Qin Official

It was the twelfth lunar month, and in the palace of Qin Shihuang in Jimo City, Jiaodong, the officials were still discussing the establishment of an "Engineering, Studying and Agricultural Study" in Xianyang. Thousands of miles away in Anlu County, Nanjun County, Weizhong, the county clerk, had gotten up early in the morning and led his subordinates to inspect the granary.

According to the law, Zhong, as a farming official, must "give five orders to the people this month, including instructions on farming plans and plowing matters, cultivating grass (lěisi), and equipping fields. In short, they must make early preparations for spring plowing."

Zhong knew that he was in the position he was today, thanks to his younger brother, and even the family name was earned through Hei Husband. He is an honest man by nature and knows nothing about other things except farming. He just wants to do his job well and not to cause trouble to his younger brother.

Resisting his sleepiness, he poured some ice water on his face to suppress the urge to yawn. He sat down in the official office, pointed at the map of public fields near the county seat, and began to arrange work for his field officials.

"This land needs to be plowed in the spring to grow rice and millet. These will be planted with broomcorn millet and bean sprouts. The rest of the land needs to be left fallow."

"Tianzuo officials must summon the field administrators in each area and ask them to compile the field register. The land taken back due to violations of the law must be counted as public land. The land given due to the increase in title must also be re-recorded in the field register to avoid collecting rent. There are mistakes and omissions from time to time..."

He glanced at his subordinates and said seriously: "According to law, those who accept bribes, hide people's land, and forge land records are treated as thieves! Do you understand?"

Everyone solemnly agreed, and then Zhong nodded and continued talking about other things. He is considered a prominent figure in the county, but he also has a lot of responsibilities.

As an agricultural official, Wei Zhong not only has to manage households and allocate land, collect land rent and cut-off taxes, but also has three main tasks in daily life:

First, organize production. Zhong was in Anlu. When he had nothing to do, he took some people for a walk in the fields around the county. When he saw people lounging around in the fields and drinking in groups, he went up and scolded these Guizhou teenagers and ordered them to go to the ground. If they didn't obey, they would be detained. The extent of serving a sentence.

"Wine is a waste of food, so it is forbidden to drink alcohol among the people. In the countryside, it can only be brewed by Lidian. During festivals and sacrifices, give a little to each family, and drink less. If someone is drunk every day, picking fights and causing trouble, how can he still drink it? Go to the fields and work hard?"

The imperial court also stipulated that even the "resident debt collectors" who worked as coolies for the government were allowed to go home for twenty days to engage in farming during the sowing and cultivating seasons. However, they had to send people to keep an eye on these people and not call them. Ran.

Second, it manages the means of production such as cattle and farm tools. Qin’s agriculture is the best among the six countries. It relies on cattle farming and iron farm tools. When other countries give priority to iron tools to cast weapons, Qin alone uses almost all iron tools to make weapons. All used in farm implements...

Iron farm tools are harder, sharper, and lighter than wood and stone farm tools. They can not only improve the quality of land plowing, but also speed up the frequency of land plowing and expand farmland area. They are powerful tools for farming.

Plowing and plowing, plowing and plowing, the status of plowing is still higher than that of fighting. Anyway, the Qin soldiers became ruthless and dared to charge naked. If they wanted iron soldiers, they could just win the battle and capture them!

However, on weekdays, the field officials who manage iron farm tools are very generous to the people who come to borrow them!

"If the fake ironware is destroyed due to lack of use, it is used as a book, so you will not be held responsible."

Wei Zhong emphasized this point to his men for probably the hundredth time. Farmers who were unable to purchase iron farm tools had to borrow them from the government. If the tools were naturally damaged, there was no need to pay compensation. They just had to return the originals and the government would just write an explanation for the record.

"If the farmer who borrowed the iron tool dares not use it for fear of damaging it, then its effectiveness is no different from that of wood and stone."

Zhong has worked as a farmer for thirty years and is very clear about the difficulties faced by the head of Guizhou. Therefore, he has been very kind to the people in the past few years as an agricultural official. He has been respected as an "elder" by the county. Invite him to butcher the meat.

However, it is also something that can be lent to the people, and the cattle cannot be used casually. If the whip is too hard and the skin is broken, or if the cowherd is too thin, the farmer and the cattle herder will also be punished.

"Each township and village must report the number of cattle they have, and allocate them in advance, giving priority to those with nobility. As for those who cannot be allocated cattle to help with farming, Tian Dian will teach them the art of coupling farming again."

This involves Weizhong's third important task: to guide farmers' production technically.

In addition to coupled farming, agricultural officials also have to educate young people with little farming experience on how many seeds to sow per acre of land.

"For rice and hemp, use two bushels and six liters per acre for sowing seeds. For millet and wheat, use one bushel for every acre. For beans, half a bushel for each acre... Sowing seeds in this way is neither sparse nor dense, which is beneficial to the field."

In addition, there is the extremely important technique of composting, which must also be promoted by farmers. Thanks to Heifu's invention eight or nine years ago, every township in Anlu County has universal public toilets, and a person in charge of public toilets has also been arranged. The man, at Heifu's suggestion, was called the "director", and his rank was equivalent to that of the "cattle chief" who specialized in raising cattle. He was also an unorganized civil servant.

The director and two subordinates were in charge of composting, and in spring and summer, they picked up public fields.

Seeing that the crops in public fields are nourished by fertilizers and have good harvests almost every year, many civilians wonder: Why does my family's fertilizer water flow into other people's fields? Therefore, in Anlu, some wealthy families who have the conditions began to build toilets in front of their homes and prohibited outsiders from using them. The Yuanbai family in the south of the city even became rich by selling excrement...

