African Entrepreneurship Records

  Introduced in Chapter 383

Ernst is commanding the frontline operations, while Constantine has to be a toolman in the rear. Enriching East African industries has always been a cause promoted by Ernst, and agriculture, as the dominant industry in East Africa, is also a top priority. East Africa Currently, there are only a few agricultural products that have been grown on a large scale and exported on a large scale. Sisal, clove, pyrethrum, etc. are undoubtedly popular products. Among them, sisal ranks first among the tropical cash crops exported to East Africa all year round.

However, these economic crops can only be said to be relatively niche or partial. Among them, the promotion of pyrethrum is closely related to the mosquito repellent products launched by Heixingen Daily Necessities Company. Pyrethrum is also actively planted in East Africa to block diseases transmitted by mosquitoes in East Africa. make important contributions.

As for those familiar cash crops with broad markets, most of them have not yet left the market. For example, the first batch of coffee planting in East Africa was in 1867. A small amount of harvesting has just begun, so it is not yet a profitable project. The introduction of rubber is In 1868, other non-native cash crops were basically introduced after 1865.

·If these introduced cash crops have a relatively long growth cycle, they are currently in the pure investment stage and have no profit value.

  Tea is a cash crop that has already entered production. East Africa tried to push local black tea products to Central and Eastern Europe, but encountered serious problems.

"Your Majesty the King, this is the tea we brought from the East. This time we have selected a total of 23 excellent varieties, mainly green tea, and some black tea. At the same time, we have introduced a group of 'professional' tea production personnel, which can better "Contribute to the development of tea in East Africa." Minister of Agriculture Wiggins introduced the results of the Ministry of Agriculture to Constantine.

The Ministry of Agriculture in East Africa is a very embarrassing existence. As a native of Austria, Wiggins is a declining noble. He has a very big head on how to develop agriculture in tropical Africa. As a major rice-producing country in East Africa, Wiggins is coming to East Africa. I had never seen rice before. Fortunately, the "wise and powerful" His Highness Ernst pointed the way for me to go to the East to learn from it. Far Eastern rice varieties were introduced under the leadership of Wiggins.

 Wiggins once asked Ernst why not learn from India. After all, India’s agricultural conditions are not bad and it is also a country with a long history. It should be considered a leader in the field of planting, especially tropical crop planting.

Ernst's answer is that because of this, we cannot learn from India. As a British colony, although India has become the most rice-producing region in the world, its technology comes from Europe. The British built a large number of new water conservancy facilities in India. , many new technologies have been applied, and East Africa also has these things. Modern agricultural technology can be directly introduced from Europe.

As for the remaining cash crops, Britain does not have much technical content. For example, it has engaged in cotton cultivation, poppy cultivation, and tea cultivation in India. These are also the three cash crops in which Britain has invested the most in India.

There is nothing to say about cotton cultivation. It is entirely the need of British industry. But when it comes to cultivation technology, it is the former slave owners in the southern plantations of the United States. Opium, such evil things, is banned in East Africa, and tea is imported from India from the Far East. Stolen.

Moreover, the lower-class Indians who believe in Hinduism are very casual and fool around in their work. Especially the Indians under the British rule have taken these character traits to the extreme, just like the black laborers who can work as foreign workers under the hands of East Africans and will never do much. The truth is, if you are lazy to begin with, you will be even less motivated if you rush away with a whip. What can you learn from such people?

Of course, Ernst is not belittling the natives of India and Africa, but this is true throughout the tropics, especially when living in a sultry environment. Let alone activities, even eating sometimes has no appetite.

This also reflects the superiority of East Africa's climate. Don't think that the natives of East Africa are not hard-working. In fact, compared to the black people he saw in his previous life, Ernst was the most down-to-earth and hard-working black people in East Africa. Among the East Africans, the one who gave the best impression was Ethiopia has been destroyed by Ernst. Of course, Ernst mainly came to this conclusion after comparing it with Nigeria in West Africa. Ernst did not go to many other countries in West Africa and did not know much about it.

This is also related to economic and educational issues. South Africa was very good in the early days, but it has been going downhill. After the black rulers came to power, they were really on par with the United States. They have learned the essence of zero-dollar purchases. This kind of social atmosphere of getting something for nothing is a blessing. Ernst was very disgusted when he saw it. Not to mention colonial oppression, Tanzania's economy was far worse than South Africa's, and its economic conditions were not ranked high in Africa. However, Ernst had seen that some Tanzanian farmers did not even have enough to eat. , nor like the South Africans. You must know that South Africa is a powerful agricultural country, and its level of mechanization is even higher than that of China.

