Chapter 163

Chapter 163: Meat

  Mwanza Aquatic Products Processing Plant.

  Workers are pouring the newly purchased fresh fish into wooden barrels and sending them to the workshop for further processing.

   This is a factory built purely by manpower, and the main product is dried salted fish.

  Dried salted fish can be stored for a long time, and it is convenient to transport. It can even be used as military rations.

  In this era of immature fresh-keeping technology, East Africa can only produce this traditional product at the current level.

   Canned food is feasible, but the cost is too high. Canned food needs metal or glass as a carrier, and East Africa has no production capacity for these two things. It can only be considered after the subsequent iron factory and glass factory are completed.

   And this is only the first step. After all, there are materials, and machines and other processes must also be considered.

  In this era, any metal, even bone, is an important material. Many places in Europe need to recycle, and it is impossible for East Africa to provide canned food to immigrants with riches and wealth.

  It costs money to produce it, and it costs money to recycle materials. It is really uneconomical to sterilize or remanufacture after recycling.

  If you want to make a profit, you still have to sell it in Europe, but the competition in Europe itself is very fierce, and canned food is not accepted by the public, and it is only popular in the army.

  The armies of various countries have stable canned food suppliers, and now Ernst will not get involved, unless during a war, the supply of munitions is in short supply, and the army has the opportunity to purchase on a large scale.

  The main agricultural products currently sold by the Heixingen Consortium in Europe are primary agricultural products such as flour and logs.

  In this era, it is basically a fantasy to rely on machines to process fish meat. The first step is to process fish scales. Therefore, the dried salted fish produced in the East African colonies is completely manual without any machine participation.

  Every day, the Mwanza Aquatic Products Processing Factory will receive a large number of freshwater fish caught that day from fishermen.

Workers in the aquatic product processing factory first use tools to remove fish scales and other sundries, and then workers in the next process disembowel the fish, remove the internal organs and gills, then rinse the surface with water, put the fish in a large tank, and use Salted and finally hung on poles to dry in the sun.

Simple and unpretentious processing methods, but the scale is relatively large, so the production capacity is relatively considerable. The Mwanza aquatic product processing factory currently has more than 500 workers. It is the largest salted fish processing factory in East Africa. The products are mainly supplied to the inland and arid areas of East Africa. .

  After the consumption of wild animals was banned in the East African colonies, alternatives to meat sources became particularly important.

  In East Africa, the government has unilaterally slaughtered wild animals and enclosed land at the same time, resulting in a sharp reduction in the range of animal activities, and a large number of wild animals have been wiped out.

   East African immigrants need protein and supplements for manual labor. There are three solutions. One is to develop aquatic products in East Africa, the other is to raise livestock, and the third is to grow soybeans.

  Aquatic products are readily available among the three. East Africa has a vast water area, especially the many lakes. No matter it is fresh water or salt water, fishery resources are relatively rich.

  Livestock takes time to breed, and the scale is not large. After all, most of them are imported, and there is no more than ten years of breeding and growth, so it is basically impossible to count on it.

Soybean is the most easily obtained plant protein, and it is widely planted in East African colonies, mainly for crop rotation. The root nodules of soybean have the effect of nitrogen fixation, and it is generally used in rotation with wheat. The tropical plateau is also very suitable for soybean planting, but I want to completely replace it. Meat is also less likely.

  So the protein supplements of East African immigrants still mainly rely on the rich fishery resources in East Africa. Compared with other wild animals on the grasslands of East Africa, fish is inherently safer to eat.

   After initial pickling and processing, it can effectively kill germs and parasites in the body.

  In places such as Mwanza, a large amount of fish is harvested. After workers manually remove scales and internal organs, they are salted and dried. The dried fish can be preserved for several months in East Africa.

  In coastal areas, along lakes, and along rivers, residents can obtain fresh fish. In areas where waters and fishery resources are scarce, they can only eat dried fish after pickling.

  Of course, eating fish alone will definitely not solve the problem, and animal husbandry (breeding) is the real way out in the future.

The East African grassland itself is a natural pasture. Although it is not high-quality, the area is definitely large enough. The uneven distribution of precipitation time is the biggest factor restricting the development of East African animal husbandry. substitute.

  Of course, it is impossible for East Africa to have only large livestock such as cattle and horses, and poultry such as chickens, ducks and geese must occupy an important position.

  However, large-scale breeding of chickens, ducks, geese and poultry is not easier than large-scale livestock such as cattle and horses. Free-range and domestic breeding are safer and less prone to plague. Therefore, poultry farming in East Africa mainly depends on immigrants themselves.

   In East Africa, there is another kind of characteristic poultry, the guinea fowl, which is also promoted by the East African government.

   This thing was once brought to Europe by the Ottoman Empire. It was called "Turkish Chicken", and the meat quality was not bad.

  The most important thing is that as a rare local species in Africa, it has much stronger disease resistance, and the guinea fowl will keep singing when it sees the fire, which can be used to prevent fires.

   This is very important for the East African colonies, especially during the dry season, when the sky is dry and things are dry, which can easily cause fires.

  Poultry farming occupies an important position in East Africa, but it is mainly carried out spontaneously by immigrants, and the grains it needs also need to be solved by immigrants themselves.

   Therefore, the scale of farming is limited to the family, and they raise more and eat more, although East Africa does have a lot of wasteland to grow feed.

  However, each immigrant needs to complete the tasks in the fields arranged by the East African colony before he has time to take care of the wasteland he developed.

  The fields assigned to each immigrant in the East African colonies are not small plots, more than ten acres of land, even if slaves are used, it will take a lot of work to complete.

  So after completing all the fields of the Hexingen Consortium, the immigrants basically have no extra energy to open up wasteland.

  In addition, immigrants have no property rights on the land opened up, and the East African colonial government can take it back at any time. That is to say, the most indispensable thing in the East African colonies is land, so the immigrants are allowed to develop by themselves.

  However, if immigrants want to develop wasteland, they can basically rely on the women at home. The work assigned to women in East Africa is relatively light, so they can squeeze out time to increase family income.

   Poultry farming and vegetable gardening are basically done by the women and children at home.

  Speaking of aquatic product processing plants, such factories are basically built near the slightly larger lakes and seas in East Africa, providing meat supplements for the entire East Africa.

  According to the principle of proximity, responsible for the supply of meat in the region, combined with other meat sources allowed in East Africa, can basically meet the meat demand of East African immigrants.