Chapter 45 Productivity, productivity

The vast farmland in front of Heifu was composed of thin strips, and those strips were mu.

He stood at the edge of the field, and gently stepped out his left foot along the small ditch used for drainage at the edge of the mu, followed by his right foot, one left and one right, which was the basic distance unit of this era: step, one step equals six feet, equivalent to 1.38 meters in later generations.

In this way, he just walked the width of an mu of land.

So each mu is 1 step wide and 240 steps long. Because Qin State began to implement the large mu system after Shang Yang's reform. It is different from the 100-step small mu of Yan State, Chu State, Qi State, and the 200-step medium mu of Wei State.

The reason is that in addition to the fact that Qin State was sparsely populated when Shang Yang carried out the reform, it was necessary to let the people get more land and grow more grain. It was probably because Qin State began to widely use oxen to plow, and even families without oxen could borrow oxen from the government for plowing. A cow pulling a plow with its head down would need to take a breath after about 240 steps. As for a person, if you pull a plow for 100 steps, you will be exhausted.

Therefore, the 100 mu of land belonging to Heifu seemed particularly large.

After being shocked, Heifu squatted down and used a branch to calculate: one mu in later times was 666.67 square meters, while one mu in Qin was about 400 square meters, a little smaller than later times. But converted, one hundred mu is more than 40,000 square meters...

"With such a large land, I would have been a small landlord in the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China."

Heifu suddenly laughed. You know, it was normal for farmers in the Qing Dynasty to have more than ten mu of land, and the poorer ones even had only a few mu.

But don't be too happy too soon. Although these lands were distributed to Heifu, they still belonged to the country. Dong Zhongshu of the Han Dynasty made up a story without any basis that the Qin State "changed the imperial system, abolished the well-field system, and allowed the people to buy and sell land." However, when Heifu returned to the Qin State, he had never seen any land transactions, let alone contracts. The Qin bamboo slips excavated in later generations could not find anything similar.

In the Qin State, land could never be bought and sold! After all, only under the premise of nationalization of land, the land granting system and military merit granting, the two foundations of the Qin State, could be maintained. At least before Qin Shihuang unified the world and announced "let the people cultivate their own land", farmers had the right to use the land, but not the ownership.

Thinking about it this way, the national conditions of the Qin Dynasty and our Celestial Empire are really similar.

And don't think that the fields are large and the harvest is large. On the contrary, in this era, it is precisely because the harvest of cultivated land is too small that if so much land is not allocated, it is absolutely impossible to support a family.

"Brother."

When Heifu was resting on the ridge, he asked Zhong: "How much did our family harvest per mu last year?"

Zhong also sat on the path. After walking for a while, his leg was a little sore, but unlike Heifu, he looked at the land in front of him with longing and expectation in his eyes. As a farmer, how could he not love the land?

"For millet, 2 dan, rice is a little more, 3 dan per mu. The land in Nanjun is low and wet, not as good as Guanzhong. When I was serving in the garrison, I heard from the soldiers from Guanzhong that the yield of millet per mu there can be doubled or tripled!" As the backbone of the family, Zhong had to know how much more or less he harvested every year.

The "stone" here refers to volume, not weight. After all, there is no time for precise weighing these days. When farmers harvested millet and pounded rice, they put them into fixed-volume buckets and liters. The "Shang Yang Fangsheng" distributed to counties and prefectures in Xianyang was the standard measuring instrument of this era. As the saying goes, a liter of rice is a favor, a bucket of rice is a grudge, and the same is true when paying rice rent.

Heifu has been in this era for so long, and he has carried rice and grains countless times, so he has a rough idea in his mind. So he knows that according to his elder brother, the millet yield per mu in his own land is about 50 catties, and the rice yield per mu is about 70 catties.

What is this concept?

Heifu's hometown in his previous life was in the countryside, and he also knew about grains. He knew that modern hybrid rice fields can produce nearly 2,000 catties per mu! As for millet, if it is planted on a large scale, one mu can also produce 800 to 900 catties!

In other words, the per mu yield of grain in this era is probably only a few tens of that in the 21st century.

Productivity, which was just a dry word in textbooks in the past, seems so deadly now. If people want to have enough food, they can only expand the planting area if the yield per mu cannot be increased. No wonder the average land per person is so large at this time.

So Hei Fu can especially understand the difficulties of farming in this era. Without the help of mechanization, the work that each farmer has to do is ten times or even dozens of times that of later generations! A family of five to eight people must work day and night in the fields during the busy farming season to cultivate so much land.

Under the guidance of the field officials appointed by the government, the farmers of Qin have left the stage of sowing seeds all over the sky and slashing and burning, and began to cultivate carefully. The "Granary Law" even taught farmers step by step, saying that when sowing seeds, rice and hemp should use two and two-thirds dou per mu, millet and wheat should use one dou per mu, and millet and beans should use two-thirds dou per mu...

But even so, the yield of millet is only slightly higher than the "1.5 dan per mu" of Wei State 200 years ago. In addition, the rent and taxes are heavy, so at most they can only be half hungry.

After all, there are no chemical fertilizers and pesticides these days, which does not bring about ecology, but low yields. Farm tools are a mixture of wood, stone, bone, copper, and iron, and farming techniques need to be improved. If you want a good harvest, you can only use water conservancy to forcibly improve it. Guanzhong with Zhengguo Canal and CD Plain with Dujiangyan built became the largest granary of Qin State, supporting the King of Qin to launch wars one after another.

