Chapter 957 Agriculture, Forestry, Animal Husbandry and Fishery

After Helwein listened to Morse's opinions, he asked Morse to formulate Kampala's agricultural development strategy. This can be regarded as an excellent phenomenon in the governance of East African countries.

After all, most officials in East Africa do not have as much experience and family heritage as European aristocratic officials. This makes East African officials rely more on the advice of "experts." The only pity is that there are too few practical experts like Morse.

…

In Rhine City, Ernst was also listening to reports from professionals from the Ministry of Agriculture.

"As of 1898, the country's cultivated land area was close to 2.5 billion acres, second only to Tsarist Russia and the United States in the world. In the past eight years, the new cultivated land was mainly in the central and western regions, as well as the southeastern region."

"With the increase in cultivated land, farmland water conservancy facilities have also increased significantly. More than four million black workers have participated in agricultural production activities, and a large number of new water conservancy facilities and reservoirs have been built. In the past five years alone, the number of new reservoirs has reached more than 20,000. This has greatly increased Improved agricultural production efficiency.”

As a country dominated by savannah climate, rainfall distribution in most parts of East Africa is uneven, especially with large seasonal differences. The construction of water conservancy facilities has greatly improved the efficiency of agricultural production in East Africa.

In the absence of water conservancy facilities, the land in most areas of East Africa could only be cultivated once a year. However, after the construction of new reservoirs and other water conservancy facilities, water sources were guaranteed, and many lands in East Africa were able to be cultivated twice a year. In some areas, even It can be harvested three times a year.

This is equivalent to doubling East Africa's food production without increasing the area of ​​cultivated land. This shows the outstanding achievements of East Africa's agricultural and water conservancy construction.

"In the 1990s, our most important scientific and technological progress was the development and popularization of large vehicles and agricultural machinery. In 1898, the number of tractors nationwide reached more than 14,000, with the highest penetration rate in the Great Lakes and central regions."

The tractor production technology in East Africa has been relatively complete. At the same time, as a key science and technology project in East Africa, priority is given to meeting domestic demand. Currently, East Africa is also the country with the most internal combustion engine vehicles such as cars and tractors in the world.

The secret behind East Africa's superior output of agricultural machinery such as automobiles and tractors is assembly line production. Of course, on this basis, Ernst also proposed the concept of the entire industry chain.

The clear division of labor and cooperative development among various factories in East Africa have a huge impact on East Africa's industrial production capacity. Take the automobile assembly plant in New Frankfurt as an example. Many of its internal parts are not produced by the factory, but are provided by other factories.

Of course, the East African government's overall management and formulation of unified standards have greatly improved the reliability of parts and components.

Due to the need for confidentiality, these factories are basically located in the central and inland areas, and the coastal areas adopt European and American standards. As a result, the automobile production plants in Dar es Salaam and Mombasa still use the traditional manual assembly model, which is extremely inefficient.

Of course, East African assembly line models will also be exported in conjunction with the cars produced in these manual factories. The former are generally high-end models, while the latter are low-end models.

After all, assembly line models produce more parts, are more uniform in quality, and are easier to maintain and repair, so they are labeled as "high-end products."

However, in addition to industry, the main sources of income in the two places include commerce and service industries, which are not available in the inland cities of East Africa.

"The past thirty years have also been a period of great development of our country's forestry resources. The continuous expansion of the country has led to the continuous expansion of the forest area we have obtained, especially the almost inexhaustible forestry resources in the Congo Basin. As for artificial forests, , mainly rubber forests.”

Before East Africa, the African continent had not been effectively developed for a long time, so it accumulated a huge amount of forestry resources, including a large number of virgin forests in arid Southwest Africa and Somalia. Therefore, at the current stage, the area of ​​deforestation in East Africa is far greater than that of planting. area.

And this situation will continue. The area of ​​cities and cultivated land is still on an upward trend, so the plunder of forests will also be a long-term process.

"The livestock industry in East Africa is developing rapidly, especially in high-quality grasslands such as South Africa and Southwest Africa. The main economy in Southwest Africa is livestock industry. At the same time, the development of livestock industry in the western region has also created a certain competitive relationship between us and Argentine agriculture."

Argentina is a big country in animal husbandry. In the 19th century, it could even be said to be a powerful country in animal husbandry. Although Southwest Africa is arid, it also means that there is a large amount of grassland there. In addition, the vast land and sparse population are naturally conducive to the development of large pastures. At the same time, with the The construction of the Walvis Bay Railway and the Alexandria Port provided access to the sea for agricultural and animal husbandry products in Southwest Africa.

Naturally, the livestock market mainly targets European countries, which has depressed international beef prices to a certain extent. Of course, the development of livestock industry in Southwest Africa started late, so its current influence is also weak.

"As for fishery resources, they are also in a stage of rapid development. Especially the existence of fisheries on the west coast has given us a stable source of marine fishery resources in East Africa. In the past eight years, the marine fishing industry in East Africa has quadrupled. With the support of ships, "The development of railway and cold food technology not only provides domestic residents with a new source of meat, but also brings huge profits through export to European and American countries."

The west coast fishery in East Africa is the fifth largest fishery in the world, and it is also the only fishery among the five largest fisheries in the world that has not undergone large-scale development.

At the same time, on the east coast of East Africa, due to the existence of the Somali Ocean Current, seasonal fishing grounds will be formed, and East Africa is not a politically unstable country like Somalia in the previous life, so East Africa basically has a firm grasp on the resource development rights of the fishing grounds along the Somali coast.

In the past, Somalia was in a state of civil war, and the government and local warlords were corrupt and incompetent, unable to effectively manage the Somali coast, so the entire Somali coast became a paradise for foreign fishing boats.

The small sampans of Somali fishermen naturally could not compare with the advanced and professional foreign fishing boats, so foreign fishing boats fished extensively along the Somali coast, causing the local fishery resources to be depleted and the fishermen to lose their source of income, thus giving rise to the profession of "pirates" in Somalia.

The original small fishing boats were indeed not good at fishing, but after installing engines, they could achieve class leaps by robbing passing merchant ships, so the Somali pirate problem was also a kind of cause and effect reincarnation.

Of course, although the fishing grounds along the coast of Somalia are rich in resources, they are still not comparable to the fishing grounds on the west coast. Although East Africa has acquired the west coast for a short time, from the perspective of the time when the East African government strongly supported the development of the marine fishing industry, the two were almost carried out at the same time, so the growth rate of the marine fishing industry on the west coast far exceeded that of the east coast.

"The above is basically the basic development of the four major industries of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery in my country. In general, East African agriculture is in a period of rapid and stable development."

"The driving force for this rapid development is mainly the promotion of government policies, the increase in the national population, the development of the transportation industry, etc."

In terms of policy, the role of the East African government cannot be ignored, and population growth is the driving force for agricultural investment and expansion in East Africa. The development of the transportation industry is also extremely important, especially for the development and utilization of fishery resources.

If the transportation conditions in the west are not in place, East Africa will naturally not be able to achieve the vigorous development of the western marine fishing industry, unless it is processed into canned or semi-finished products that can be stored in the west coast cities and factories nearby.

The application of refrigeration technology on the railway allows the inland of East Africa to eat relatively fresh seafood products, which expands the market scope of the marine fishing industry.

In fact, it was only after the East African railway network was basically formed that the East African marine fishing industry entered a stage of rapid development.