"Short on draft animals?" Roland froze for a moment, then learned that what they lacked were actual livestock, not "workhorses" like Yun Feng. Of course, having more qualified "workhorses" like Yun Feng would naturally be even better! As a boss, Roland had no objection to his subordinates voluntarily becoming "workhorses."
"Yes! This isn't Flowing City. No merchant caravans come here at all, yet the population keeps growing! We're seriously short on animal power!" Adolf Heinrich said with a frown.
Although Roland had introduced the more advanced Curved-shaft Plow long ago and promoted a simplified version of intensive farming, due to grain varieties and various other issues, even with the composting techniques Roland had personally taught them, northern crop yields still fell short of the per-mu standards of ancient China. In Middle-earth, a yield of one hundred jin per mu was already considered normal! Vast tracts of land lay abandoned, leading everyone to focus only on clearing more wasteland and expanding by quantity. No one had considered pursuing quality! Correspondingly, reclaiming and cultivating huge expanses of wasteland demanded a terrifying amount of animal power!
Why did farmers live such tight lives? Because they had to keep draft horses for plowing! Horses were not as easy to feed as cattle! You could not just cut a few baskets of grass and call it a day! A qualified warhorse could not live on grass alone! Beans, oats, and other staple grains and coarse grains had to be constantly supplied, and during wartime, it even needed eggs for extra nutrition! Draft horses were not as precious as warhorses, but they still needed careful care! First, you needed a proper stable, then you had to feed them coarse grain. During heavy labor, they also needed eggs to strengthen their stamina! Most importantly, after a draft