Alexander sat in the second-floor outer hall, where he was holding council with his advisors, two days after he had moved in.
“So, where are we with the farmers?” Alexander asked Menicus from sitting at the head of the table.
Food was the most important resource for Alexander to secure right now and overseeing its production was his first and foremost priority.
“We have done as you have instructed comma…pasha,” Meniscus replied, slightly calling Alexander by the wrong title.
And then continued, “The surrounding land had fortunately been already titled by the women folk under the instructions of the nobles and so the twenty thousand slaves had little problem planting the wheat and rye.”
This instruction to plant seeds was given five days into his stay in Zanzan, when the city had mostly been cleaned and so Alexander had charged Menicus, the most experienced in his group, to lead the twenty thousand slaves out of the city to immediately start planting wheat, rye, oats and various other vegetables following a three-crop rotation system.
And almost a week later, it seemed that the seeds of the most important carbohydrate were in the soil.
Menicus continued reporting his progress, “As you have instructed, we have followed the new three-crop rotation plan, planting twelve thousand hectares with wheat and rye by once plowing the field, we also plan to soon plant another twelve thousand hectares with legumes such as peas, lentils, and oats after plowing the fields are complete, and the rest of the field will be plowed twice and left to fallow.” Menicus finished.
“Hmm, okay!” Alexander lightly smiled.
And then praised, “You did well to get the grains in the ground before November. Ideally, it should have been planted by September or early October, but even planting it late October like now is okay,”
“Hehe, no, no, this old man deserves no such credit. In fact, it’s Pasha Alexander who deserves all the praises,” Meniscus humbly chuckled.
And then explained, “The reason we could do so is because of the heavy plow and the horse collar. These are revolutionary tools invented by the divine son of Gaia. The slaves and farmers almost have foams coming out of their mouths singing their praise.”
“They say they have never seen the soil part so easily. It’s like drawing hot knife through butter. And they say horses and mules could never work as hard as they did before. These credits only belong to the great lord,” Meniscus had an excited, almost squealing tone to his praise as he sincerely expressed his admiration toward Alexander.
“…” Alexander only lightly smiled at these expected results as many others joined Menicus to flatter Alexander.
“Haha, of course, of course, it’s the great Alexander we’re talking about,” Menes roared uproariously.
“His inventions are always amazing,” Theocles added.
“With the great pasha at the helm. Zanzan will become the greatest city in Adhan,” The leader of the blacksmith guild Harun praised.
But the man being praised didn’t show much elation on his face, instead being careful not to be washed by the oil of flattery that came his way, as he knew Menicus had certainly embellished the truth.
Even with the heavy plow and having a beast of burden to pull, plowing a field of heavy clay was no ‘drawing hot knife through butter’.
It was back-breaking work with the plow requiring to be both pulled by the horse or mule and pushed from behind by the man to maximize speed.
There was another man that didn’t share the other’s enthusiasm, Melodias, who had a rather worried frown on his face.
“Ahem,” Melodias coughed a bit to draw attention towards him and then first praised Alexander, “Pasha, it is no doubt that these inventions are revolutionary.”
But afterward, he revealed his misgivings, “But the amount of land we are cultivating is too small to feed us till next year’s winter!”
He then delineated. “The native farmers tell me that a hectare can make about three hundred kilograms of wheat. With the twenty-four thousand hectares we plan to cultivate, that’s only about seven thousand tonnes of food. With its current population, Zanzan will use that up in less than four months, while the crops planted in spring will take six months!”
Menicus too joined to share his concern, as he then spoke up, “I too share Melodias’s fears, pasha. Even if we assume the new plows will increase yield, even if we assume it to be double, we will still be in trouble. Remember Pasha that more people will come to the cities once the news of the free food spreads, so food will run out much faster,” Menicus warned. 𝒃𝒆𝒐𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝙘𝙤𝒎
Alexander was very pleased by this exchange.
Not by the prediction of a shortage of food, that was terrible.
But what Alexander was pleased by was that the people around him were not boot-licking sycophants, constantly trying to suck up to him, but actual thinking, using their brains people.
They were not afraid to point out his mistakes and even criticize him on points they thought him to be wrong and many had learned Alexander’s preferred way of arguing and started to emulate it.
Like how Melodias had used maths to make his case, and even though the math was very simplistic and a bit wrong, like assuming every crop would have the same yield as wheat, it still made its point.
The numbers spelled out by Melodias were also spoken from a piece of papyrus, meaning Melodias had done his homework and came to this meeting prepared.
This made Alexander inwardly very happy as it meant that Melodias was very serious about his job and Alexander made up his mind to delegate various crucial jobs to the ex-mercenary leader.
Alexander was also pleased by the dynamic discussion going on as he felt that he could just draw a vague outline of a plan and then leave these people to figure the rest of it out on their own, thus drastically reducing his work burden.
Alexander gave a light smile towards the worried faces of the people around the table and spoke, “I’m aware of the problems you stated. And I even know that each farmer can cultivate around two-three hectares of land by himself. That comes to close to sixty thousand hectares of potentially arable land, whereas we are only cultivating less than half.”
Alexander then paused to see the others nod in agreement with his statement and then stare expectantly for his explanation.
“The reason for this is simple- we don’t have enough plows and pack animals. And more importantly, there is no time. November is upon us and any grain we plant now will only die and rot. That’s also why I put twenty thousand men on a ten thousand man farm, to get the seed into the ground as soon as possible.”
Alexander’s reasoning convinced his entourage, while some drew rueful breaths at the challenges that lay ahead.
Among the rueful ones was Menicus, who drew the heaviest breath, “*Sigh*, the pasha is right. We only have a thousand heavy plows and even with the horse collar, we can only get about a hectare done in a day per plow. If the pasha hadn’t ordered the tilting be done even at night with shifts, I’m afraid we wouldn’t even have what we planted.”
Due to time and cargo capacity constraints, Alexander could only bring a thousand plows with him which was proving to be too few and inadequate.
“So, that’s why the vegetables have not been planted, yet!” Melodias connected the dots.
“Yes. Although the horse collar has literally doubled the amount of work a horse can do, it’s still not enough,” Menicus drew the same rueful smile he had begun his speech with.
But for the doom and gloom that was going on, Alexander himself was not that worried.
He knew the effects of heavy plow on heavy clay soil and was confident that it would not just be a double increase, but a triple one or possibly even a quadruple one.
Heavy clay soil was problematic because it held onto water too well and didn’t drain properly, obstructing the breathing of the roots of the crops.
But when titled properly, it would transform into a very fertile form of soil, capable of producing yield far greater than the light soil dominant in Adhan.
Alexander expected the wheat to be close to a ton per hectare, and to boost yields even further in the future, he had begun to make the sanitation unit dump all the natural waste into the empty land that had been left to farrow, which would act as a natural fertilizer.
This a-ton-per-hectare yield was which was nothing impressive as, in his modern world, four tons of wheat per hectare was easily possible, though that was with the help of modern fertilizers and pesticides.
But for now, Alexander decided to stay quiet about this new tool, and reassured the men another way, “We have brought a lot of food when we came and that should last for some time. Furthermore, Pasha Farzah has also promised to sell us even more after the spring harvest, so, the food situation is not dire yet.”
This bough a bit of relief and color back to the men and then Alexander moved on to his next topic- the military.