In Zhou Huairen's opinion, farming is a very simple matter. There is no need to waste so much energy on it, especially since His Highness wants to personally oversee this matter. How can this be possible? His Highness is a man who can do great things.
"It would be best if you could connect all the farms in different places and appoint a person in charge in each place. I will personally give them a batch of seeds and also a group of slaves. We should try not to hire outsiders for our farms and rely entirely on these slaves to farm the land. If this group is not enough, we can go to the human market to buy people."
Li Xiang knew that doing so would cost a lot of money. Moreover, the more land he bought, the more people would need to farm the land. He could rent the land to those who needed it and only need to collect rent every year. Although hiring slaves to farm the land would bring greater profits, the money spent on buying slaves was not a small amount.
"Your Highness, the crops you planted must not be known to outsiders, right?"
Zhou Huairen is not a fool. If he were a fool, he would not have guessed this. Seeing that Li Xiang was so cautious about this matter, he immediately understood what was going on.
"It can't be known to the outside world for the time being. If it were to be known to the outside world, our plan would be meaningless."
Li Xiang's seeds were all exchanged in the system. The yield per mu of land must be at least more than 2,000 kilograms. In today's era, this yield might be called fairy seeds.
"We purchased nearly 300,000 acres of land. If we were to use slaves for all of it, the number would be much higher."
Zhou Huairen frowned and said that nowadays one person can only take care of less than ten acres of land a year. After all, it is done manually at that time without any machinery. If we want to buy all the slaves, then we will need at least 30,000 slaves, and they must be healthy.
"Why did you buy so little land? I remember when I left, you already had over 100,000 acres. Didn't you say you were making a huge achievement?"
Li Xiang frowned immediately when he heard the number. How could it be so small? Had he not done anything during this period of time?
"Your Highness, the land we purchased is quite scattered, with only about 300,000 mu able to be concentrated. If all the land were added up, it would be at least 600,000 mu. However, the other 300,000 mu is not concentrated, so we cannot farm according to your model."
Li Xiang breathed a sigh of relief after hearing what Zhou Huairen said. If your efficiency was so ineffective, you would have been fired long ago.
"How about the clearing land?"
At present, there are still many wastelands in the country, but no one has taken care of them. With a little tidying up, these wastelands can be turned into fertile fields.
"We have sent people to all the places Your Highness mentioned, and we have indeed achieved considerable success. We have currently opened up 20,000 acres."
Zhou Huairen was quite happy when talking about this. Li Xiang pointed out some places to him across the country, but these places are currently wasteland. However, Li Xiang said that as long as these places are slightly transformed, they can immediately become fertile fields.
Twenty thousand acres of fertile land were added in three months, which is indeed a good achievement. You must know that in today's era, if you want to develop wasteland, as long as these wastelands have no owner, you only need to report to the local government office and then pay a small amount of money, and these wastelands will immediately become yours.
"This work cannot be stopped and must continue for some time to come."
Buying land and developing wasteland are the two paths that Li Xiang can take. Both can increase the land area for Li Xiang. Buying land costs more money, and developing wasteland takes more time, but the final effect is the same, that is, to increase the land area in Li Xiang's hands, and then increase the grain production in Li Xiang's hands. At that time, the major families will not be able to use grain to threaten the court.
After listening to Li Xiang's narration, Zhou Huairen finally understood what these farms were. On the surface, they looked like farms, but after they were all built, they looked like farms owned by powerful landlords. It was like a big prison, and there was no way to get out of it.
The slave owner's estate...
Zhou Huairen finally understood what was going on. There had once been a slave dynasty on this land, but it had been proven that the slave dynasty could not develop at all. Why did our Highness want to go backwards?
"Your Highness, aren't we using too many slaves? For example, this huge farm west of Luoyang requires at least 1,500 slaves. You know, they're all strong and powerful, so we need at least 300 warriors. So our expenses..."
Zhou Huairen did not continue speaking, but Li Xiang understood what he meant. It would cost money to hire someone to watch over these slaves. Even though these slaves were submissive now, after a while, they would definitely stand up and resist. Such things happened every year all over the country.
"Don't worry about the guards. I will send them there myself. There's no need to pay them too much."
After this battle, Li Xiang has received more military rewards from the system. Currently, there are at least hundreds of thousands of troops in Li Xiang's system. These people can be used as armed guards. If any slaves want to run away, you can only blame yourself for being blind.
Although Li Xiang said so, Zhou Huairen still frowned. If anything went wrong, our lives would be difficult. If the slaves escaped, it would definitely affect local security. If the local officials were to impeach His Highness because of this incident, then His Highness's status in the court would be greatly affected...
"I know what you're worried about. Don't worry. In the next period of time, we will focus on these farms."
Li Xiang said very confidently that the first batch would be these 300,000 acres of land. If all of them were planted with crops, based on the output of two seasons a year, we would be able to produce 4,000 kilograms of grain a year, which would be 600,000 tons in total.
Of course, this is just an experiment. The total arable land in the Tang Dynasty is only 600 million mu, which is far from what it was in its heyday. As long as Li Xiang can reach one-third of the national output, he will be qualified to compete with the major families, and of course he will also be qualified to compete with the imperial court. If the emperor grandfather wants to take away our military power in this way...
hehe……