As for what you can learn in the Far East, it is natural to learn traditional planting experience and technology and agricultural product processing technology. Far Eastern farmers are indeed the best in this regard.

Ernst was not praising him at all, but he put aside his Far Eastern identity in his previous life and believed it realistically. The characteristic of Far Eastern agriculture is intensive farming, maximizing the use of the soil and fertility of farmland, and being able to maintain and restore land fertility through various means. . This has been reflected in agricultural production in East Africa. Fallow farming is prevalent in Europe and the United States, but this rarely occurs in East Africa. This is because a large number of East African farmers come from the Far East, so land cultivation methods are mainly based on patterns they are familiar with.

The only difference is that the land developed in East Africa is originally fertile land with favorable climate, water conservancy, soil and other conditions. Many areas can be used as cultivated land. Ernst has not developed it on a large scale. For example, in Tanzania, Ernst has no plans to expand cultivated land. scale, instead turning to inland areas to develop new cultivated land.

Furthermore, the farmers of the Far East are very good at accumulating agricultural experience. Although most of the landlord class is not engaged in production, their written summary of the agricultural experience of the Far East is quite complete. The Far Eastern government is a typical agricultural government, and it has been a thousand years of admonishing people to teach farming. The old tradition has made the traditional agriculture in the Far East quite developed.

Ernst used the word developed to describe it, but the emphasis is on the word tradition. It is not really about asking Wiggins to copy the Far East model, but mainly asking him to learn from it. Even if East Africa borrows one-tenth of its excellent experience, it will be of great benefit.

The introduction of tea varieties from the Far East this time was carefully selected by Wiggins who personally led a team to visit several tea producing areas in the Far East.

Wiggins said to Constantine: "There are many kinds of tea in the Far East. There are hundreds of kinds of tea in Anhui Province alone. However, my time is limited, so I can only choose a few important tea provinces for inspection. Among them, Anhui and Jiangsu The tea-producing area is close to our "Huaihai Economic Zone", so it is the key area for my inspection. Later I heard that the black tea from Wuyi Mountain in Fujian is also very good, so I stopped by Fujian on my way home. This time the tea varieties are mainly from Get it from these three provinces.”

Originally, Wiggins was also very interested in Zhejiang tea, especially West Lake Longjing, but I heard that the real West Lake Longjing only has a dozen tea trees, which are also supplied to the royal family. The Far East officials are very careful about it, let alone the dozen tea trees. The surrounding tea leaves are very valuable, so forget it. Wiggins values ​​not only quality but also output, and he really doesn’t have time, otherwise he would like to go further inland to the Lianghu area to take a look.

The dilemma encountered by East African tea exports is that the varieties come from India, so they cannot compete with British tea merchants because the taste is the same or even inferior. Moreover, India has large planting scale, high output and low labor costs. This market is completely Monopolized by them, unless East Africa does business "at a loss".

This is indeed what East Africa does. East African tea is exported to Germany and is basically half sold and half given away. Fortunately, the labor cost in East Africa is equivalent to no cost. It can barely earn a few German marks, Taylor and Austrian rhine guilders to recoup the original cost.

So this time Wiggins went to the Far East to select tea varieties in order to open up the European market. The first step was to introduce green tea to compete with the popular black tea in the European market. An important reason for the popularity of black tea in Europe is that the green tea introduced from the Far East in the early days did not taste as good as black tea. This is because the Far East is too far from Europe, and the smell of green tea will dissipate if stored for a long time. On the contrary, black tea does not have this concern. East Africa is not far from Europe, and steam is used on ships, so that the speed of current ships is not a hundred years. It can be compared with the old ships transporting tea in Portugal.

What’s more, the Heixingen Consortium’s best tactic is to smear its opponents. It will start a debate about tea authenticity in Europe and open up the popularity of green tea. Let’s not talk about the taste of green tea after brewing it. On the whole, it is more eye-catching than black tea. , by creating a few oriental allusions, improving the quality, and then supplying them to European courts, the door to the high-end market can be opened. The Hechingen Consortium has rich experience in this regard.

Of course, East Africa will not give up the black tea market. This time, Wiggins brought back several types of Far Eastern black tea to plant in Africa to broaden the taste of European black tea. With thousands of people, there will always be consumers who don’t like Indian black tea. , just like the one in East Africa.

Although it is said that drinking tea will form a habit,

  (end of this chapter)