The extremely abnormal climate that began last year caused severe drought in Jiangxi and even some surrounding places. This also cast some shadows on the Chu Empire, which was undergoing rapid industrial development.

But it's just some shadows.

The Dachu Empire was not like the previous Ming Dynasty or any feudal dynasty in ancient times. Its productivity was extremely low. Even if the rulers were willing to provide disaster relief, they did not have sufficient capabilities in the face of natural disasters.

But the Da Chu Empire is different. The Da Chu Empire is an empire that has officially entered the first industrial revolution. The application of a large number of mechanical equipment has greatly improved the productivity of the Da Chu Empire.

Although the Chu Empire has not been able to solve the problem of hybrid rice and chemical fertilizers, the increase in productivity has still brought great help to agriculture.

For example, more and better farm tools. As important tools in agricultural production, farm tools play a very important role in food production.

Good and sufficient agricultural tools allow farmers to cultivate more land at the same time. Even if the unit output cannot be increased, they can increase the total food production by planting more land.

In addition, the sufficient national strength of the Da Chu Empire also allowed the Da Chu Empire to possess various water conservancy facilities, roads and other transportation facilities that were unmatched by the ancient feudal dynasties.

Especially water conservancy facilities are everywhere.

Although today's water conservancy facilities in the Great Chu Empire cannot be compared with those of later generations, or even far behind them, they are several times better than those of the traditional feudal dynasty.

Taking this drought as an example, if we had placed it before the Ming Dynasty, even if there were no civil strife during the prosperous period of the early Ming Dynasty, and the court would try its best to provide relief, there would probably have been a large-scale famine, leading to countless people starving to death.<

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Because the productivity of the pre-Ming Dynasty was simply unable to prevent large-scale grain output, and at the same time, it was impossible to transport large amounts of grain from other places to disaster areas in a convenient way.

But the Chu Empire can!

It is not that the large number of water conservancy facilities built in the past have not played a role. On the contrary, the large number of water conservancy facilities built in the past few years have played a great role. Otherwise, many places would not have reduced production this year, but would have lost all revenue.

Relying on powerful water conservancy facilities, many areas that suffer from ordinary droughts can still rely on water storage reservoirs, diversion canals and other methods to ensure the watering of the most basic crops.

In some areas with severe droughts, water conservancy facilities can also be used to ensure the production of some crops. Large-scale production reductions are inevitable, but it does not mean that all local crops will be lost.

In this season, it is extremely rare to even be able to save part of the grain, so there is no need to mobilize grain on a large scale from other places.

Even though transportation in the Da Chu Empire is more convenient, the cost of large-scale transportation of grain is still very high.

The basis for transporting grain also benefited from the water conservancy facilities spread across the country in the Chu Empire.

The Dachu Empire was very large. Although central Jiangxi suffered from severe drought, there were many places with good weather, especially in the main grain-producing areas of Jiangnan and Huguang. Although the rainfall was overall less, it benefited from the local

The good water conservancy facilities are basically not affected by drought.

Although the agricultural production of the Dachu Empire does not yet have the conditions to completely resist large-scale severe extreme weather conditions, it has no problem with some ordinary floods or droughts.

As the grain output in these main grain-producing areas is not affected, a large amount of grain can be supplied to the outside world.

According to the proposed plan, the Dachu Empire Grain Corporation will withdraw a large amount of grain from its stockpile and then transport it via waterways to severely affected areas in central Jiangxi to ensure stable local grain supply.

As long as enough food is transported and the food is available locally, the next thing will be easily solved.

The Dachu Empire has a complete set of comprehensive relief programs, which are the result of more than ten years of experience.

Various relief-for-work projects will be launched in clusters in disaster areas or adjacent areas to recruit local people to work to earn income, and then use these incomes to purchase grain transported by grain companies from other places to feed a family.

Although it is a bit harder, you will never go hungry.

At the same time, Luo Zhixue issued an order to exempt many severely affected areas from the unified agricultural tax, and also implemented limited agricultural tax exemptions for areas affected by certain disasters.

We should try to reduce the burden on the affected people as much as possible. We cannot allow them to reduce their food production or even have no harvests, so why not ask them to collect a unified agricultural tax?

This will cause the farmers affected by the disaster to quickly fall into bankruptcy.

The government of the Dachu Empire wants to prevent these disaster-stricken farmers from going bankrupt as much as possible and help them survive this difficult year for the coming year.

In addition to various conventional relief measures, the government organized a group of large government-run or private enterprises from other places to go to the disaster areas to recruit workers.

There is not enough local food to eat, the fields cannot be harvested, and the cost of transporting food from outside is too high, the empire's top officials also hope to transfer part of the local surplus population to industrial cities.

With fewer local people, the pressure on food will naturally be reduced.

Companies in Liaodong and other places with sparsely populated areas are the most enthusiastic about this kind of thing, especially those mining companies, smelting companies and machinery companies in Liaodong Province. Because the population in Liaodong and other northeastern regions is generally insufficient, they have been working hard all year round.

In order to solve the problem of difficulty in recruiting workers, they often, under the organization of the government, go to places with a large number of people and few places in the pass, or in disaster-stricken areas to recruit workers.

Although the recruitment cost is relatively high, it is also relatively easy to recruit, and many people can be recruited in one recruitment.

In addition to corporate recruitment, the Immigration Department is also involved. They organize manpower to recruit a large number of immigrants in the disaster areas, either domestic settlers or immigrants overseas. Whether you go to remote areas in the country or overseas territories, the Immigration Department

Everyone is welcome.

