Chapter 729: The Main Contradiction of the Era

Time passed quickly, and more than half a year was frittered away. Huaxia had a great Harvest of grain, including both cities and other towns. Because there was plenty of grain, after the new grain was collected, the old grain had to be cleared out of the Grain Storehouse to make room for the new.

The population of Huaxia continued to grow significantly, but newborns had almost no capacity to consume grain. The population was increasing, but it could not keep up with the speed of grain growth.

Huaxia had no choice but to provide most of the old grain to the Slaves to eat, and the wages of tenant farmers also increased by a lot; some more important job positions even saw a doubling.

In this way, the fruits of Huaxia's development were not only enjoyed by ordinary people, but even tenant farmers and Slaves enjoyed many dividends.

However, the problem of labor still existed. Looking at the whole world, Huaxia was still too small, so the annual grain yield had too great an impact on the entire country. If production decreased, they would have to rack their brains to solve it and consider the future even just to buy a Slave.

Now that there was plenty of grain, they began to consider how to consume this grain normally. Blindly building Grain Storehouses would not work either; the current Grain Storehouses were already numerous enough. The Grain Storehouses of the two cities were piled full, and the National Treasury of Lema City already stored enough grain for all the city's Residents to eat for a year.

Several towns had also built their own Grain Storehouses. Coupled with Huaxia's tax exemption and reduction policies, they did not need to hand over any grain; the output of a large amount of land was all stored by themselves.

As for the output of a portion of public land under the jurisdiction of the town government, Baifeng did not make them hand it over either, using it all for their future construction and as wages for those administrative personnel.

Regarding the current Huaxia, Baifeng also summarized the main contradiction of their current society: that is, the imbalance between surplus survival resources, backward production and construction capabilities, and a lack of consumer markets.

Many Residents already had enough grain to exchange for larger plots of land for their families and build larger houses, but there were only so many construction Workers in Huaxia. They were controlled by the state as a whole to be responsible for more important matters, and ordinary people simply could not wait for that opportunity.

With professional personnel in existence, they were also unwilling to build houses themselves, because in that case, they could not guarantee the quality of the house; not only would it waste grain, but it might not even be safe. The houses built by themselves in the outskirts of the city were a clear example; they were habitable, but they were already used to living in spacious, bright, and safe houses, so how would they be willing to live in those houses that looked shaky?

Another thing was the consumer market; there were too few places where grain could be converted into other materials. In the state-run market, the things that could be exchanged were limited. If one wanted to exchange for meat, meat was rationed every day and had to be fought for. There was plenty of Wine, but one could not exchange all the grain for Wine.

Everything was rationed, and there were not that many things available for them to exchange. Except for having more children and more mouths to feed, ordinary families really could not think of any other way to consume this excess grain.

As for the wealthy families, they did not even need Baifeng to think of a way now; they even wanted to donate the grain themselves to see where Baifeng could use it. Making more contributions to Huaxia was better than letting the grain go moldy in their own homes.

Baifeng did not know whether he should be happy or worried. More grain was definitely a great thing, but wanting to consume it in large quantities and bring about actual benefits was indeed somewhat difficult.

The cattle, sheep, and pigs in the Pasture had more feed, so their growth speed was faster, allowing them to be slaughtered in a shorter cycle and then turned into meat delivered to people's tables, and the meat was also very fatty.

However, expanding the Pasture and Breeding Farm was not an easy task. If expanding, where should the site be chosen? There was nowhere to go inside the city. Although outside the city was fine, the safety issue remained to be studied. After all, in that kind of situation in later generations, one would often hear news reports about fierce beasts attacking livestock.

Their Pasture outside the city had also been attacked before, and if it were expanded further, management would also be a troublesome matter.

However, Baifeng soon figured it out. There was no need for him to fix his thinking in this era. Why must cattle and sheep have a Pasture? In the past, it was because feed and forage were insufficient, and food was everywhere in the wilderness; in that situation, grazing was the best choice.

But now it was different. The stalks of various crops were all good feed for livestock, and oil dregs could be invested in large quantities without regard for cost. So, wouldn't it be fine to directly transform the Pasture into a Breeding Farm?

With a more intensive breeding scale, it would occupy less land, and there would be no need for herdsmen to graze; they would only need to feed grass and water on time. Baifeng acted as soon as he thought of it, gathered the people from the Agriculture Department, and announced this plan to them.

The people from the Agriculture Department did not have much experience in this area either. Even for pigs, they were semi-free-range. Baifeng proposed comprehensive pen-rearing, where they would be kept in such a pen from birth to death; they still could not quite imagine it.

However, Baifeng had long been used to those things, but he also knew that the problems that needed to be considered for large-scale pen-rearing of livestock were no fewer than free-range, and perhaps even more. With intensive pen-rearing, one had to consider the issue of hygiene, the prevention and control of epidemics, and the breeding of livestock.

When free-ranging, all of these followed Nature; they were allowed to mate and breed, and they could raise their young themselves. Feces were left on the ground, which became fertilizer. Herdsmen only needed to care about whether the livestock could all return to the pen at night and whether they would be attacked by wild beasts.

Baifeng could not say much about the flu. The viruses and bacteria of this era were too simple. If a person from later generations brought whatever bacteria or viruses they had on them, they could completely and easily create a mass extinction in this era.

This era might also have bird flu, but it was probably very difficult for it to occur and spread in the wilderness. However, large-scale intensive breeding, accumulation of feces, and foul air would really easily produce some epidemics.

By then, the entire breeding industry of Huaxia might be completely finished, and it would have to start from scratch. If it could also be transmitted to humans, then Huaxia would face an apocalyptic disaster.

So Baifeng still had to consider the issues of site selection and management. The site selection must be downwind of Huaxia City, preferably outside the city. At worst, he would build a sufficiently high wall for the Breeding Farm to deal with those wild beasts. Anyway, if it were built inside the city, the risk would indeed be too high.