There are already 500 more elderly people in the territory, whom Roland brought back from Serenmis village.
Ansen has also led a team back, but the people he brought back are basically the proletarian poor who came to seek refuge with Wheat Fragrance Territory after hearing that Wheat Fragrance Territory's taxes were low. They are basically young and strong, and there are about a hundred people.
Three Prophets did not harm other villages, but the extremely high taxes of those unscrupulous nobles harmed many civilians - for example, some knights of Ermined were able to raise the food tax to 70%!
Wheat Fragrance Territory, which only charges 30% tax, is a complete paradise in their eyes. If it weren't for the good weather this year, more people would probably come.
Businessmen no longer deal with people. Due to the existence of transportation companies, many businessmen have discovered new foreign trade opportunities and have begun to travel long distances with transportation teams - being a human trafficker does not sound good after all, and they have also discovered that the cost of transporting people is higher than they imagined.
Therefore, Li Ang also stopped the policy of acquiring people and changed it to propaganda.
It will take some time for the transportation company to fully gain the recognition of all merchants, but most merchants are already following the transportation team, which is considered to be taking advantage of the transportation team's protection along the way.
This is actually a good thing. As long as the merchants follow up several times and confirm that the transport team will not turn into robbers, they will start to consider the cost issue and gradually no longer support the fleet on their own.
In fact, a few businessmen have already packaged their carriages and drivers and sold them to the Long River Express company.
The overall development seems to be going smoothly.
Now there are 1,200 people in Wheat Fragrance Territory, and they are reclaiming a lot of wasteland.
The lord really knows nothing about farming - he has never farmed, let alone medieval land...
However, just because you don't know how to farm doesn't mean you don't know how to engage in agriculture.
As long as agricultural production is turned into corporate logic, Lord Lord can still do it!
Pande Continent people sometimes, like modern people, misunderstand various production capacities and often make some strange comparisons.
For example, if there are two counties, one county has an average yield of 100 pounds per mu, and the other county has an average yield of 200 pounds per mu. People will think that the former is too weak and is simply a primitive society.
Then they all expressed how advanced the latter was, how intensive farming should be, how to improve tools... etc.
But in fact, in a county with a yield of 100 pounds per acre, the per capita planting area is likely to be 50 acres.
In a county with a yield of 200 acres per mu, the per capita planting area may be less than five acres.
If the difference in population is not too big, which county has a higher total output?
The latter is indeed intensive farming and technologically advanced - but these technologies do not necessarily mean that the former cannot use them, but that they cannot use them.
In this era without large machinery, it is impossible for one person to cultivate fifty acres of land and do intensive farming.
Only when resources per capita are scarce, people will be forced to build a dojo in a snail shell. There are many people and little land, and they have no choice but to do so.
The lord does not know how to farm and cannot increase the yield level of the territory in a short period of time.
But now he has a large amount of grain seeds in his hands, and there are countless ownerless wastelands around the territory. In a situation where there are many people and few lands, the lord can use large-area farming to increase the overall total output.
Therefore, the logic of Li Ang is to plant in large quantities and use the area to increase the yield!
Moreover, the old people brought back by Roland and the extremely poor people brought back by Ansen are all experienced farmers, and they know how to work.
The lord only needs to provide them with seeds, tools and wasteland.
In fact, even the tools only provide raw materials. There are carpenters and blacksmiths in the territory. Many old people can do some technical work and can make many farm tools.
In fact, these so-called old people are not old in the eyes of modern people - most of them are only in their fifties.
But in this day and age, this really means being half buried in the ground.
Li Ang did not allocate shares to these newcomers again - the shares would be worthless if they were divided too much.
He used another method.
In order to avoid unfairness and improve efficiency, the lord promulgated a rare policy.
In other words, it is a policy that people here have never seen before, the 'group responsibility system'.
To put it simply, several young people and several old people are divided into groups according to the same proportion, so that the age structure is basically the same.
After grouping, each group has six young people and four old people, two of whom are women.
This group is regarded as a basic production unit, and all production is based on the group and is not measured on individuals.
This is of course a short- to medium-term strategy, mainly to deal with the current situation where only the elderly and widowed are single.
Young adults can be responsible for various strenuous tasks.
The old people impart work experience to the young people and take on the trivial tasks that are relatively easy but require patience, such as picking seeds and weaving ropes.
In this way, people of all ages will form a group to cultivate the land together, and taxes will be collected according to the group.
This is of course for the purpose of complementarity, but also to properly utilize all labor forces to improve overall efficiency.
This policy quickly made Wheat Fragrance Territory a place where the age structure of the population seemed relatively normal.
Pande Continent actually has never had much respect for the elderly - the main reason is of course that the elderly are old and weak and cannot afford high-intensity labor.
In fact, even in modern times, this is still the case in many places...
In fact, this is mainly because the way of evaluating work is too rudimentary.
Aristocrats only see superficial things - of course, so do most unskilled capitalists.
