Chapter 68: Chapter 66: Great Harvest
The success of pioneer agriculture largely determines the future direction of the Dragon Grass Tribe’s development.
The current primitive hunting and gathering lifestyle within the Kawa Great Forest can scarcely support the numerous large tribes, capable of hosting over a hundred thousand beastmen, which generally resides at the borders where the Kawa Great Forest meets human territory.
This is because the beastman’s backward production methods are utterly incapable of supporting populations over a hundred thousand. The large beastman tribes at the borders exist because they invade human realms during the cold winter to loot enough food to sustain themselves.
If the attempt at pioneer agriculture fails, even though Austin has quite a few tricks up his sleeve, lacking sufficient food supply makes it even more troublesome to increase the population of beastman clans under his command.
Even though the growth of kudzu during the pioneer planting process has been consistently smooth, and under careful nurturing, its exuberance cannot be compared to wild kudzu, but until the outcome is truly revealed, no one knows.
As Vini swung the spade down, all the surrounding beastmen spectators held their breath.
His hands gripping the wooden spade trembled a bit, but he still stomped firmly, causing the spade to deeply penetrate the soil, and then he levered the wooden handle downward.
Crunch!
A crisp muffled sound came from the soil, and simultaneously Vini felt resistance, as if there were a huge wooden root beneath the soil. But under the beastman’s strength, this resistance was negligible, and soon a large clump of soil was turned over.
Along with it appeared a kudzu root, broken at the tip, about one decimeter long, and the size of an arm!
Success!
All the beastmen in attendance widened their eyes, gazing at the huge kudzu root picked up by Vini, with expressions ranging from excitement to awe.
Several nearby beastmen couldn’t help but take tools to dig along a row of land, as the soil turned over and one kudzu root after another was unearthed, the surrounding beastmen’s atmosphere became more fervent and finally erupted into excitement.
"As expected from His Highness Austin, it truly worked!"
"It’s really possible; I’ll work hard in the future pioneering so we won’t lack food anymore!"
Food issues are a sore point for every beastman struggling to survive within the Kawa Great Forest. Among the beastmen present, who hasn’t faced days without harvest and gone hungry?
Though beasts’ heads are simple, it doesn’t mean they don’t understand the significance of this large batch of kudzu roots before them.
Previously requiring traversing mountains and waters to find, where it might be there one day and gone the next, but now it can be gathered and planted on a plot of land, producing consistently; planting kudzu here each time could mean a fixed food source?
Moreover, with just a small segment of land excavated, there’s already this huge pile of kudzu roots dug out; both in size and yield far exceeds that of wild kudzu, looking at this vast kudzu patch, if it’s entirely excavated, imagine how great the harvest would be!
Seeing this, the spectating beastmen couldn’t help but start grabbing tools and joining in the excavation of the kudzu roots, working energetically and enthusiastically.
With the beastmen’s excavation, the kudzu roots on the clearing piled up higher and higher, nearly forming a small hill; when all 20 acres are fully excavated, it indeed has become a small mountain.
The output from the 20 acres of pioneer land roughly estimated at about ten thousand pounds, with a per-acre yield of five to six hundred pounds.
This output is several times less than the kudzu’s two thousand pounds per acre yield in Austin’s past life, but kudzu seeds then were specially cultivated with various fertilizers incomparable to the rudimentary planting conditions now.
Furthermore, in his previous life, from planting to harvesting took nearly half a year, whereas here in Otherworld, it only takes about a month and a half, incomparable.
The kudzu roots grown here, through concentrated planting and care, yield several times more than wild kudzu roots.
If venturing out to gather, even if the entire Dragon Nest Tribe spent a whole month dedicated to digging wild kudzu roots across mountain ranges in dozens of kilometers, it might still not reach ten thousand pounds in quantity.
But now, merely 20 acres have produced this quantity of kudzu roots; how could the beastmen not be astonished?
Furthermore, after pioneering this piece of land, future kudzu planting would no longer require such exhaustive Kung Fu as at the start.
Calculating in this way, even if beastmen were simple-minded, they’d deeply understand that the food obtained through pioneer planting is far superior to gathering food outside.
"Success!"
Seeing the beastmen on the field plunged into celebration and the kudzu roots piled like a mountain beside, the Blue Young Dragon couldn’t help but exhale lightly.
Coupled with the hunted meat and various wild fruits and seeds collected, the beastmen in the Dragon Nest Tribe each consume about one to two pounds of kudzu root daily.
Of course, if they’d only eat kudzu roots each day, probably each would consume around three pounds daily, but given the current strength of the Dragon Nest Tribe, alongside raising wild rabbits and wild pigs, they won’t run out of hunted food every day.
Calculating like this, the twenty acres, with around ten thousand pounds of kudzu root output, can sustain the Dragon Nest Tribe’s seven hundred members for about ten days, and if the beastmen’s rations can be compressed, even up to twenty days.
And this is just the output from the first 20-acre pioneering land!
As of now, under Austin’s command, the Dragon Nest Tribe has pioneered around one hundred and fifty acres of land.
Due to the relation of pioneering followed by planting, the planting time for each plot varies; the next batch of around thirty acres of pioneering land kudzu roots will ripen in about ten days or so.
Thus calculated, with sequential planting on the one hundred and fifty acres of pioneer land, the kudzu output will be sufficient to sustain the entire Dragon Nest Tribe’s beastmen.
This food crisis has thus been entirely resolved.
Nevertheless, Austin will not halt the pioneering land work.
Although the current one hundred and fifty acres’ yield can sustain the increasing population of beastmen in the Dragon Nest Tribe, following this grain incident, Austin has decided to store food in large quantities.
Before initiating the next war to annex other tribes, it’s crucial to ensure sufficient food is budgeted in the warehouse to prevent a scenario of population surging causing food shortage.
Moreover, with the population of the Dragon Nest Tribe growing, labor force has increased, speeding up the pioneering work by the beastmen, thus producing more land and subsequently more food.