CHAPTER 542: CHAPTER 440: LUCIA ASSISTANCE PLAN · 3 (REQUEST FOR MONTHLY TICKETS! AUTUMN PEAR SYRUP!)

In Flame Country’s first batch of aid to Lucia, the Energy Towers are undoubtedly the highlight, but for the Lucians, greenhouses are what they care about the most.

During the construction of the Energy Towers, the greenhouses were completed first.

However, since the Energy Towers intended to supply heating and electricity to the greenhouses are not yet completed, the greenhouses are not fully operational at the moment.

But due to the current food shortage in the Lucia Capital, the Lucians have straightforwardly used other heating and power facilities as a temporary solution. Although it can’t make the greenhouses fully operational, it’s enough to allow seeds to be sown.

Despite the slow germination and growth of seeds caused by inadequate heating and electricity, these issues will be resolved once the Energy Towers are completed.

By that time, the grains produced from the greenhouses can greatly alleviate the current food shortage issue facing the Lucia Capital.

In fact, the food issue is a classic problem for Lucia.

Whether it’s from the earliest East Slavs’ establishment of Kyiv Rus, or the later establishment of the Grand Duchy by Ivan IV, the Novgorod familiar to Mount & Blade players, and the subsequent Romanov Dynasty founded by Peter the Great, even as recent as the Suyia era and modern Lucia periods, the food issue has always troubled this country.

Their high-latitude location, with its cold climates, results in long winters, where the land remains frozen for more than half of the year, posing significant challenges for agriculture in Lucia.

After all, when the land can’t be cultivated for half of the year, it’s extremely hard to increase food output in the primitive farming society.

Moreover, the key issue in the Suyia era was that despite owning the world’s vastest territories, only a third of it was suitable for farming, and even to the modern day, this third’s land utilization is only 60%.

Coupled with a scarce agricultural population, although Lucia once was a very famous exporter of agricultural products, that was based on serfs living worse off than livestock during the Tsar period.

In the Suyia era, the underdeveloped and lagging agricultural industry severely constrained Suyia’s economic development.

This is also why during those years, the second generation leader of Suyia, Comrade Corn, greatly promoted agricultural development. The policy itself had no problem, but unfortunately, Lucia’s land wasn’t suitable for planting corn, originally from the tropical regions of Central America.

And in the Lucia era, due to some issues arising from the dissolution of Suyia, a severe land abandonment problem occurred in Lucia, only gradually improved after the current Lucia leader took office in recent years.

Yet now, the formerly vast territory is entirely frozen over with ice and snow, making it impossible to plant anything.

Therefore, the greenhouses aided by the Flames to the Lucians are indeed more important than the Energy Towers that provide heating and electricity.

Of course, Lucia itself actually has relevant agricultural technology, and greenhouse planting isn’t something only the Flame Country people can do.

But although Lucians grasp the relevant agricultural technology, there might not be a country in the world more skilled at farming than the Flame Country people.

After all, they are a nation that thinks about farming whether it’s in islands, deserts, snow mountains, poles, or even in space.

The basic greenhouse construction isn’t a problem for Lucians, but when it comes to crop planting management and breeding high-yield crop seeds, they fall short of the Flame Country people.

Moreover, in the current environment, planting crops involves many technical details different from pre-disaster times.

Flame Country, having specialized teams studying eco-friendly greenhouses and cultivation technology, has made considerable achievements in this area, which are the focuses of their aid to the Lucians.

After all, simple greenhouse technology isn’t rare, and planting crops isn’t too difficult, but how to cultivate high-yield crops in the current environment with limited conditions, how to increase crop yield, is the real core technology.

However, unlike the core technology of Energy Towers, these technologies are taught unreservedly to the Lucians by Flame Country.

This is not because agricultural technology is unimportant, but because it is a technology that can let more people survive, unlike other kinds of technology.

People might be able to live without a mobile phone, computer, the internet, or everything modern technology offers, but not without food.

Flame Country’s deep-rooted love for the land and commitment to farming stems from having experienced too many disasters and tragedies due to a lack of food, this fear has even become instinctively engraved in their genes.

Therefore, as a nation that knows the tragedy of not having enough food, the Flame Country people would never make things difficult for other countries in such matters.

Other things might consider the influence of various factors, but when it comes to growing more food, the Flame Country people have never thought of holding back.

In fact, there’s no need to hold back in such matters because agricultural technology is inherently something with a low entry barrier. Even without the technology from Flame Country, Lucians could manage on their own.

Moreover, Chen Xin believes that rather than withholding technology, it is better to provide Lucians with high-yield crop seeds.

High-yield crop seeds are specially cultivated, with unstable genetic traits, the first generation is high-yield, the second generation produces less, and by the third, it basically loses the high yield—this is quite normal.

To ensure continuous high yields, specially cultivated high-yield crop seeds must be used constantly. Not only that, but efforts must also be intensified in crop management and fertilizer usage.

For ecological agriculture, this isn’t ideal, and the research center’s studies on eco-friendly greenhouses are avoiding this.

Ecological agriculture focuses on cyclic planting, and if every year demands sowing new high-yield seeds, it can hardly be called cyclic planting.

Of course, the aid to Lucia is just regular greenhouses and high-yield crops, not the eco-friendly greenhouses used in ecological agriculture.

This doesn’t mean Flame Country is stingy, but constructing eco-friendly greenhouses takes time, and while they offer a richer variety and are not low in overall yield, Lucia currently needs large quantities of filling food in a short time, making high-yield crops and regular greenhouses more suitable for their situation.