For example, only young people can be recruited as soldiers, only young people can do coolies, and only young people can work overtime and do repetitive work, while the consumption of the elderly is not much less than that of the young.
But this is all superficial...
What you can't see is that the experience possessed by the elderly can avoid pitfalls and greatly improve efficiency. In fact, in most industries, an experienced old employee can do the job for ten people.
But the problem is that these experiences cannot be seen, and it is difficult to make a purely quantitative evaluation.
Because any work requires design and planning.
However, 'design' and 'planning' cannot be evaluated.
For example, it's like farming - what to plant, how to use it, what tools to use, how many stages to use, how to fertilize, and how to prevent pests. These are all design plans that rely on experience and knowledge. The process of digging the ground with a hoe is the specific execution, which requires physical strength.
Even if it is hard work, such as resisting sacks. How to resist, whether you can use tools, what tools to use, and what route to take, these are all design and planning, and the process of resisting luck is the specific execution.
This kind of design and planning in a broad sense is usually invisible, and its actual effect cannot be evaluated. After all, nobles and bureaucrats usually do not consider specific matters.
The aristocrats can only see what the representatives actually do - who looks stronger, who can work overtime, who is more obedient, who demands less.
Then, they will use the logic of single target quantification to evaluate each person's output.
After all, farming in this era is mostly individual labor, and teamwork is almost non-existent.
And if quantified in terms of individual goals, the disadvantages of the elderly are even more obvious - because of their lack of physical strength, they cannot keep up with the actual implementation process.
Therefore, most of the time, when people evaluate a noble territory, they look at how many young people there are... the elderly are basically regarded as a burden.
Even in modern times, most capitalists always only want young people who are young and strong and can work overtime for a long time. Old guys who are a little older and can't stand it will be abandoned.
But the experience of the elderly combined with the physical strength of the young is the most reliable way of working, and it is also the basic meaning of segmented work content and teamwork.
However, even in modern times, there are still a large number of stupid companies that do not understand this most basic truth - especially some Internet companies.
The lord's group responsibility system was quickly fully accepted - this was actually a mandatory policy, and those who did not fit in with the group would not receive land, so they had to accept it.
The young people may not understand, but none of them dare to complain. After all, the Lord here is God and he has the final say.
But soon, this seemingly simple policy took effect.
Those old guys who claimed that they had only a few years to live had made Wheat Fragrance Territory fully active at extremely fast speeds.
It's not because they are so quick at work, but because they can help young people avoid detours.
These old guys really didn't expect that Wheat Fragrance Territory would be treated so well, with food to eat and things to do, and they treated them as equals to young adults, so they burst out with unimaginable enthusiasm.
When you truly show respect for people, people will naturally repay you - especially people who were originally in dire straits.
In addition, Morgan and Sir Roland planted seeds of kindness when they moved them here.
Now this kindness has been passed on.
The old people devoted themselves to the construction of Wheat Fragrance Territory almost without sleep and food. They not only spared no effort to teach the younger generations how to do things, but even took the initiative to grab jobs.
This forces young and middle-aged people to have to work overtime - you can't be in a group where everyone is working, but you don't do anything, right?
I can't afford to lose this person!
And he will probably get beaten... This is the common interest of the group!
Seeing that everyone in the territory was moving, Li Ang once again ordered that each group of cultivated land must be connected together to form a farm, but there is no upper limit on the amount of land to be reclaimed - anyway, the area from Wheat Fragrance Territory to White Deer Fortress is all wasteland, you can just enclose the land yourself!
There is only one thing - after receiving the seeds, you must plant them. If the amount of seeds does not match the land, all members will be expelled from Wheat Fragrance Territory.
This free reclamation policy requires a large number of grassroots managers. In order to manage these production groups, the lord used all non-commissioned officers.
There are about a hundred non-commissioned officers in the territory, and they even learned some culture.
Li Ang assigned all farmers to non-commissioned officers, and each non-commissioned officer was divided into a group.
These sergeants will be given a farm and serve as leaders of the people under their command.
The four senior non-commissioned officers will become middle managers - Gou Dan Eric will go to manage the transportation team. There are only four senior non-commissioned officers in the territory.
But there is no master-slave or employment relationship between them, but a corporate management-employee relationship - that is to say, the lord has established four agricultural departments, each department has more than twenty production groups.
The loyalty of these hundreds of non-commissioned officers to the lord is unquestionable. It can even be said that every soldier wearing chainmail robe with Griffin crest looks at the lord like his own father. Whatever Li Ang says, they will carry it out to the end - they have shares.
Allocating shares to core employees and letting them manage ordinary employees is a common practice in modern companies.
This operation also seems to be in line with the enfeoffment logic of this era. It is like enfeoffing the people and territory for several knights, and then the knights let their attendants manage some farmers.
Precisely because they look similar, they are easily accepted.
After all, those difficult-to-understand operating methods are not suitable for this era.
However, the actual logic of this operation is completely different from the enfeoffment system. The non-commissioned officers only have management rights but no control over the people.
