Traditional agricultural production is a labor-intensive industry. Whether it is planting staple foods such as rice or wheat, or growing economic crops such as cotton, mulberry, and sugar cane, a large amount of labor is required.

At the same time, the production tools of traditional agriculture are not very good. In rural areas, there are not even enough cattle and draft horses. Many farmer families can only rely on manual labor for farming, and few use cattle and horses to plant power.

Although the machinery industry of the Great Chu Empire continued to develop, production tools such as hoes and sickles have been greatly improved, but the essence has not changed much.

Production relies on a large amount of agricultural labor.

In fact, this kind of problem is not a big problem in the provinces in Guannei, because many places have more people and less land. Even in places with relatively few people and relatively large land, such as several provinces in the north, it is only relatively small.

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Agricultural production in these places basically does not suffer from large labor shortages.

But in several provinces in the Northeast, the situation is different. There are fewer local people and more land. Especially in northern Liaoning and Heishui Province, there are large areas of land to be developed, but the total population is not large.

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Even if horses are used for farming, the per capita grain production level has been greatly improved compared to Guannei, but the problem of insufficient labor force is still there.

Ordinary farm families don't have any intuitive feelings, because although they have a lot of land, this amount is only compared to Guan Nei. Generally speaking, a single family can only plant a few hundred acres of land. That's it.

Extensive management methods such as horse plowing can be adopted.

But for a very large agricultural planting company like Liaohua Agricultural Company, the problem of labor shortage is very serious.

The endless rice fields ahead are the problems that trouble Hua Tianzhong!

Relying on manual harvesting is very time-consuming and laborious. A person can only harvest a few acres of land every day... But the area of ​​rice planted by Liaohua Agricultural Company this year exceeds 100,000 acres.

Moreover, there is a time limit for grain harvesting. If you harvest it too early, the rice will not be fully mature. If you harvest it too late, the grain will be overripe and fall off.

It is not an easy task to harvest and thresh these grains in a limited time.

A lot of labor is needed in a short period of time!

Even if Liaohua Agricultural Company transfers manpower from everywhere, it is not enough, so it can only hire people temporarily at high prices.

If there could be a mechanical harvester, the situation would be different.

Hua Tianzhong didn't think much about it at all, and immediately said: "I want to see the people from Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company. By the way, if they brought the prototype, let them bring the prototype too. It's empty talk, can you?

Use it and you will know if it works or not, just give it a try!"

Anyway, it won’t take long to meet people and look at the equipment, but if the combine harvester produced by Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company actually works, it will solve a big problem for their company!
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The people from Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company are just waiting for a reply from Liaohua Agricultural Company. The person who came to sell them has not done anything at all and just lives in the next town.

Because Liaohua Agricultural Company owns the largest single farm in northern Liaoning and even the entire Northeast region, which is larger than many purely government-run farms.

Winning an order from Liaohua Agricultural Company is crucial for an enterprise specializing in the research and development and production of agricultural machinery.

This is why as soon as they successfully developed the harvester, they couldn't wait to come to your door to actively sell it.

Soon, Hua Tianzhong, co-organizer of Liaohua Agricultural Company, met people from Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company.

The purpose of the meeting between the two parties was very simple and pure. One came to sell, and the other hoped to obtain a kind of agricultural machinery and equipment. Therefore, after a simple greeting, they went straight to the open space outside.

There are already several pieces of equipment brought over by Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company.

A representative from Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company came forward and introduced: "There are two harvesters we brought here today. One is a power-charged rocker harvester. During operation, it only needs two horses to drag it forward and uses ground wheels as power.

It provides power to the harvester for harvesting. The harvested rice will be transported down through the conveyor belt and laid out in bundles on the ground!"

"In the future, we only need to arrange for people to take the rice away to the threshing machine for threshing!"

"In terms of efficiency, such a two-horse harvester can be operated by two people and it only takes four hours to harvest ten acres of land!"

"After our research and development this year, we have already conducted tests on many small farms, and the test data is only a lot more!"

"The big guy next to us is based on our in-depth research and development on the swing arm harvester. After integrating the thresher, we created a harvester that is separated from the integrated combine harvester and uses twenty horses for pulling, which is more efficient!

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Hua Tianzhong looked at the harvester in front of him, listening and watching. After hearing this data, he said: "So, on the surface, it is at least many times better than manual harvesting!"

"But if you include the labor force of horses, I'm afraid the efficiency is not so high!"

Hua Tianzhong directly pointed out the problem. This kind of harvester, whether it is a simple swing arm harvester or a combine harvester, looks good, and it seems that the harvesting efficiency is much higher than that of pure manual labor. However, this kind of equipment still needs horses to pull it.

In fact, horses are also labor force, and the cost of raising horses is much more expensive than raising a person.

However, the representative of Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company said: "Although horses are also consumed, in our place, especially your company, there is no shortage of horses, but people!"