Now Heifu is allocated 100 acres of land by himself. Although it looks beautiful at first glance, he has no desire to farm after thinking about it carefully.

"Brother...just as you said, let's find someone to farm this land." Hei Fu's scalp tingled when he thought of so many farm works.

Zhong nodded and said, "This matter is not urgent. I will ask in the village in the next two months whether there are any laborers willing to come to farm."

Although the land grant system was implemented, not everyone in Qin had land. There were always some wanderers and people who had committed crimes whose land was confiscated. Because the concept of Qin law on land is that it is not allowed to occupy the toilet without shitting. You are not active in farming? Okay, don't farm, it will be nationalized and distributed to others to farm!

The most typical example is Dongmen Bao's family. Because his father drowned in drunkenness, it was considered a violation of the law, so the land was taken away. There was no vacant land near the county town for him to secretly farm, and Dongmen Bao could only make a living by other means. Xiao Tao's family is also the same. The father and son are working as laborers for others and may become servants at any time.

The eldest brother pointed to the edge of the field and said, "I called you to see the land today because I want to discuss and gather some people to build the field ridges first."

Although Heifu's land is large, it also has boundaries. There are square mounds of earth at the four corners of the field, called "feng". Other people's fields have four earth walls built along the feng, which are called liè, used to mark the boundaries.

When the two brothers were pointing at the fields, a few people happened to pass by behind them. One of them had a topknot on his head and wore a wooden crown. He looked like a tall and thin old farmer with his hands behind his back. He looked at them from a distance and said, "Aren't these the two brothers of the Zhong family?"

This person was the head of Xiyangli, who was working with a few subordinates. Zhong and Heifu had to stand up and bow to him.

"Meet the village head."

The village head said with a bad face: "Zhong, Heifu, what are you doing wandering around this land? It is written in the law that if you destroy the land, whether intentionally or unintentionally, it will be considered as "stealing the land" and you will be sentenced to long-term imprisonment. If you dare to secretly shovel them away and then expand your own fields a few steps outward, it will be "stealing land" and the punishment will be even heavier! Humph, don't blame me for not reminding you!"

How can you treat someone as a thief at the first sentence? Heifu was unhappy.

The hatred here originated from eight years ago when the village head's son also fell in love with his eldest sister-in-law Kui and wanted to be her concubine. But Kui wanted to marry her eldest brother, and finally, under the sweet words of their eldest aunt... No, it was good persuasion, the Kui family also agreed to this marriage.

Since then, the headman's family has frequently made things difficult for the brothers: when they borrowed cows for spring ploughing, they only gave them the weakest old cows, and when they borrowed iron farm tools, they only gave them the tattered ones.

This is also the reason why Heifu asked his eldest brother to buy a full set of iron farm tools after he got the money, just because he didn't want to have to look at people's faces again.

Heifu also thought that he was assigned to serve in the New Year's Day, which was probably because of the headman's obstruction.

He looked at the head of the village with a somewhat unfriendly look, but the eldest brother just bowed and smiled: "Thank you for reminding me, head of the village. We will never break the law knowingly. But I have something to ask you."

Zhong said: "I inherited my late father's title of Gongshi. Every year, the village will assign a bastard (servant) to help with farming, but there was no one last year. Let alone this, my second brother has just been awarded the title of Gongshi. He can't take care of a hundred acres of land by himself. Head of the village, this year should be assigned to him a bastard, right?"

The head of the village still had a stern face: "What about Gongshi? Gongshi is great? I still have the upper hand! Bastards are limited, but there are seven or eight households with titles in the village. How can they be assigned? According to the law, bastards should be given priority to those with official positions, and then distributed to each family according to the household registration number. Sooner or later, it will be your turn, so wait!"

He sneered and was about to leave.

At this time, Heifu finally couldn't help it and asked loudly: "May I ask the head of the village, if I also become an official, then the illegitimate son will be assigned to my family first?"

"Be an official, just because of you?"

The head of the village turned around, looked at Heifu with contempt, and said contemptuously: "When your family was in Chu, they were commoners like slaves and concubines, and served my family for generations. After entering Qin, you were lucky enough to get a public official. Now you still want to be an official? Let's toss a few more generations!"

After saying that, he raised his head and left with the slave.

When the Chu State ruled, the Zheng family was a small clan in this area with a large population. After entering Qin, they were also elected as head of the village. He looked down on Zhong and Heifu, who were poor for generations.

"A small head of the village who is as small as a sesame seed is arrogant and dares to retaliate against my family in private with small means, bah."

The head of the village walked away, and Heifu felt like he had eaten a fly, and his good mood in the past few days was ruined. But think about it, aren't there many village heads and village party secretaries in later generations like this? They are corrupt and corrupt, collude with each other, and are like local tyrants.

"After all, he is an official, Heifu. The family is counting on you to be an official, maybe he can restrain himself." Zhong smiled bitterly and shook his head. The family's life has become increasingly difficult in recent years, which is also related to the retaliation of the head of the village. But they can only be angry but dare not speak out.

The people cannot fight with the officials, no matter which era.

However, Heifu looked at the steps of the head of the village like a peacock, and laughed instead of being angry.

"Brother, just wait, one day, I will make his family unable to even be the head of the village!"