Traveling through the sword to engage in military industry

#188 - Agriculture and industry both need to be strong

At the end of May, the summer harvest crops also yielded well. The experimental fields, known as the "100,000-catty grain production base," had another bumper harvest, yielding 30 million catties of wheat and 49 million catties of corn, which solved the grain problem for the 100,000 military and government personnel in the border region.

Originally, due to the grain shortage, the Border Region could barely support the garrison troops. In the original timeline, there were only 14 regiments, including eight garrison regiments, four numbered regiments, and the headquarters' cavalry regiment and special service regiment.

However, after the autumn harvest last year, due to the bumper harvest, Ren Zhong had already proposed the need to take down the Yikezhao League. The Border Region formed two new garrison regiments, the Ninth and Tenth Garrison Regiments, which went north to stabilize the situation in the Yikezhao League together with the Provisional Third Division.

After the spring plowing and summer harvest, the Border Region, based on the new demand for four regiments to go north, had already formed four new garrison regiments to fill the gap. According to the information revealed by Staff Officer Ye, the troops going north would be mainly the 359th Brigade, integrating the Daqingshan Detachment and the Yikezhao League guerrillas to form the Saibei Military Region. They would not only annihilate the Japanese cavalry group in Jiuyuan but also ensure that Jiuyuan and the Yikezhao League were firmly under their control.

With the gradually increasing strength of the Seventh Route Army in the west and the Japanese Garrison Army in Mongolia and the Kwantung Army in the east, the Saibei Military Region was isolated outside the Border Region across the long distance of the Yikezhao League. The danger was naturally great, but Ren Zhong had to take this step to seize the best resources outside the Great Wall first to support the next major outbreak of military industry.

Waiting for tanks and fighter planes to come out, the resources needed for the steel torrent could not be supported by indigenous blast furnaces alone. A single T-34 tank required 32 tons of various types of steel, and a thousand tanks would require more than 30,000 tons!

After more than a year of frantic expansion, the Border Region, including various base areas, had not yet broken through 60,000 tons of steel production, including more than 20,000 tons of steel. The vast majority of steel production capacity still came from the newly built electric furnace steel plant.

When the summer harvest was over, the fertilizer plant in Haojiaping finally went into operation. The fertilizer produced began to be used for scientific fertilization demonstrations on the grain production base presided over by Ren Zhong. Thanks to the popularization of rotary tillers, another 150,000 mu of new land was opened up along the upper reaches of the river, and the 100,000-catty grain production base had been upgraded.

Although the area of improved varieties had not increased (the ability to bring goods was really limited, and he couldn't carry so many things. The seeds of improved varieties were still produced from the original 500 mu of land), the local seeds from last year's local hybrid breeding began the second round of screening experiments.

Ren Zhong expected that some varieties significantly better than the original ones might be produced this year for both wheat and corn crops.

The current fertilizer can produce 100 tons per day. According to the fertilization amount of 40 kilograms per mu, one month's production capacity can support 75,000 mu, barely supporting the 250,000 mu grain production base opened up by Ren Zhong.

Next, he would open two or three more fertilizer plants to bring the Border Region's intensive farming and irrigated land to more than one million mu, and a yield of 400 catties per mu could solve major problems.

Therefore, the Border Region could further absorb foreign populations next.

The grain constraint on the population would soon be broken through Ren Zhong's promotion of water conservancy projects and the use of fertilizer. Ren Zhong's exploitation and use of Border Region resources would enter a new stage. Relying on the resources of the Border Region and Saibei, Ren Zhong could truly drive the Border Region's industry to take off.

The Border Region had the most abundant energy sources, whether coal, natural gas, or oil, so much that people at this time could not believe it. However, regarding the exploitation of energy, except for coal, Ren Zhong did not intend to develop oil on a large scale. On the one hand, his current demand for oil was not too great.

Cars and aviation could not form a large scale in the short term, and even more so, the steel torrent could not be completed in the short term.

If too much oil was discovered, the Japanese devils, who were desperate for oil, might try their best to attack the Border Region.

Don't think that the Border Region was very safe in history and was never captured by the Japanese devils. That was because the Japanese devils weighed the cost and the benefits, which did not match. With the Border Region being such a remote and barren place, even a mouse would cry from hunger if it came in.

Now, although Ren Zhong could quickly arm more than 100,000 troops and rely on local defense to resist the invasion of three to five divisions, plus the support from surrounding base areas, it was possible to eat this invading Japanese group under the condition of paying a considerable price.

The Japanese devils probably also assessed this point and saw no need to plunder this barren land.

But if Ren Zhong extracted a large number of oil fields, the situation would be different.

The Japanese Kwantung Army might send its main force to grab oil.

Therefore, in terms of oil exploitation and smelting, Ren Zhong had to calculate the usage and then extract it on demand, so as not to trigger the Japanese devils' wild ambitions.

The Border Region's steel and copper resources were scattered points, not large in quantity, but Ren Zhong was in urgent need now, so even if these resources were small, they had to be developed. Among them, the most prioritized development now was bauxite. The use of aluminum alloy was not only in aviation but also needed in many aspects of weapons.

Especially now that the main force of the Eighth Route Army was in the mountains and guerrilla warfare, reducing the weight of weapons, making mortars, mountain guns, howitzers, and 107 rockets lighter, even reducing dozens of kilograms would be a great improvement.

Now that there was a complete set of equipment for thermal power plants, the acquisition of electricity could get rid of the dependence on rivers. It was only necessary to build thermal power plants in places with coal to obtain a sufficient supply of electricity.

According to Ren Zhong's understanding in the main world, the bauxite reserves in Dawanzi, Yanchang County, reached a scale of 43 million tons. This place had minerals such as oil, natural gas, coal, and salt. After appropriate development, this place would become a very good raw material supply base.

Therefore, Ren Zhong set a small goal to first build an electrolytic aluminum plant with an annual output of more than one thousand tons in Yanchang.

An empty P-51 Mustang fighter weighed about 3.4 tons, and the amount of aluminum used might need a little less than one ton. Next, the empty weight of the C-47 reached more than 8 tons, and the amount of aluminum used would be even greater. One thousand tons of aluminum might only be barely enough for early use.

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Ren Zhong, while excavating the surrounding resource information from the main world, calculated the various raw materials he needed, feeling that it was really too difficult.

It was simply unbearable for ordinary people to support a quasi-industrial base in this poor and white place. In the world of "亮剑 (Liang Jian)", he basically maintained a workload of more than 12 hours a day. If he could not return to the main world for rest, even the most capable person would be exhausted after such a high-intensity workload year after year.

Fortunately, now he saw the days getting better day by day.

Compared to when he first crossed over, now Ren Zhong had people under him, strength around him, and people to help him do things. Except that he could not create an industrialization in one day, he should be quite satisfied.

The achievements currently made were amazing even if they were exchanged in the main world. These things showed that even a liberal arts student, if forced, could become an engineering student without much difficulty.

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