Hua Tianzhong didn't say anything after hearing this, because what the other party told was the truth!

To be honest, their company has no shortage of horses. Not to mention the daily draft horses, there are also a large number of draft horses in the horse farm next door that can be used at any time.

What their company lacks is people!

To be precise, there is a shortage of people during the busy farming period, but in normal times there is actually no need for so many people.

During busy farming periods, it is a feasible way to use energy storage instead of manpower for efficient farming.

But in the end, whether this kind of thing is useful or not, we still need to try it before we can say.

Immediately, a small swing-arm harvester was hitched to two batches of draft horses and began testing in a small field of mature wheat that was about to be harvested. Their harvester could be used to harvest both wheat and rice.

Although the wheat planting area of ​​Liaohua Agricultural Company is not large, the scale is not small, and harvesting is currently underway.

How about the current situation of testing this kind of harvester?

From the beginning of the experiment, it attracted the attention of everyone, including Hua Tianzhong.

This efficiency is too fast.

I saw two horses dragging the rocker harvester. The harvester kept moving forward, cutting off large tracts of wheat, and then transported them and placed them in bundles at the back.

In this way, you only need to bring another carriage later, load the wheat harvested along the way, and then transport it to the thresher for detachment.

The entire harvesting efficiency has been greatly improved.

With the same manpower, it can be improved several times.

Such a harvester alone can completely solve the labor shortage problem faced by Liaohua Agricultural Company.

The next combine harvester was even more eye-opening for them.

This thing is more efficient in harvesting, and it can also directly complete threshing and packaging. After more than ten horses pull the combine harvester, the directly threshed wheat is conveyed up, and the workers directly pack and tighten it, and then it can be directly delivered to the side.

The transport carriage.

As for the cost of the extra horses, this is nothing to Liaohua Agricultural Company, they have no shortage of horses!

After seeing the test, Hua Tianzhong asked about the price and finally placed an order on the spot.

They did not take a fancy to those swing arm harvesters, but only ordered a small number of them, and more of them were large combine harvesters.

A small swing arm harvester, you can tell at a glance that it is used on smaller farms or even family farms.

However, the scale of their Liaohua Agricultural Company's farm is too large, with a planting area of ​​tens of thousands of acres or more. It needs to be used in one step, using large combine harvesters pulled by dozens of horses.

Although the cost investment is relatively high, it is more efficient and can harvest more planting areas.

Yes, Hua Tianzhong is already preparing to further increase the planting area of ​​wheat and rice next year.

After placing the order for the harvester, Hua Tianzhong asked people from Hekou Agricultural Company to deliver it as soon as possible. This year's harvest season is coming soon, and they are still waiting to use it!

The people from Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company smiled and patted their chests and confirmed that their company's production line has been established and a batch of inventory has been produced. This batch of goods can be shipped as soon as possible.

Then I tried to ask Liaohua Agricultural Company if it was interested in various agricultural machinery such as steam-powered harvesters. Their company is researching various agricultural machinery powered by steam engines. Do you want to place a pre-order or something?

Hua Tianzhong naturally said that if you come up with the research, take a look at it, you will definitely want it if it is good!

This is actually just a polite comment. If the item is good, Hua Tianzhong will not hesitate at all and will definitely buy it.

If the stuff is not good, don’t expect him to place a pre-order, who knows what you will make by then.

Their company's money has been cultivated through hard work and will not be wasted casually.

Besides, the main customers of Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company are these large-scale planting companies or growers.

And Liaohua Agricultural Company is their biggest customer, so there is no need to worry about keeping the good things they make but not selling them.

In this kind of cooperation transaction, Liaohua Agricultural Company, as the buyer, still has a very advantage.

Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company also wanted to maintain a good cooperative relationship with this large customer, and even kept the large and small harvesters as samples before leaving.

The wheat of Liaohua Agricultural Company is currently being harvested intensively, and the demand for harvesting equipment is very high. It would be better to have harvesting equipment to help, and it would be faster. After the wheat harvest is finished, they will start harvesting rice.<

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Of course, these two harvesters were not given away for free, but were purchased directly by Liaohua Agricultural Company, and were included in the first batch of orders.

Hekou Agricultural Machinery Company acted very quickly. In order to pry open the pockets of Liaohua Agricultural Company, a large customer, and at the same time, they wanted to use Liaohua Agricultural Company's order as a breakthrough point to open up a larger market, so they were promoting this contract.

I worked very hard.

While working overtime for production, we also shipped the equipment in stock first to try not to delay the harvest season of Liaohua Agricultural Company.

These equipment will be dismantled into their main parts, then packed and sent upstream to the Liao River on steam ships. After the Liao River waterway is no longer able to move, they will be transported by horse-drawn carriage.

In order to speed up transportation, they also paid a large sum of extra money for expedited transportation, so that this batch of harvesters could be delivered to the farm of Liaohua Agricultural Company in time, and then assembled by technicians.
To be continued...