Chapter 159: The Experimental Base
Seeing the flourishing experimental base taking shape before his eyes at a speed visible to the naked eye, Anton Perutz felt quite satisfied deep inside.
It was precisely Perutz and his team who appeared as that group of puzzling strangers to the residents of what used to be "Second Town." Compared with ordinary immigrants, all of Perutz's party were dressed in suits and ties, plus they were accompanied by personnel dispatched by the East African colonial government—so it was obvious at first glance that they were no ordinary people.
Second Town had already been notified to cooperate with Perutz and colleagues. To build this experimental base for the East African Tropical Agriculture Institute, Second Town was to contribute labor and land.
In fact, when Perutz first arrived in Second Town, he too got a scare. Starting from when he passed through the First Town city center, he'd begun suspecting that this place might actually be a branch of the Kingdom of Prussia overseas. Nearly everyone in identical Prussian uniforms left every researcher on Perutz's team shocked. Fortunately, there were government staff from the East African colony acting as guides, answering many of their questions.
Nonetheless, Perutz and his research companions remained astonished at Ernst's lavish outlays in the colony. The cost of clothing for over a million people had to be astronomical by contemporary standards. Indeed, so it was. Early on, Ernst had obtained a large number of secondhand Prussian uniforms from the Prussian government, but later he simply bought up a factory to produce "monkey-copy" Prussian uniforms for the colony. After all, Prussia itself had only some tens of thousands of troops; there weren't enough old uniforms for Ernst to snap up. And back then, his ties with the Austrian court weren't as close, so it never occurred to him to purchase Austrian surplus. Moreover, the Austrians' white uniforms weren't dirt-friendly. Imagine how they'd look if worn by settlers working the fields.
These "monkey-copy" Prussian uniforms also underwent many modifications for East Africa's conditions. Given it's practically summer year-round there, not so much fabric was needed—saving money. That strange, spiked Prussian helmet was dropped because Ernst disliked the look, so production stopped. Lots of unnecessary buttons were removed, and as for belts, they just handed out rope to everyone.
After such redesign, the "monkey-copy" Prussian uniforms had changed beyond recognition, though in the big picture they still resembled Prussian uniforms about thirty percent. Along with those early immigrants' actual secondhand Prussian uniforms mixed in, Perutz and company had quickly spotted that nearly all colonists in East Africa wore something like a Prussian uniform.
Over this past month, Perutz and his companions had grown used to the locals' attire. Their experimental base was located on the east bank of the Little Rhine River, directly occupying considerable farmland that Second Town had previously cleared, plus some undeveloped territory. It spanned over seven hundred mu of good farmland, extending into southern hills, northern plains, and lowlands near the Little Rhine—ideal natural conditions and topography.
With the Little Rhine for water, a mix of hills, plains, and lowlands providing multiple terrain types, plus a water-lifting windmill on the riverbank offering a steady water supply—these fields were built into ridged patches of soil or stone, forming water-retaining borders while being subdivided into parcels of various sizes to observe how different planting scales affected crop development. They also set up gates in the fields to drain water, allowing them to switch between paddy fields and dry fields at will.
Around the base rose laboratory buildings, an archives room, warehouses, and dorms for staff. The lab equipment had all been shipped from Europe—microscopes, Petri dishes, calipers, and so forth. A small botanical garden, vegetable patch, and floral area had been added, plus some space for growing trees. This would be Perutz's main workspace, though he and his team could travel anywhere throughout East Africa for field investigation. In Germany, Perutz would have had better hardware facilities, but for a tropical-plant expert, East Africa was a paradise. Plants he had only read about or seen as dried specimens could now be observed in situ, and the colony's extensive domain encompassed rainforest, savanna, mountains, deserts—so many tropical climates.
…
Though the base wasn't yet fully operational, that didn't stop Perutz from giving lectures to his trainees.
"Conditions in East Africa are extremely favorable for agricultural development, but in fact the factor that determines a region's agricultural potential is its weakest link. Agriculture and plant growth can't do without land, heat, water, and light—these four essentials.
"Take East Africa as an example. Its limiting factor is actually the soil, though fortunately the terrain isn't too rough. The real problem is the soil," he declared.
Students following him around hurried to record his words.
"In the tropics, total energy output for the land is actually far higher than in mid- or high-latitude areas, yet it's not effectively absorbed by the soil. Instead, it's stored in tropical plants and animals. That explains why tropical vegetation can be so lush, but the soil's fertility is weaker than in cooler latitudes. It's not that tropical land is infertile—nutrients simply aren't retained in the soil, while our crops need soil-based nutrients," Perutz explained.
A student asked, "Professor, if the tropical soil can't hold nutrients, then it is basically infertile, right?"
"That's just what we're about to discuss. Think about what we mean by soil. I see it as 'sand' containing some impurities. It differs from desert sand in that it's finer and more cohesive, plus it has some nutrients invisible to the naked eye. The presence or absence of those nutrients largely defines the soil's fertility," Perutz said, scooping up a handful of dirt in his palm. "See how it's a dark red color? Low-latitude zones often have red soils, mid-latitudes pale soils, high latitudes black soils. So the color changes with latitude, and fertility changes as well. But we also know high-latitude vegetation doesn't rival the tropics. That leads us back to sunlight and rainfall. Without water and light, most plants die. Tropical rainforests prove that the tropics generate abundant organic matter, but if we try growing cereals on red tropical soil, yields aren't as good as in the black soils of middle or higher latitudes.
"That shows that a large share of the nutrients in tropical regions is removed from the soil. Presumably, not the fault of vegetation; cooler latitudes also have big forests, though the cold climate there stunts many plants. Temperature shouldn't be the only culprit, so it may be rainfall. Ancient civilizations began along alluvial river valleys: take ancient Egypt, whose farming thrived on the Nile's flooding. The tropics have denser river networks with even heavier water flow. Why not produce the same effects? Because tropical rivers rarely deposit silt, actually washing away nutrients instead. East Africa, however, gets moderate rainfall, so that might not apply here.
"All this is just my speculation. We still need to run experiments to verify. Only by grasping the underlying principles can we 'treat' the soil accordingly to raise fertility in East Africa."
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