Chapter 1041 New Agriculture
The technological innovation of water pumps in Kapolan City is also a microcosm of the development of the agricultural field in East African countries in recent years. Of course, water conservancy is not only related to agriculture, but also has a huge impact on cities and shipping.
Kapolan City has less natural precipitation. Without advanced and complete water conservancy facilities, it would not be possible to become a new cotton planting base to be built in Bohemia Province.
For example, cotton can be grown in the eastern part of Bohemia and has relatively abundant rainfall, but the quality of cotton is not as good as that of the western region. Generally, the quality of cotton in arid or semi-arid areas is better, and in these areas The first priority to solve when growing crops such as cotton is water source.
The most prominent one in this regard is the cotton growing area in Somalia. The water conservancy construction in Somalia has made the Shabelle and Juba river basins become world-famous agricultural production areas.
The same is true for Kapolan City. The construction of its water conservancy facilities began in the 1980s. It developed rapidly and basically took shape in the 1990s. The completion of such water conservancy project construction in just a dozen years naturally required the help of black workers.
As a relatively young country, East Africa’s exploitation of black labor has reached its peak in the past two decades. Without their efforts, East Africa’s national agriculture would not have been able to quickly catch up with other countries.
Even the United States, which has a relatively short history, has a history of large-scale modernization and development for hundreds of years. East Africa has closed the gap with Europe, the United States and other regions in just a few decades. The sacrifices must be astronomical. .
The investigator of the Kapolan City Water Conservancy Bureau was not in a hurry to leave after completing his work. He himself was quite interested in the agricultural development of Kosha Town. As someone who often dealt with agriculture, this part of East Africa Two generations have also witnessed with their own eyes the great changes in the agricultural development of East African countries.
Kesha Town was originally developed from a village. In the early days, it only planted some food crops, including wheat and corn. With the development of agriculture and changes in national agricultural policies in recent years, Kesha Town began to plant cotton and tobacco extensively. and other cash crops.
In particular, it only took seven years for the scale of cotton planting to grow from almost zero to number one in the city.
During the First Five-Year Plan, the cotton planting area in Kesha Town increased the fastest. On the one hand, it was the improvement of water conservancy facilities, and on the other hand, it was the improvement of mechanization efficiency. Of course, the most important thing is the policy change. This promoted the agricultural transformation and development of Kesha Town.
Walking in the fields of Kesha Town, you can see large-scale cotton fields. These cotton fields are all large in size, with a standard geometric distribution and are divided by water canals.
“There are more and more tractors in the town now, and the field plans are getting larger and larger to adapt to this new agricultural machinery farming model. In the past, farming was mainly carried out by livestock.” Tal introduced to him. .
"Tractor production is getting higher and higher now. The agricultural machinery station in our town now has a total of 28 tractors. If we include the surrounding villages, there should be more than 40 tractors, all in the past five years. Newly allocated and equipped with corresponding agricultural tools.”
The tractors used in Kosha Town are basically produced by Harare City. As for Kapolan City, where Kosha Town is located, it is a city with a relatively weak industrial base in the province, and its industry is limited to some light industries.
“Agriculture has been undergoing adjustments in recent years, including merging villages and towns, providing water and electricity, road construction, farmland transformation, etc. The city is also actively building a new fertilizer plant, which is expected to wait until the year after next. Our city can use its own fertilizer.” The investigator also revealed some of the information he had obtained to Mayor Tull.
This is not a secret, but one of the key industrial projects in Kapolan City during the Second Five-Year Plan. In addition, Kapolan City will also build a cotton gin factory to adapt to the increasing demand in Kapolan City. Large cotton planting area.
So during the Second Five-Year Plan, Kapolan City was allocated a total of two modern factories, a small-scale fertilizer factory and a medium-sized cotton gin factory. This shows that industrialization in East Africa is not easy now. On average, the resources that can be allocated to more than 600 cities in East Africa during the Second Five-Year Plan are very few. Some cities do not even have a modern factory. This is also the current dilemma of East Africa's industrial development.
Of course, East Africa's Second Five-Year Plan obviously has more advantages than the First Five-Year Plan period, and East Africa is in the early stages of industrial development. The path to early industrialization is bound to be tortuous, but as time goes by, the speed of industrialization will also increase. is getting faster and faster, especially East Africa, which has an absolute advantage in emerging industries.
“During the Second Five-Year Plan, it was quite difficult to allocate industrial resources. This is still the case in our province. The difficulties in other parts of the country can be imagined. Of course, compared with the past, the development of East Africa in these years is obvious to all. I don’t know much about other places. Take our city as an example, the industrial and agricultural output value has increased by more than 30% compared with before the First Five-Year Plan.”
“The following towns and villages. The development speed is also very fast, especially in agriculture. By the time the Second Five-Year Plan is completed, our city’s agricultural scale will probably more than double what it was before.”
Kapolan City responded to the provincial government during the Second Five-Year Plan. The plan will focus on increasing the cotton planting area. Today, cotton planting in Kapolan City ranks second in the province. If it is doubled, it may become the largest cotton planting base in the province.
The confidence for Kapolan City to expand cotton planting area comes from the conditions of water conservancy facilities. If Kapolan City’s water conservancy facilities were not perfect ten years ago, even if it wanted to expand cotton planting area, it would not be possible. condition.
As the westernmost part of Bohemia Province, Kapolland City still has a lot of available land. As for the labor force, although the black population has decreased rapidly in recent years, the city's birth rate is relatively high, so there is no need to worry about the labor force.
Cotton picking requires a large amount of labor to be completed manually. After all, East Africa does not yet have mature cotton picking technology, which is a pity.
Of course, at the beginning of the 20th century, there was no better method for cotton picking in all the major cotton-growing countries in the world. Even in the western United States, manual methods had to be adopted honestly. In the past, plantations in the southern United States Black slaves were primarily responsible for the work.
Of course, cotton picking in East Africa mainly relies on the cooperation of domestic nationals and black workers. Of course, with the rapid decline in the number of black workers, this also makes East Africa more urgent to develop new agricultural tools.
Not only cotton, but crops such as rice, wheat and so on have similar needs. However, due to the complexity and difficulty of picking cotton, the progress of agricultural tool development is not ideal.
The mechanized planting of rice and wheat has already been introduced, but because the technology is still immature, it cannot be promoted on a large scale like tractors.
During the Second Five-Year Plan, the main technological changes in the agricultural field in East Africa were to increase the output of tractors, pesticides, and fertilizers, and to further improve farmland water conservancy construction.
As for the further development of agriculture, it is mainly limited by the difficulties of technological breakthroughs, but difficulties do not mean that there are no achievements.
With the development of education and industry in East Africa, the development of new technologies in East Africa is accelerating, and scientific research achievements have increased significantly. Especially during the First Five-Year Plan, a large number of new technologies were applied, which greatly improved the progress of East Africa’s industrialization. Therefore, in During the Second Five-Year Plan, the East African government will further promote the application of new technologies in agriculture and industry.
(End of this chapter)