Those non-commissioned officers are not the owners of the land, they are also the people themselves, and they have to farm the land when necessary.
Of course, they will also come forward when collecting taxes, but everything will be received in the lord's treasury.
Li Ang does not intend to enfeoff the land in the core territory. Wheat Fragrance Territory wants to maintain unified management in the area.
After all, Pande Continent's popular knight enfeoffment logic is that once the territory is sealed off, even the superior lord has no right to manage the affairs of his subordinates Knight's Territory's land.
That is full authorization.
This is caused by the knight culture of the Pande Continent - knights are the force of force. The big lords need to win over knights to monopolize force. The power of knights in the territory is already very high.
After the establishment of Kingdom of Pendor, the birth of various knights gave the knights new backers besides the lords.
The original Knights were more like an alliance, an alliance of warriors who both belonged to the knight class and shared common beliefs.
Due to their common beliefs, under this alliance, knights would put aside the struggle between their superior lords and cooperate with each other to enhance the status of the entire class.
This will cause conflicts between the noble lords and the knights.
In fact, the common mainland policy of not allowing any knights to enter the noble territories was also due to the conflicts between the great lords and the various knights.
This is a contradiction caused by the monopoly of force.
High-ranking nobles want to monopolize force, but armed groups like the Knights are not necessarily willing to obey because they may have different beliefs, and maybe half of their members support political opponents.
Then the nobles were naturally very worried. After all, the internal power of the Knights had increased, moving from force to politics, and there had been situations where they had overwhelmed high-ranking nobles.
Therefore, the establishment of knights is strictly restricted and has been strictly controlled by various countries.
Therefore, in order to win over their knights, the noble lords gradually delegated their power, allowing the knights to taste the power of the aristocratic class, and used privileges to offset the knights' inclination towards beliefs or hobbies.
This decentralization made Knight's Territory a completely independent territory. The knights gradually became the emperors of their own territories, and legal principles were formed. The knights also became real aristocrats.
The privileges of a local emperor are indeed very tempting. From then on, few knights would desert their nobles. If there was a conflict between the knights and their own lords, most knights would choose to obey their own lords.
This kind of earth-emperor model can easily lead to some evil things, such as brutal abuse and oppression of civilians; such as all kinds of rape and robbery; such as Renier's bastard thing of burning down and looting his own village.
Therefore, Li Ang is not willing to entrust the land of Wheat Fragrance Territory to avoid such a mess as two worlds in one place.
Instead of waiting to make up for the negative consequences later, it is better not to open the hole in the first place.
Unless it is an enclave like Fletcher that is not next to the core territory, it really needs to be managed independently by the knights.
The assignment of personnel did not waste much time, and everyone was very cooperative.
Subsequently, taking each 'department' and 'production group' as a unit, the lord started an internal competition mode.
As a famous unscrupulous entrepreneur of the Pande Continent, the lord directly turned the matter of land reclamation into a quantitative competition like a sales team...
North Star metric, which is the core indicator, is of course the effective profit per quarter...
But the current short-term indicator is the area of reclaimed land.
Since almost all the people in the territory are currently proletarians, the lord also immediately opened the agricultural loan.
This is not a loan, but a loan of grain and seeds.
That is to say, each production group is registered by household, goes to the warehouse to receive grain and seeds every day, and keeps accounts, but after harvesting, it must pay back the original amount.
Simply put, this is cost consumption.
After all, the core indicator is effective profit, not total output - only profit after deducting all costs is considered profit.
For the top four departments, management dividends will be doubled, and residents only need to pay 30% of the tax, and agricultural loans will be exempted.
In the departments ranked at the bottom, the management bonuses are gone, and the residents have to pay 40% tax, and they have to repay the agricultural loans with interest (double).
There is also competition between groups. For the top three groups, the non-commissioned officers responsible for management will receive a heavy reward equivalent to killing the general and capturing the flag, and the leaders can be awarded Wheat Fragrance International shares!
As for the groups with the worst grades... the whole group received a "Lazy Man" sign and hung it on their farm. The group leader temporarily lost all the benefits of being a non-commissioned officer, and the members of the group will be responsible for various hard work in the territory during the off-season, until they can use their performance to wash away the shame in the future.
Doesn't this mobilize enthusiasm?
Moreover, the lord used this method to easily cover up his core purpose - the substantial owner of all the fields was still Li Ang himself. He did not grant the farm to anyone, but only let them cultivate the land and obtain the output of the land.
How can production materials be given directly to employees?
In the entire territory, only the first 800 acres of land belong entirely to the earliest members, with title deeds.
This is a benefit for old employees - these old employees are today's non-commissioned officers.
That is, Meitengheim people, the crossbowmen, and most of the first batch of citizens, numbering over a hundred.
As founding members, these people have experienced a lot of dangers following him, and naturally they have to be treated differently.
Li Ang does not plan to create a big pot meal. Although his reputation in the territory is high enough now, a commune model may be feasible, but the big pot meal is not suitable for future development, so he used a commercial model.