For immigrants from disaster areas, the immigration policy is more favorable than ordinary immigrants.

With a multi-pronged approach, although this large-scale drought is serious, Luo Zhixue believes that it is still generally controllable.

For the people in the disaster area, whether they work for work, go out to work, or simply immigrate, suffering is inevitable, but at least they can survive.

For those ancient dynasties in the past, this kind of thing would have been unthinkable... Regardless of whether the monarch is good or bad, regardless of whether the dynasty is clear or not, it is impossible.

Because even if they want to provide disaster relief, they cannot do so due to productivity constraints.

And this is also the most direct and also the greatest benefit that the first industrial revolution brought to the Da Chu Empire, or to be precise, to the ordinary people of the Da Chu Empire.

Even though they are still at the bottom of society, it is easier for them to survive due to the overall improvement in productivity.

This is like people in ancient times working hard all day and not having enough to eat. However, although people in developed countries and a few developing countries in later generations scold this and that every day and have many dissatisfactions, it is really not easy to starve to death...

...Even if you have no hands or feet, you will still have quite complete social welfare if you are alone and will not let you starve to death easily!

Why?

Because after productivity has been greatly improved, for the entire society, the cost of feeding one person has become very low, even negligible.

Under such circumstances, even if most of the wealth will be occupied by a very small number of people, the little bit that is exposed can still feed countless people.

Ancient people's dissatisfaction mainly came from their dissatisfaction with survival, and they wanted to live.

The dissatisfaction of future generations is not dissatisfaction with survival, but dissatisfaction with the quality of life. They want to live better.

The reason why the needs and dissatisfactions of ancient people and modern people are different is because of changes in productivity.

When you have enough to eat, you will be able to think about living in a big house, giving your children a better education, etc.

When there is no food to eat, people will not think about this...

The productivity of the Da Chu Empire was still thousands of miles away from that of later generations, but compared to ancient times, it was much stronger.

Therefore, the social status quo of the Great Chu Empire emerged: people are generally still working hard to have enough to eat, and often do not have enough to eat. Quite a few people at the bottom are still in a state of malnutrition for a long time... but there will not be a large-scale epidemic.

of famine.

Comparing it vertically with ancient times and later generations, the Chu Empire is better than the upper, less than the lower, and more than the lower!

But if you want to compare it horizontally with other countries of the same era, the Chu Empire can defeat them!

Looking around the world, no country can ensure that people still have food to eat and avoid large-scale famine when millions of people are affected by disasters.

Not only was there no famine, but looking further, they took this opportunity to forcefully upgrade infrastructure in the disaster-stricken areas!

A large number of relief-for-work projects were launched in the disaster-stricken areas. People in the disaster-stricken areas received temporary salary income to support their families. The government spent money but also saved the military expenditure of dispatching the army to suppress it. At the same time, a large number of relief-for-work projects were launched.

The projects are mainly water conservancy and transportation projects, which means that the level of contemporary infrastructure will continue to improve.

This will greatly improve the ability to fight against natural disasters in the future.

The Chu Empire's method of building water conservancy facilities to combat natural disasters is actually very simple. If one reservoir is not enough, build two reservoirs. If two reservoirs are not enough, build three!

If one diversion canal is not enough, dig two.

If one well is not enough, dig two.

If the water tankers are not enough, get more water tankers. Even if they are not used now, they can be stored as disaster relief supplies and used again next year.

In short, we are trying our best to improve our resistance to natural disasters.

The only disadvantage of this method is that it costs too much... But these expenses are nothing to the Chu Empire. After all, this is a huge empire with a central fiscal revenue of more than 100 million.

This amount is only the central fiscal revenue, not the local fiscal revenue.

In this severe drought, in addition to the direct allocation of 5 million Chu Yuan from the central government, some localities in various regions that were not affected by the disaster and had relatively wealthy finances also coordinated and donated a lot of funds and materials to the disaster areas.

For example, the capital Yingtianfu donated 550,000 Chu yuan. In addition, Jiangnan, a province with great wealth, donated 1 million Chu yuan in one go.

There are also more or less donations from other places.

In the end, the total amount of funds donated by local governments reached more than 5 million yuan, which was more than the direct allocation from the central government.

The disaster relief funds totaling tens of millions of yuan will be used for drought relief in parts of Jiangxi, northern Guangdong, Fujian, and parts of southern Chu, and some will be used for flood relief in Jiangbei.

That's right, while many areas south of the Yangtze River are suffering from drought, the Huaihe River and the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River are experiencing heavy rains... which in turn leads to floods in many places.

There is drought on one side and floods on the other, which makes Luo Zhixue speechless!

Because the Yellow River diverts the Huai River and flows into the sea, Anlu, Jiangbei, Henan and other places will have local floods almost every year. Even if the Chu Empire worked hard to build the Hongze Lake embankment, it will not help.

The Hongze Lake embankment can only ensure that there will be no large-scale flooding in the Jiangbei area, or to be precise, in the downstream areas... But there is still so much water in the flood season...

During the flood season every year, there is a lot of rain in the Yellow River and the middle and upper reaches of the Huaihe River. This water will eventually flow to the lower reaches of the Huaihe River, and the Huaihe River's discharge to the sea is limited, so a large amount of floodwater will not flow out, and eventually it will siltate and even flood.

The Great Chu Empire has been building various improvements every year without interruption. However, although large-scale floods have disappeared, small-scale floods continue every year.

Until now, every summer during the flood season, Luo Zhixue sees the flood disaster reports from the Huanghuai area, and unless it is a particularly severe flood, he has been able to remain calm.

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To be continued...