"The current scale is enough." Hu Wumei nodded and said, "I now have 6,000 acres of land, and I have machines to help with planting. About fifty or sixty male laborers are enough. The remaining people are enough for the plantations and factories.
When you are busy, children and the elderly can also help.”
"What if we don't use slaves?" Xu Yanliang asked, "Is there any difficulty?"
"Difficulty...it's not that difficult...difficulty..." Hu Wumei was not careful when Elder Xu suddenly asked such a question. He reacted quickly. From this sentence, he knew that Elder Xu did not agree with the use of slaves.
Unfortunately, these words came too quickly. Although he understood the other party's thoughts in time, he hesitated in speaking. Xu Yanliang naturally noticed it.
Obviously, the owner of Hu Village has no objection to the use of slaves. In other words, because the benefits gained from using slaves far exceed the costs he pays.
He did not continue to discuss this issue in depth and changed the subject: "Your current farm has 6,000 acres of land. Do you want to open up more land?"
"Of course, the more land, the better." Hu Wumei said with a smile, looking full of enterprising spirit. He knew that the elders liked this attitude, "but it is inconvenient to have too much land. Workers have to walk a long way back and forth to work. It is a waste of time."
"Why not build more farms? Wouldn't it be inconvenient for your workers to be concentrated here now?"
"Okay, I've built a new farm next to the coconut garden." Hu Wumei said, "There is too much land, so we need to set up a foreman. This person is hard to find..."
Xu Yandian nodded. He did not intend to express too many opinions on the production and management here. Originally, the focus of his work was not on agriculture. The purpose of coming to Hu Wumei was to understand the agricultural production situation in Sanya and to prepare for the future agricultural colony.
Learn from experience.
"There is another question," Hu Wumei hesitated. "You always come from Lingao. Do you know what the regulations of the Senate are now?"
"What are the regulations?" Xu Yanliang didn't react for a moment.
"That's it..." Hu Wumei was a little nervous, because he knew to some extent that the land issue had always been the core issue within the Senate - although he had never understood that a simple matter like buying and selling land would take so many years within the Senate.
I can't even get a charter.
"I just asked casually..." He hesitated, "Actually, I'm not the only one who has this problem. There are people in Sanya and Lingao who want to know."
"Tell me about it. If I know about it, I will tell you as long as there is nothing wrong with it."
Seeing his statement, Hu Wumei summoned the courage to ask: "What does the Senate mean by the ground photo? I have been farming here for several years, but there is still no ground photo. I asked several senators, but they couldn't explain it.
.I don’t feel at ease if I plant my crops in such a hazy way.”
Xu Yanliang's heart skipped a beat, thinking that the issue of land ownership still had to be faced. The Senate had been walking around vaguely for so many years, and no clear plan had been issued. As a result, various departments were still struggling with land ownership, use rights, etc.
On a series of issues, we can only take some temporary measures and play tricks on the wording.
For those people from small families, they have a house to live in, dozens of acres of land to cultivate, taxes are not heavy, and having enough food is a good thing. Naturally, they do not care about the houses they live in or the land they cultivate.
Who are the property owners? Anyway, even they themselves are "people of the Senate."
But for those outside "investors" or the "emerging classes" like Hu Wumei, their views on property rights are completely different. Who owns the land and whether they can dispose of it are their biggest concerns.
Whether land is state-owned or privately owned is an old issue that has been debated in the Senate for many years. The only point that all parties can agree on is that "those with permanent property have perseverance." The question is, how to define this "permanent property" and how to ensure that the Senate
The government has the right to control land, ensuring that poor people can obtain land relatively fairly.
Although the future of the Senate is to build a country through industry and commerce, the importance of land as a means of production will decline significantly. However, as the most basic means of production and living for human beings, its scarcity and irreplaceability make it inevitable to become a source of various social contradictions
This also makes the Senate particularly cautious on this issue. For many years, it has "only discussed, not voted" to prevent major internal rifts caused by this issue. This is also one of the reasons why many senators are reluctant to mention this matter.
Like other elders, he could now fool him by making jokes and speaking some specious official language. But Xu Yanliang thought about it and felt that it would be better to speak more thoroughly.
Xu Yanliang thought for a while and asked: "What is the nature of the land you are farming now? Didn't the Senate give you any paperwork or anything?"
"Yes, yes, but I can't understand the words above." Hu Wumei said with a bitter smile, "To tell you the truth, if I could figure it out, I would be willing to cultivate more land, but I don't dare to do it casually...
…”
"Bring all your credentials and tell me about this habit." Xu Yanliang said, "Actually, I don't understand it very well myself, but since you reported it to me, I will definitely tell you this."
