, but for a country, relying entirely on imports for food is not a long-term solution. Therefore, after the establishment of the Grand Duchy of Lanfang, under the instruction of Qin Zhiyuan, the cabinet made strategic adjustments to the planting structure.

The local climate in Borneo is hot and not suitable for growing wheat, but it is very suitable for growing rice, especially Java Island, which is densely covered with water networks and flat terrain, making it the most suitable place for growing rice.

The original text can be read in Liu # 9 @Book/Bar!

So all residents of Java Island can obtain 100 acres of land for farming, and all of these lands will be planted with rice, striving to achieve food self-sufficiency within two years.

The two-year time limit is actually a bit low. In Borneo, rice can be planted three times a year. Under normal circumstances, food self-sufficiency should be achieved in one year.

The land here is so fertile that you don’t have to do anything after planting the seedlings. You can harvest the rice in a few months. The yield is much higher than the domestic land that has been cultivated for thousands of years and is already barren.

The Biological Research Institute of Corsica is studying hybrid rice. It is estimated that there will be no results in one or two years, but once there are results, the rice on Java Island alone can feed hundreds of millions or even hundreds of millions of people.

Given that these new immigrants had no means of production, a national agricultural mutual aid cooperative was established at the fastest speed. Farmers could borrow money from the cooperative at very low interest rates and then purchase means of production for agricultural production.

This agricultural mutual aid cooperative is actually a primary bank, and Huang Bohan had a bank in his previous industry, so he was familiar with this.

Huang Bohan was very self-aware. He provided a team of people for the agricultural mutual aid cooperative, designed a charter, and then handed over the management of the agricultural mutual aid cooperative to the cabinet, and he himself did not care about anything and became a hands-off boss.

At Huang Bohan's level, he was already one of the richest people in the world. Money had little meaning to him. He even took the lead in donating all his plantations to the Grand Duchy of Lan Fang to cooperate with the Grand Duchy of Lan Fang's land nationalization policy.

That's right, land nationalization!

The Grand Duchy of Lan Fang recognized the sanctity of private property, but not land.

In the Grand Duchy of Lanfang, all land belongs to the state. The people only have the right to use the land, not the ownership. Therefore, the land cannot be transferred. If you want to plant, you can plant. If you don't want to plant, you can give it to the state. The sale of land is absolutely prohibited.

Corresponding to rice planting is state-owned farms.

State-owned farms are mainly those plantations that have already started production. Except for Java Island, all of them, including Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Papua Island, are plantations, planting rubber trees, palm trees, sugarcane, coffee, cocoa and other cash crops.

For a period of time, agriculture is still the pillar industry of the Grand Duchy of Lanfang. If industry wants to take effect, it may take some time.

Compared with agriculture, the construction period of industry is longer. Even a medium-sized steel plant has a construction period of years. Before, the Grand Duchy of Lanfang had no other heavy industry except for the initial exploitation of oil.

To develop industry, steel and oil are indispensable. If steel is the skeleton, then oil is the blood.

The Grand Duchy of Lanfang is not short of oil. The oil fields in Balikpapan have been initially developed. The oil produced is not only sold to Europe, but also exported to Japan and other places in Asia. However, due to the lack of refining equipment, crude oil is generally exported directly.

A large oil refinery is now under construction in Balikpapan. After the construction is completed, refined oil can be directly exported to gain more profits.

The iron ore in the Grand Duchy of Lanfang is mainly concentrated in the Padang area. The iron ore reserves here are about 280 million tons. It is a low-titanium magnetite with an ore grade of 67%. However, Qin Zhiyuan does not want to move this mine, because Australia, which is just across the sea, has the richest mineral reserves in the world. If you want to solve the problem once and for all, you still have to find a way to get the iron ore in Australia.

Australia is still a British territory. Although it has considerable autonomy, its internal and foreign affairs are still controlled by the British. At the same time, the nominal leader of Australia is still the governor sent by the British. Because of Australia's performance in the world war, the British still value Australia very much.

So how to get the iron ore from Australia smoothly becomes a very serious problem. Britain treats Qin Zhiyuan differently from France. If it is not handled well, it will be a wedding dress for the British.

Yeah, this is indeed a big problem.