Chapter 500 - Breeding Base (2/2)
The imperial court fell silent. The ministers, who strongly opposed appointing Yu Xiaocao as an official, had their heads hanging down. Their faces burned as if they were slapped multiple times! The emperor always appointed people according to their abilities and merits. He had stubbornly appointed a young girl from a peasant family as an official even though half of the imperial court opposed this idea. He didn’t want to overlook a farming genius just because of her background or gender.
After the emperor ascended the throne, in order to save some expenses for the imperial treasury, he insisted on using the former imperial palace. Some of the more remote and desolate palaces were starting to fall apart, yet he refused to repair the buildings. In order to prevent the wasting of manpower and resources, he even canceled the drafting of young ladies to the imperial harem that usually occurred once every three years. The emperor’s harem, including the empress, consisted of no more than ten women! The emperor and the empress also had their expenses cut down by keeping their longevity celebrations simple. The celebration cost no more than one thousand taels of silver, which meant that it cost even less than the birthday celebration of a wealthy merchant.
The imperial family was naturally frugal because the funds in the imperial treasury were not abundant. In the past ten years since the emperor’s ascension to the throne, he had worked diligently for the people, encouraged people to open up land for farming, lowered taxes again and again, and he even gave the people who suffered from war and disasters an opportunity to live a good life. Even so, many people in various places still could not fill their stomachs because the grain output was too low! After an ordinary family worked for an entire year, the remaining money they had after they paid the rent for the farm was barely enough to make ends meet.
If the yield per mu was increased by three to four times, then the tenant farmers would still have surplus money after paying for rent and food. If the people were well off, then the nation would be stable. Wasn’t this what all rulers wished for? There were hundreds of officials in court, but the generals were the ones who built this country, and the ministers were the ones who ruled this country. Yet it was a young girl whom everyone looked down upon who ended up stabilizing this country!
Now, it was impossible for the ministers to reject the result. Official Yu used her extraordinary ability to win the recognition of the hundreds of civil and military officials in court! Her accomplishments were gradually revealed to the people!
Some of the high yielding winter wheat seeds were stored to be planted in the Imperial Plantation next year, and the remaining ones were sold to the poor people in the north at ordinary prices. In order to prevent certain landowners and officials from monopolizing the seeds, the court had dispatched an imperial envoy to preside over the sale of the seeds.
The Imperial Plantation and Yu Family’s farmstead in Tanggu Town only totaled around four to five thousand mu of land. The average yield per mu was around seven hundred catties, so they produced over three million catties of wheat seeds. It took fifteen catties of seeds to plant one mu of land. This meant that the seeds that they currently had could only supply the planting for around two hundred thousand mu of land. This was far from enough since the Great Ming Dynasty had over six hundred million mu of arable farmland!
The emperor asked the imperial hidden guards to secretly count the land in the outskirts of the capital and the nearby Zhou prefecture that belonged to the officials and wealthy merchants. The area of arable land unexpectedly exceeded one hundred thousand mu. If all these farmsteads could be used to breed the seeds, then they would be able to supply enough seeds for the nine million mu of land! If this happened, then they would be one step closer to their goal of growing high yielding wheat all over the north!
The emperor asked Chief Steward Su Ran to gather these people together and announce that the court had expropriated their land. Of course, their farmsteads would not be used in vain. The seeds will be distributed by the court, and the harvested grains can only be sold to the court. The court was willing to pay ten copper coins per catty to buy the wheat harvested from the land.
The highest price for wheat in the market was only five copper coins per catty. The owners of these farmsteads would earn a huge profit, so why wouldn’t they agree? The imperial court signed a ten-year agreement with the owners of the farmsteads. They agreed that the court was going to decide what they will plant and how they will plant it for the next ten years. When they harvested the crops, the court will send a commissioner to buy all the crops.
The crops planted by each farmstead were different. Some planted winter wheat while other farmsteads planted spring seedings, so the process was quite chaotic. Therefore, the agreement went into effect after this current autumn harvest ended. The beginning of the agreement started once winter wheat was planted in the ground.
After the winter wheat was harvested, both the Imperial Plantation and the farmstead at Tanggu Town wildly proclaimed that they were now planting corn and potatoes. The climate in the northeastern and northwestern regions was harsher, and the land was more barren, so crops like corn and potatoes were more suitable for planting than wheat. Last year, many villagers from the suburbs of the capital came to the capital and frantically bought some corn seeds before returning. They immediately started planting the seeds at the start of spring. According to their feedback, the corn was growing very well; however, the specific output of the crop would not be unknown until harvest season in the fall.
The two farmsteads already had some experience with planting corn. Before she started planting the seeds, Yu Xiaocao walked around the well water at the edge of the Imperial Plantation. She increased the concentration of the mystic-stone water that had already gradually weakened. She also put on an act and walked around the fields a few times with her hands clasped behind her back. Her task was now completed!
At this time, the peaches and plums at the back of the farmstead already began to mature. Because she had urgently required fruit trees at the time and couldn’t pick and choose, they now had a wide variety of peaches growing on the hill.. A few of the trees there were grafted with Dongshan Village’s honey peach branches, and the resulting peaches were large and sweet. As for the other varieties available, they had the sweet and crunchy big white peaches, sweet and sour juicy blood peaches that looked as red as blood, and the sour and sweet crispy yellow peaches. Regardless of the variety of peach, all of the peaches produced at the fruit orchard were large and numerous. There were so many peaches on the trees that the branches were slightly bent from the weight.