The matter must be submitted to the Senate as soon as possible."
In the past few years, this was the first time for such a clear answer about land. Hu Wumei suddenly became energetic, stood up and said: "Please wait a moment, I will go get the documents right away!"
While Hu Wumei was leaving, Xu Yanliang asked softly: "Is there any truth in what this person said?"
Yuan Fei smiled: "Don't listen to his nonsense. He has not fifty or sixty slaves, but at least two or three hundred, all of whom are in coconut plantations. Coconuts alone can earn him a lot of money in a year - he has to use them all."
The workers' wages alone will be much higher! He saw that you didn't like using slaves, so he went to the young man to tell you."
Xu Yanliang nodded, this is similar to what he thought. The production efficiency of slaves under the plantation economy is not low. It is not accidental that the cotton and hot crop plantations in the Americas are keen on using slaves, just as the demand for food in Western Europe began in the 16th century.
, causing a large-scale rebound of serfdom in Eastern Europe is one thing.
"How much does a slave cost nowadays?"
"The price fluctuates. Generally, a young and middle-aged male slave costs more than ten yuan. A female slave also costs seven or eight yuan. The one with a good physique is more expensive."
"How many slaves are used here?"
"There are so many workers who don't spend money to eat, who wouldn't want to use a few? But small families can't afford it, and they don't dare to buy it. It's only the wealthy people who buy it." Yuan Fei said, "In the past, under the rule of the Ming Dynasty, there were also
Buying slaves to farm the land."
"What about what he said?"
"That's true. What this old Hu cares about most is his land. This old boy is greedy!" Yuan Fei said without any scruples.
Hu Wumei went there for a while, took out a tin box, carefully opened the padlock on it, took out a book protector inside, and carefully pulled out a few pieces of paper from the inside.
"This is the land allocated to me and my family when I came to Sanya. At that time, there were fifteen people in my family's household registration, with a total of 450 standard acres. This was an additional reward from the Senate, with a total of 3,000 standard acres.
The acres are all wasteland, and there are these..." He unfolded these certificates one by one and put them on the table, and pressed them with a tea cup, "This is my real estate certificate, which was given to me later when I opened up wasteland.
You have to get a waste ticket..."
Xu Yanliang picked them up one by one and looked at them. He saw that these "licenses" had different inscriptions and patterns. Not only did the nature of the land ownership have different names, but also the issuing departments were different.
"Kou Fen Tian" is stamped with the seal of the People's Committee for Civil Affairs. There is no word about the nature of the land, so it is called "Kou Fen Tian." It only states that according to the registered population, regardless of gender, age or child, each person has thirty standard acres.
As for the "reward from the Senate", the certificate was actually an "Agricultural Production Land Tax Certificate" issued by the State Administration of Taxation. Xu Yanliang couldn't laugh or cry, what kind of land certificate was this? It seemed that the people in the Government Affairs Council had gone to great lengths to avoid the issue of land ownership.
The "waste land reclamation ticket" is even more strange. The department that stamped it was actually the "Sanya Special City Government". Probably the people who originally came up with this system also felt that it was inappropriate, so later it was stamped by the People's Committee of Agriculture and the State Administration of Taxation.
A big seal.
Judging from these credentials alone, they meet many characteristics of a real estate certificate. For example, they are accompanied by drawings, clear land boundaries, and even the longitude and latitude are indicated. The problem is that in a legal sense, these are not the same as a land title certificate.
Relationship. There are only a few real estate certificates that are quite satisfactory, at least stating the "owner of the real estate". Of course, the land occupied by the real estate only records the area and has no specific nature.
No wonder Hu Wumei was muttering. To be honest, the Senate could still gain the trust of the naturalized people with this approach. It was probably because they were living in troubled times and did not have many choices.
Seeing him, Hu Wumei was sometimes surprised, sometimes sarcastic, and sometimes showed expressions of disbelief. She couldn't help but feel worried. He had studied these land documents countless times, and always felt that "something was wrong." Seeing that Elder Xu had not spoken for a long time, he
He had the courage to ask: "Chief, look..."
Xu Yanliang shook his head and said: "This is also the first time I see these certificates. It's really eye-opening!"
"Then these credentials..."
"Since they are all stamped with a big seal and issued by the Senate, they are naturally valid. You don't have to worry too much." Xu Yanliang quickly gave him a reassurance, "You don't have to think too much."
"Yes, yes, thank you very much, Chief Xu." These words reassured Hu Wumei a little, but these messy documents were still a worry for him. After all, this was not the clear land deed of the Ming Dynasty!
Xu Yanliang knew from the expression on his face that his guarantee was not convincing. To be honest, even he himself found it unconvincing.