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Matters like Guo Tai, Guo Linzong opening a mountain school to teach the ancient classics were certainly very important, but they were not the most urgent task.
The most urgent task now was restoring agriculture.
Yong'an was slightly better off; only the young sprouts had been damaged, so simply replanting would suffice. But in Pingyang, besides tilling the soil, there was another crucial and urgent matter: restoring the irrigation canals.
The nearest water source to Pingyang County town was the Fen River.
Though described as "nearby," it was actually over twenty li away.
Fei Qian had Ma Yue continue handling the Baibo affairs while he, along with Jia Qu and Huang Cheng, followed the dilapidated canal eastward.
The canal ran alongside the road. It was evident that it had originally been lined with bricks and stones, with a relatively intact structure. However, in certain places, due to trampling by people and animals, there was some damage and collapse. Additionally, neglected, it had become severely clogged with silt and overgrown with weeds.
The group slowly rode their horses along the road, following the canal's direction. This official road was relatively flat, of course, "flat" by the standards of this era. Perhaps in later generations, it would be described as a gravel dirt road without bomb craters.
From horseback, Fei Qian pointed to the road, the faint traces of field ridges nearby, and the thickets of shrubs and tall grass further away. "At this time, what would be most suitable for replanting?"
Jia Qu's face reddened slightly. "Well... my lord, I'm has not been involved in farming..."
Fei Qian nodded. "No matter. I didn't know either initially. It was only while traveling and studying in Jingxiang that I gained some understanding... Shuye, do you know?"
Huang Cheng chuckled sheepishly and also shook his head.
"In the Spring and Autumn period and the pre-Qin era, the northern lands mainly grew foxtail millet. Later, because of wheat's per-mu yield... well, higher yield from the fields, cultivation gradually shifted to wheat..." Fei Qian said, musing as he spoke. "South of the Great River, in the Jingzhou and Yangzhou regions, with moist soil and convenient irrigation, higher-yielding rice became the main crop..."
Fei Qian recalled when he first went down to Jingxiang, talking with the elderly farmers in the fields, and also thinking of Zijing, who loved green grass and other crops at the foot of Deer Mountain...
Perhaps with such a large tract of land to tinker with, he would be joyfully running wild in the fields...
Fei Qian inexplicably thought of an uncontrollable Husky. He quickly shook his head, trying to banish this incongruous image from his mind.
"The five grains of the Han—foxtail millet, beans, hemp, wheat, and rice—are the most widely cultivated. There are also broomcorn millet and sorghum, which are well-suited to this land... Therefore, our land here is still better suited for crops that are cold-resistant and drought-tolerant..." Fei Qian spoke slowly. This was not an era of balanced nutrition but an era where people couldn't even eat their fill. Thus, whatever had higher yields was the most suitable to plant...
Potatoes and sweet potatoes...
Had they spread to Southeast Asia yet? Probably not...
But if they were in the Americas, that was truly too far away. Though the small ice age was approaching, and the Bering Strait would likely freeze, without insulating cotton, relying only on animal furs and fats, ordinary Han people would likely have no way to adapt. Possibly relying on the Dongyi, the hunting and fishing peoples of the northeast—the Xianbei or Wuhuan?
Traveling by sea would be even more difficult. Only the scholar-official families in Yangzhou, who had dealings with Japan, could build oceangoing ships...
In his later life, Fei Qian remembered some idle person who created a calculation, based on some unknown rules, of how many times more information an ordinary Times newspaper contained compared to ancient people...
He had forgotten.
This, in fact, was the gap...
Fei Qian thought wistfully. Many ancient people might have recognized that the system had problems, that the rules were flawed, but they had no direction for resolution, nor did they know if answers existed. So, they could only struggle within the land bounded by high mountains, vast seas, deserts, and frozen soil, desperately increasing the limited resources. Whenever they saw something, they scraped it in, sat tightly on it, staring at the land beneath their eyes, never letting go until death...
No wonder later generations of Chinese people, though severely afflicted by housing issues, still relished it. This was a recessive gene formed over thousands of years, flowing in their blood.
Now, Fei Qian knew where the problem lay. Though he didn't have a complete solution, at least his vision was global—Asia, Europe, Africa, and beyond the continents, the Americas...
Fei Qian dismounted and walked a few steps towards the canal by the roadside. He looked at the long canal extending from the Fen River. It wasn't deep, mostly filled with silt, with some depressions. From the rainfall days earlier, moisture remained under the weeds in the canal, indicating that at least in these sections, the brick lining's water-sealing function was still intact.
Fei Qian looked at the land beside the official road—the remnants of once-cultivated fields and ridges. This area had likely been the fiefdom fields of the Pingyang Marquis.
The government-built irrigation facilities were constructed first and foremost to meet the needs of these fields...
"The Fen River has ample water. But for fields farther from this canal..." Fei Qian squinted into the distance. "Look, these lands aren't actually far from the water source, but... they're thirsty."
"Actually, the Fen River's volume is sufficient to support irrigation for this entire area. But because this canal originally served the old Pingyang Marquis's fields, water only reached here after the Pingyang Marquis's fields were adequately irrigated. And I can say with certainty that this isn't just the case in Pingyang—most government-built canals throughout the empire don't deliver enough water..."
"Shuliang, do you know why?"
Jia Qu thought for a moment. "Because... too much water damages the seedlings?"
"Most areas near water sources are either fiefs or land owned by powerful families. Once these people's own fields have had their fill of water, who cares about those that aren't theirs? How much water reaches the fields of ordinary commoners? For the powerful, if ordinary farmers' yields don't decrease, how can they get people to borrow from them? How can they find people who can't hold on and sell their land? How can they expand their own land holdings year by year?" Fei Qian said coldly.
Thus, one finds that despite being near water, despite the state allocating funds year after year to build canals, water simply doesn't reach the fields. The fields thirst, forcing farmers to carry water themselves. Eventually, unable to sustain themselves, they have no choice but to let their crops fail, then fail to pay their taxes to the state, falling into a vicious cycle until they finally sell their land...
Beside the water yet thirsty for water—this is the reason.
As for the empire as a whole, if agricultural yields can't increase, who is to blame?
Would those mud-footed peasants, with their feet stuck in the mud day after day, understand why the canals constantly break down and never get properly repaired?
Would the emperor sitting on the dragon throne understand why, despite allocating funds for water management year after year, there are floods here and droughts there every year?
During the Han Dynasty, the main crops and vegetables were mostly available, but there was a lack of spices, oil-bearing crops, high-yield crops, and cotton...
It seems cotton was already being cultivated around this time, as cotton seeds existed in Asia—India, Arabia...
Long-staple cotton also seems to have come from the Americas...
Mother Earth is quite fair, isn't she? She gives a little something to each place, allowing all to develop their own technologies, but she doesn't much care how exactly they develop...
Africa seems to have been used to store humans during the great ice age, and when the ice receded, the migrations began...
For humanity, interbreeding and migration are the drivers of civilization's advancement...