Second-hand time travel: Liu Bei, the big-eared bandit

Chapter 241 Farming
Spring of the fifth year of Zhongping.

Liu Bei did not launch any more military campaigns, but focused on farming and domestic affairs.

Originally, Liu Bei intended for Jia Xu to oversee the land reclamation and spring plowing affairs within the province.

However, Jia Xu guessed that Guo Yuan wanted to shirk his duties, so he strongly recommended him to Liu Bei as the Agricultural Commandant.

The imperial court originally did not agree to establish agricultural commissioners in prefectures and counties, but only allowed governors to cultivate land. However, since governors now have the power to appoint and dismiss commandants, it is effectively equivalent to establishing agricultural commissioners in all prefectures and counties.

There were many powerful clans in Qingzhou, and many of them had been eliminated before. When urgently resettling the starving Yellow Turban refugees, they did not make many distinctions, since at that time, the top priority was to save as many people as possible.

However, things become more complicated when the planting season arrives.

To formulate agricultural policies, it is necessary to coordinate the various households in Qingzhou who have previously contributed grain and labor to support the resettlement of the people, as well as manage the food, drink, and daily needs of hundreds of thousands of resettled people, and handle a series of affairs such as planting grain, tools, and livestock. Moreover, it is necessary to consider not only the present but also the future.

These things are extremely tedious, much more troublesome than fighting a war...

Therefore, Liu Bei consulted with Jia Xu and Guo Yuan for a long time. Jia Xu still did not run away. Guo Yuan was in charge of the specific affairs, but Jia Xu had to work with Liu Bei to formulate policies.

In fact, Liu Bei knew why Jia Xu didn't want to do this job: it was because it would easily offend people, and even if he didn't offend them now, he would in the future...

However, having been dragged into Liu Bei's business and unable to escape, Jia Xu had no choice but to join forces with Guo Yuan to create a big commotion.

Guoyuan was indeed a very capable person. After receiving the appointment, Guoyuan immediately went out to investigate the fields and reclassified the land types.

The land was divided into two categories by the state: one was private land, which was the land of the existing large households, that is, private fixed assets.

After clarifying the land holdings, Guo Yuan issued a public notice to reassure the people, informing each household that the government would not confiscate their existing property, which put the minds of the existing powerful families in Qingzhou at ease.

Most of the powerful families in Qingzhou had previously cooperated in the resettlement of the Yellow Turbans, and most of them had provided grain and money to resettle the starving people. After consulting with Liu Bei, Guo Yuan had the brothers who stayed behind in each county count the number of starving people each family had resettled.

Subsequently, based on the number of people pacified, these powerful clans who had contributed grain were each allocated additional land as a reward.

Each powerful family could obtain land as long as they reported the newly registered households they had settled. The more households they had, the more land they could get. The starving people who were settled by each family would become their tenants.

This incident instantly changed the Qingzhou gentry's perception of Liu Bei. From top to bottom, they all praised Liu Bei for his benevolence and righteousness, and lauded Jia Xu as a "loyal minister."

But Jia Xu was not happy at all.

Because he knew that in less than two years, most of these people would be cursing him...

This was actually to prevent the powerful clans of Qingzhou from treating the newly settled starving people as unregistered households, and to encourage them to register all of these people—once they were registered as citizens by the government, they could no longer be considered slaves; tenant farmers were also citizens, not slaves.

Originally, the process of settling down was very complicated, but in order to obtain land, each family took the initiative to handle the matter and even registered all the existing hidden households in their families as newly settled tenants.

After all, the land can be divided...

This was obviously exploiting people, but Jia Xu and Guo Yuan didn't care. They accepted the household registration as long as they had it, since the land distributed to each family was scattered—all the plots of land that had been divided up by powerful clans and could not be connected were distributed.

Those lands were never suitable for military settlements...

Private land can be traded freely, but a transaction tax will be levied on the transaction. The tax amount is not high, and it is 10% of the government's assessed value. Regardless of the actual transaction price, the tax will be levied based on the assessed value.

Those who owned private land naturally had to pay grain tax. Guo Yuan gave a fixed price of only 10%, but during the autumn harvest, each household had to deliver the corresponding amount of grain to the county granary according to their household registration and land area.

The county no longer undertakes the task of collecting grain taxes, but only the task of storage. In addition, it has set up Changping Granary to deal with disasters and set up official grain shops to sell grain at fair prices.

Apart from the amount of grain that the Ever-Normal Granary must maintain, all other tax grain that enters the county granary will be sold locally at official grain shops and will no longer be transported to the prefecture or county.

If any household has surplus grain, they can sell it to the official grain shops, which will buy as much as they want at a stable price—of course, the vast majority of people will not sell it.

