Struggle in the Steam Age

Joining this small customs union means to Lawrence not only that his territory enters this trade circle, but more importantly, it means that he can integrate into the encircled environment. After all, people are social animals, and so are countries. It is much better to be able to communicate with the outside world than to close the country.

In addition to these normal harvests, the lords at the meeting agreed to buy the grain sold by New Sauer at a premium of 20% based on the average grain export price of the top 15 trading ports along the Sea of ​​Stars in the current month. And all self-pickup in Nova Sauer.

In other words, as long as Lawrence grows the grain, someone will come to buy it. There is no need to worry about the sale of the product. This is great news for Lawrence, who is just getting his feet wet in the area.

After completing the mission of the visit, Lawrence's ship returned directly to his territory. In just half a month, great changes have taken place in New Shaw. For example, the original temporary trestle bridge has been replaced by a semi-permanent wooden pier at this time. Not far away, a group of people are preparing to use cement and stone to build a real permanent pier.

In addition to the pier, Lawrence also saw five or six huge windmills appearing on the coastline. Presumably, this should be because the steam engine that came ashore needs to be used in more important places temporarily, so the craftsmen who came to the island with the boat simply took advantage of the almost non-stop sea breeze by the sea to build several windmills as a supplement to the steam engine.

"Lord August, you are finally back." As soon as he got off the boat, Lawrence was stopped by several priests wearing brown priestly robes. "You told us to build a digester and we've fixed it, so what do we do next?"

Lawrence didn't call this group of agricultural priests just because of favors. If it was just favors before, it would be great if he could call one or two technicians. The reason why they sent a team was because Lawrence wrote a conjecture about circular agriculture in the letter, and said that he would use his territory to test this conjecture.

As the daughter of the Mother Earth and the Father of Nature, the Goddess of Agriculture has always been in a state of entanglement and contradiction. On the one hand, the inheritance it received from her parents told her to protect the natural world, but on the other hand, her priesthood required her to stand on the side of intelligent creatures to develop agriculture as much as possible and produce more agricultural products.

But in this way, the development of agriculture will inevitably need to destroy the natural world. Especially after the Industrial Revolution, intelligent creatures, especially humans and dwarves, have severely damaged the natural world, and a large part of it is due to the development of agriculture. For example, large-scale reclamation of land will seriously damage natural vegetation, and excessive use of chemical fertilizers will easily damage the soil.

The circular agriculture mentioned in Lawrence's letter to the church gave the goddess of agriculture hope, a hope that human development and the natural world can coexist as harmoniously as possible. This is why she issued an oracle to send such a capable team from the headquarters of the Agricultural Church in the New World to the island facing the silver level.

However, because Lawrence learned all this knowledge from the Internet, there is only a general framework. In addition, considering that even if different worlds look similar, they are likely to be different in some microscopic places. So he simply announced what to do in the next step when he finished the previous step for the rest of the details except the knowledge framework. In order to be able to adjust the wrong place in time to avoid problems due to dogmatism.

But in this way, the members of the Agricultural Church who had worked overtime with great interest before suddenly found that they did not know what to do after efficiently completing the construction of the biogas digester arranged by Lawrence before he left. So they waited for two days in boredom, which is why they were so excited when they saw Lawrence come back.

Building a biogas digester is a very important thing for Lawrence, after all, as an area dominated by agriculture, sufficient fertilizer is essential. In addition, the unified fermentation of manure and various perishable organic matter is an effective means of blocking infectious diseases for Lawrence and the others in the tropics.

What's more, the region's hot and humid climate all year round is actually very suitable for biogas fermentation. The biogas digester can be used all year round instead of only a few months like Lawrence's hometown in the north in his previous life. However, although he was very dissatisfied with the biogas digester in his hometown in his previous life that could only be used for a few months, if it wasn't for that incident, Lawrence wouldn't have such information about the construction of the biogas digester in his mind.

While thinking about these things, Lawrence and the clergy of the Agricultural Church came to the side of a circular building made of cement, and in a small house next to this building, several cauldrons filled with water were lying on the ground. The biogas stove is already boiling. And two farm workers are cooperating to pour the boiled water into each kettle.

"After the first batch of feeding, all the biogas digesters have been running smoothly." The leading priest of the Agricultural Church said to Lawrence with a satisfied smile, "At the beginning, there were still one or two biogas digesters that were not running well. Normal, but after your life-constructing companion checked, they all returned to normal."

"Because I told my companion about this before, she is more clear about these details." Lawrence explained after listening to the priest. But in fact, he was still quite confused in his heart, because he didn't remember that Nora had ever shared this kind of knowledge with him.

Of course, everyone has their own secrets. Although it is said that Nora's birth has a lot to do with Lawrence, it does not contradict having her own secret. Lawrence respected the privacy of the doll as an independent individual, and felt that she must have a reason for not telling the reason. I don't plan to explore it.

These fuels are actually very important to the islands, because Lawrence found that most people in this era are drinking raw water not because they want to drink raw water, but because they need enough raw materials to boil water, but ordinary people usually have not much fuel. It's good enough to cook the rice.

After the Industrial Revolution, people in the cities were finally able to obtain cheap enough coal and even gas as fuel. But in the vast countryside, the firewood obtained from woodcutters is still their only fuel.

Therefore, one of the important reasons why Lawrence established the collective canteen before was to reduce fuel consumption, and then squeeze out precious firewood for boiling water. Provide the public with clean water by boiling water to avoid the outbreak of tropical diseases. And now the biogas digester that can provide fuel 24 hours further reduces the consumption of fuel.

"In addition to producing gas that can be burned, those things in the biogas digester will heat up during the fermentation, eliminating the possible pathogenic bacteria in it. At the same time, the final fermented biogas slurry and biogas residue can be improved Soil can increase crop yields. Adding it to feed can also promote the growth of livestock.” After walking out of the hot water room, Lawrence said to the agricultural priests.

This era also had early chemical fertilizers, such as mineral fertilizers like superphosphate. However, due to the limitation of the chemical industry in this era, the free state acid content in the fertilizer is often too high, and a large number of impurities are mixed. Lead to serious soil pollution, soil compaction, and finally affect the growth of crops.

Fertilizers that greatly increase food production are great for the Church of Agriculture, but very, very bad if this increase in crop production is obtained with damaged soil. That's why they came here in such a hurry after receiving Lawrence's solution.

"And this biogas digester is an important part of what I call circular agriculture. In the process of creating circular agriculture, we must promote the reciprocating and efficient flow of various agricultural resources in the farming system to achieve The purpose of energy saving, emission reduction and income increase is to promote the sustainable development of modern agriculture and rural areas.”

Since I have called others from the New World to work for so long, it has also helped me a lot. Then Lawrence should also take out some dry goods and hand them over to these agricultural priests. After all, everything requires an equivalent exchange, and it is definitely not enough to just make cakes for others.