A similar situation also occurs in the metropolitan city of Xianyang, where the public toilet industry is in the ascendant.

But in other counties and counties, composting is still in the ascendant. Even in Guanzhong, the long-established habit cannot be changed in three or two years. Not to mention Jiangnan and other places, even cattle farming has not been popularized. The local Yue people are still practicing slash and fire farming. The advanced production technology of the Central Plains will not be introduced for a while...

The Anlu Agricultural Director does not need to worry about this, as long as he manages one-third of the county's land, but in the palace of Jiaodong, this issue has become an important reason for officials to support the establishment of "agriculture"!

…

Qin Shihuang's hunting tour was not a pure sightseeing tour. Although the people and horses were constantly moving, the government affairs that had to be done in Xianyang along the way were not left behind. The emperor stayed up late every night and worked overtime to review memorials. How could his ministers dare to be lazy? ?

According to Qin Shihuang's habit, most of the suggestions put forward by his ministers were not agreed on the spot, but were discussed by the ministers, and finally they summarized their opinions and made their own decisions.

As a result, during the period from November to December, when Jimo was in the palace in Jiaodong, the officials discussed Heifu's proposal to establish "engineering, agriculture, and agriculture."

Tingwei Ye Teng strongly supported this idea. He traced the history of Qin and said that during Shang Yang's reform, the first important "No. 1 Document" issued was called the "Grass Reclamation Order"!

The general content of this decree is to rectify all folk customs and bad habits that hinder farming, to suppress intellectuals, idlers and merchants economically, to restrict migration, and to leave the people with the only way to do farm work, with food as the key and agriculture as the basis.

Not only at the central level, in order to implement the "Grass Reclamation Order" at the local level, many agricultural officials were also appointed. At the national level, there are "Government of Millets", at the county level, "Du Tian Shifu", at the county level, "Tian Shifu", and at the township level. There is "Tian Zuoli" on the top and "Tian Dian" in the middle.

According to Heifu's understanding, it is equivalent to the Ministry of Agriculture, the Department of Agriculture, the County Agricultural Bureau, the production brigade, and the squad in later generations.

He is determined to pursue his own affairs in his position, but he is ignorant of the underlying reasons for these things, and Heifu understands them all too well.

Since the establishment of political power, the government has directly or indirectly intervened in the social economy. Depending on the intensity of intervention, later generations have been divided into market economy and planned economy.

But it was Shang Yang's "Grass Reclamation Order" that pioneered the control of the economy.

During the Western Zhou Dynasty and the Spring and Autumn Period, the state and workers were separated by feudal officials, fiefs, clans and other organizations, which made it impossible for the state to intervene in the agricultural activities of the majority of workers.

However, Qin killed or weakened all these intermediate organizations. After Shang Yang's reform, Qin's control over workers reached an unprecedented level. From the work of agricultural officials, we know that the imperial court was eager to guide and manage every aspect of farming.

This kind of big government thinking is very beneficial to the promotion of advanced production technology. The only problem is that among the vast number of agricultural officials, there are also many people who are half-experienced, or come from humble backgrounds and have narrow vision. You won't realize it for a while.

Although the agricultural officer system is good, it lacks professional guidance.

Therefore, Heifu dared to propose the establishment of "agricultural science" not because of a sudden whim, but because he thought that on the basis of the Qin Dynasty's emphasis on agriculture and the agricultural official system, we should further establish agricultural universities, with the government providing financial resources and farmers providing technology to train agricultural technicians so that they can Going to work in various places, allowing agricultural officials at all levels to play the role of an "agricultural technology station" is a natural progression!

Heifu was right. Regarding "engineering", there were still some differences among the ministers, but "agriculture" was unanimously approved by almost all ministers.

In the end, Qin Shihuang also approved the matter: "The reason why the warehouses are real is that farming is the main task. Qin established the country with agriculture, and it is necessary to establish agricultural science! All officials in Guizhou and the capital must be able to do the work of Shen Nong and Hou Ji!"

"Your Majesty, Holy Might!"

The ministers fell silent and prostrated themselves in praise.

Heifu made a calculation in his mind: "Forty counties in the world, nearly a thousand counties, need at least a thousand agricultural technicians. If these people go to places with farmers' skills, how much can they do to the country's agriculture?" improvement?"

If they can still accept Heifu and Zhang Cang's private goods of "understanding nature, utilizing nature, and transforming nature" and spread them across the country, the prospects are really limitless.

With this base number, even if his black husband is no longer in the world in the future, who knows that China will not have an ancient Yuan Longping?

This is Heifu's "lifelong plan" for this country and nation.

“It’s better to teach a man to fish than to teach him to fish!”

…

Qin Shihuang stayed in Jiaodong for more than a month, and he did more than just cabbage and tofu.

Just when the officials in the Jimo Palace were discussing and decided to establish "agricultural science" so that practical science could flourish in this cold winter month, the Jimo Tian family's mansion outside the city was in a gloomy mood.

As soon as the wind and snow stopped, Jimo Tian's servants opened the door as usual, but were shocked to find that a group of dark Qin troops had surrounded the place! He aimed his strong bow and crossbow at the door lintel. He was so frightened that he threw down the door panel and ran to the yard to report.

Cao Shen, an officer of the county soldier Cao, together with a team of Lang Weijun who were directly affiliated with the emperor, led more than a thousand people to surround the Jimotian family's mansion and read out Qin Shihuang's edict:

"The Jimotian family moved their entire family to Dayuan, Beidi County to establish a frontier fortress!"