The powerful clans didn't see any problem with these policies—as long as there were no forced levies on grain and corvée labor, they could accept even higher grain taxes. If the grain was simply transported to the local county granary, the losses weren't significant. With a 10% grain tax, each household would actually spend about 12-13% of their grain, which was less than the previous expenses for bribing county officials.

Of course, with no hidden households and the amount of land publicly disclosed, it becomes much more difficult to evade taxes.

As for the integrity of the official grain stores themselves, we'll set that aside for now. We need to prioritize people's livelihoods; once those are improved, we can address corruption.

Besides... dealing with corruption isn't Jia Xu's or Guo Yuan's job...

After the framework was in place, Guo Yuan announced that all other unclaimed farmland in Qingzhou would be designated as official military farms and managed by the Qingzhou Prefectural Governor's Office.

Officially owned farms were strictly prohibited from being traded.

At the same time, no matter what kind of land it is, if it is left uncultivated for a season, it will be regarded as ownerless land and reclaimed by the government for military settlement.

Everyone has benefited now; taxes have been reduced and land has been acquired. No one has any objections to this. Not only has no one accused them of encroaching on private land, but they all praise this as a benevolent policy.

Clearly, whether a policy is good or not depends primarily on whether one benefits from it.

The scattered fields were all distributed out, and most of the official farmland consisted of large tracts of good waterfront land along the Yellow River and the Ji River, which was also for the convenience of management.

Because there were many official military farms and many tenant farmers to manage, Guo Yuan sent Liu Bei's close followers from the army to serve as "village chiefs" in the official farms—this truly combined the roles of army village chief and military farm chief into one.

This meant that Liu Bei's personal guards were to protect and manage these official fields, but it did not mean that the fields were distributed to them.

There are about twenty military settlements in total. Each settlement is divided into plots of land, some large and some small. The larger ones have several thousand tenant households, while the smaller ones have over a thousand.

In total, more than 40,000 hectares of land were set up as military settlements, with a total of 60,000 tenant households and 280,000 people.

The rent standard for government-run farms was nominally 50%, but in practice it was 40%, and the 10% that was not collected was regarded as tax—this was actually to avoid special changes in the future.

Tenants only need to pay 40% of the output.

Apart from rent, no other taxes are required. The only requirement is that the land be rented according to the number of people in each household, with each person not exceeding fifteen mu (Han mu), and people are encouraged to rent according to their means.

If any farmland is left uncultivated, it will be immediately reclaimed and additional penalties will be imposed.

Newborns can also be counted in the population, and there are subsidies for raising children. For each child, the family can receive 20% of the rent paid that year, up to a maximum of 60%, until the child is ten years old—this is, of course, to encourage childbirth and to try to increase the survival rate of young children.

It's not that you don't pay rent, but that after paying rent, you take your children and apply for the grain that should be returned, based on the rent receipts you paid. There's a difference.

Subsidies can be received after the age of ten, but the child must be enrolled in a new school. Once enrolled and passing the academic exams each year, the subsidy can continue until the age of fifteen. The new schools are the vocational colleges approved by Liu Bei. Currently, only the Maritime College has been established, but more schools will inevitably be established there in the future.

These policies are very attractive to tenants, the key being that they are completely tax-free except for rent.

If tenants are diligent enough and save properly, they can also accumulate enough money to purchase private land from those who own private land.

Liu Bei's officials and soldiers were also allocated some land according to their merits. This was not arranged by Guo Yuan, but by Liu Bei himself. The person in charge was Zhao Yun, who was the fairest in handling matters—Zhao Yun was in charge of military law and the merit book.

This type of land was called "granted land," which was separated from the official military farms. Tenants would also be allocated land, somewhat like a fief.

However, these are still government-owned farms on a lease basis, not private land like private fields, and therefore cannot be traded.

They can enjoy full rent and even pass it on to their descendants, but they cannot buy, sell, or sublet it to others.

As long as the land is not left uncultivated, it will not be taken back—but similarly, if it is left uncultivated, it will be taken back, and grain tax must still be paid.

Tenant farmers' birth and education subsidies were applied for separately and were calculated based on grain rent to prevent lazy people from taking advantage of the system. Landowners who received land grants still received 40% of the full rent.

This would make those who have made contributions treat their tenants better, since higher productivity means greater profits, and more children per tenant means more land for each household, which would also benefit the meritorious officials.

Because the rent for government-owned farmland and military settlements was only 40%, and no taxes were levied, if a powerful family treated its tenants badly, most of the tenants would have to go to the government-owned farmland. If there were no more people farming the land, the land would be abandoned and then taken over by the government.

This is a typical policy of forcing evil to do good.

……

(End of this chapter)