You were made to farm, and now you're the emperor of an empire?

Chapter 339 Where there's a will, there's a way; where there's a will, there's a way.

Early June.

Khal returned to Plenty with several thousand slaves.

Roman accepted everything.

He has now swept away the surrounding nobles and has no shortage of labor.

But now that you've brought it back, you can forget about leaving.

Those children who were bought back are also very useful. They are all malleable, and with education and the cultivation of loyalty, they will become pillars of society in the future.

Of course, this process is very long.

Roman was naturally willing to wait.

Kao temporarily resided in the Abundance Castle, and Sanna also settled there.

Both men had something to say to him; the former believed that the Black Iron King was nothing but a skeleton in a tomb, while the latter brought information about Iotashina.

News from afar is both important and unimportant. It can influence the future, but the future is far away.

Before the future arrives, Roman can only try everything he can to develop.

It now has a population of 20, making it a powerful region.

The entire Black Iron Land has at least ten million people, and it's possible that there are even twenty million.

The cities of Origin and Abundance are but a lone boat on a vast ocean. Even with their high war potential, they cannot withstand the erosion of battle after battle.

The city of Fengrao is indefensible and faces pressure from all sides.

If some unforeseen event occurs, Roman will have no choice but to abandon Plenty City and retreat to Origin City.

Because even winning on the battlefield doesn't guarantee victory.

The other party threw out all sorts of rotten fish and shrimp; he couldn't accept them, nor could he refuse them.

The more prisoners of war there are, the more unstable the rule becomes. The loyalty of the city of abundance will be constantly diluted, eventually approaching ineffective rule—unable to control the excessively large population.

As things stand, most of the slaves in Plenty City have a problem with him.

Those people served Roman as slaves for less than a year and a half, and while they tasted some benefits, it wasn't much.

If they see the Papacy's flag flying high, most of the half of them will submit to the gods, shed their status as "slaves," and return to their former status as "peasants," while the other half will waver.

Roman thought that farming for two years would be enough.

It takes time to appease the people and to change their minds.

Once society stabilizes to the point where it can operate autonomously, these idiots, who hate him to the core now, will worship him like a god in the future.

Watch me grow my own world!

……

In June, the first batch of rice this year began to be harvested.

The yield per mu of the Gewier No. 3 rice variety has not yet been calculated. The Gewier No. 4 rice variety was hastily sown.

Roman took the time to go back and visit.

He was absolutely certain at that moment.

Origin City has now become his largest granary. All of Origin City's annual output can meet the food needs of at least 150,000 people.

Origin City has only 100,000 inhabitants.

This means that surplus grain can be stored.

If the weather is favorable and the crops are plentiful for two more years, then the surplus grain each year will increase, and the accumulated grain will also increase.

After all, reclamation work around the canal was also in full swing.

There are two types of farmers in Origin City and Plenty City.

Roman called the former "self-sufficient farmers" and the latter "citizen farmers."

Self-cultivating farmers contract land on a family or residential scale. Apart from the unfamiliar 50% tax, it is the most suitable and widely accepted system for the current era.

Citizen farmers are like bricks, moved wherever needed. They receive no pay, but have a guaranteed minimum standard of living; their food, clothing, and shelter are all provided by the government, offering many benefits that self-cultivating farmers cannot enjoy. It's hard to say which is better or worse; they are equal in status, both being laborers.

Currently, most farmers at the bottom of society want to become self-sufficient farmers.

The conditions for land reclamation were harsh; people could only live in wooden sheds, collect firewood every day, and endure wind, sun, and rain. But this did not dampen the enthusiasm of the people—they still wanted to put their efforts into their own land, and they could not waste even their bodily functions on other land.

Moreover, there is absolutely no need to worry about the supplies needed for land reclamation.

He received a fixed ration of food from the canal bank each month, which his wife would use to cook, and then he could work happily.

Pickaxe and shovel broken? Then trade them in for new ones.

Lacking animal power and heavy plows? Once the preliminary clearing work is completed, you can apply for their use.

If you get sick from being caught in the rain, or catch another illness, bring some allicin from the hospital. If you recover, keep working; if not, bury you in the ground.

If you lack initial funds, you can borrow from His Highness Roman to purchase living supplies such as tables, chairs, pots and pans, clothes, and bedding.

The principal only increases by one-fifth in a year, but you can pay it back after farming for four or five years.

Roman was also happy to see this happen, because it really saved on management costs.

There were some problems when allocating the land at the beginning.

For example, factors such as the distance of the river, the fertility of the land, and the complexity of the terrain can all lead to a lot of trivial matters.

Don't underestimate these trivial matters; in the eyes of those fools, they are of paramount importance. Even if His Highness Roman were to appear before them, they would dare to kneel and kowtow, begging for a piece of land near a river, with fertile soil that is easy to cultivate.

But Roman never came forward or responded. He chose a one-size-fits-all approach: if you don't plant it, there are plenty of others who will. You're given this land, so you'd better take good care of it.

The initial problem has been solved.

However, the subsequent allocation of resources for animal power and heavy plows is also a problem.

With more monks than meat, resources are ultimately limited. After clearing a flat piece of land, whether you deep-plow a month earlier or two months later determines whether you can sow the seeds earlier and harvest the harvest sooner.

Mohr, from the Ministry of Agriculture, is primarily responsible for mediating disputes in this area and upholding justice.

Fairness means doing things as quickly as possible.

Because Roman set targets for him.

As for how Mohr would mediate the issue, that was beyond Roman's consideration.

We may not have large animal power, but we have plenty of plows. Does that mean we can't rely on people to pull the plow without oxen or horses?

If you can't pull it, use steel farm tools to dig the ground again.

The essence of plowing is digging the soil. Dig to a depth of ten or twenty centimeters, break up the soil, and then draw furrows. That's about the same as plowing once.

As long as the mind does not slip, there are more solutions than difficulties.

To date, the number of independent farming families that Roman has sent to those areas is countless, totaling more than 30,000—most of whom were slaves introduced last year and have a basic level of stability.

They were either single or newly married, but none of them had been allocated a brick house yet.

After all, once people with brick houses start cultivating the land, this house won't be left for them.

On the other hand, because of the infrastructure support for Plenty City, the construction of brick houses in Origin City has slowed down, and those who were originally in the back of the queue have been pushed further back.

As a result, this group of people severely diverted the population of Origin City.

Meanwhile, those hardworking laborers and their family members, who were not afraid of hardship or fatigue, reclaimed 50,000 mu of land in just six months on land that had never been cultivated before, achieving Roman's expected goal at an extremely fast pace.

But Roman also invested a lot.

The farming work has been taken care of, but the infrastructure work must be done by him.

Roman used a large map to plan the route and gave them road design plans, but to connect all the reclamation points, they would have to pave roads, build bridges, and construct houses.

Therefore, the size of construction teams is expanding. A veteran construction worker leads several newcomers, and the team quickly grows to five or six thousand people.

Now they are like beauticians, gradually transforming those wild wildernesses into suitable settlements.

This is about transforming nature. It's about turning an unsuitable environment into a suitable one and expanding living space.

For humankind, there is nothing greater than this.

(End of this chapter)