African Entrepreneurship Record-Chapter 894 - 98: Feasibility of Cash Crop Mechanization

Regarding Angola's agriculture, the main focus of the East African Government was previously on restoring local plantations and farm production. Now that this goal has been achieved, four years after the Portuguese withdrawal, the East African Government has successfully restored local agricultural order.

Following this, the issue of social order needs to be addressed, which bluntly put, involves re-apprehending the Black Slaves who fled across Angola during the war and returning them to work in plantations and farms.

While restoring production, the East African Government is also simultaneously reviving Angola's original product export market. Otherwise, agricultural products will be produced without a place to go, leaving the East African Government busy in vain.

The East African strategy is to simultaneously advance domestic and foreign markets, starting with the restoration of the former Portuguese product sales channels in Angola. However, due to relations between the two countries, progress in this area is minimal.

Therefore, East Africa urgently needs to develop new shipping markets, which naturally falls into the hands of Germany, as East Africa's West Coast reaching Germany is the fastest ocean route.

Originally, East African ports were located in the east, requiring East Africa and Germany to engage in direct maritime trade via the Gibraltar Strait, or alternatively through rail transit via Austria-Hungary Empire.

With the addition of West Coast ports, East African ships can directly reach Atlantic ports such as Bremen and Hamburg in Germany or pass through the Skagerrak Strait, or the future Kiel Canal, into Baltic Sea ports.

The Kiel Canal has not yet opened; it began construction before the South African war, in 1887. According to the current progress, the canal will open at least by next year, namely 1885.

Besides rebuilding the international market, establishing the domestic market is also crucial for Angola to escape its predicament. With the completion of the north-south railways from Benguela to Luanda, East Africa's central and Angola regions are now connected.

This is a mutually beneficial scenario, meaning products from the central area can exit through both East Africa's east coast and west coast ports.

Taking Lubumbashi, the capital of Swabia Province, as an example, its straight-line distance to both eastern and western ports is about one thousand four hundred kilometers. Whether to choose the eastern or western port mainly depends on where the product export market is located. For instance, if it's Austria-Hungary, the eastern port is more cost-effective; if it's Germany, the western port is better.

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"Regarding Angola's agriculture, the Portuguese invested more efforts locally, but our resources mainly focus on Mozambique, primarily on farm economy, whereas Angola mainly operates a plantation economy," Gorwystan said.

The current plantation economy requires a large labor force, which is true for any region dominated by a plantation economy, while farm economy can quickly reduce costs through mechanization.

Plantation agriculture comprises many plant resources such as natural rubber, coffee, cocoa, tea, bananas, pineapples, mangoes, oil palms, sisal, tobacco, cotton, and jute, most of which cannot achieve mechanized operations or currently cannot.

However, East Africa farms mainly focus on grain crop cultivation, combined with limited livestock raising and vegetable planting. Grain crop, especially cereal agriculture, has shown signs of mechanization in developed areas.

Machines like tractors, seed drills, plows, harvesters, planters, balers, mowers, and transporters have almost all been invented.

Currently, Europe and America are, like East Africa, vigorously promoting agricultural mechanization. However, it's a lengthy process; not until around World War II did Europe and America achieve overall agricultural mechanization in developed countries. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

This is also the primary direction of East Africa's agricultural reform, which is why Mozambique, with its plains and excellent water and heat conditions, is chosen as a key experimental region.

For tropical cash crops like rubber, sugarcane, and cotton, they currently can only rely on human labor. East Africa, like other countries, uses many Black Slaves as cheap labor, especially since current cash crop benefits are high, making this East Africa's main agricultural income source.

The agricultural model in Angola predominantly revolves around tropical plantation industries, whereas agriculture like food and fisheries clearly pales in comparison.

Regarding this, Gorwystan stated: "Our tropical cash crop industries still heavily rely on cheap native 'workers' as the main source of power. This clearly doesn't align with our policy to phase out Black labor within the next twenty years. Hence, the Agriculture Department believes that for crops that can potentially achieve mechanized planting and harvesting, we strongly support research institutions in improving agricultural tools to reduce dependence on cheap labor."

The tropical cash crops Gorwystan referred to are primarily those non-woody plant crops like rubber, fruit trees, tea leaves, etc., which even in the 21st century haven't achieved large-scale mechanized operations. However, crops like cotton and sugarcane have feasible mechanization potential, mainly for harvesting.

Of course, for rubber and fruit trees, East Africa doesn't have better solutions and can only maintain the status quo, though it can achieve cost reductions in certain aspects.

For instance, by reducing transportation costs through railway and road construction, although large-scale mechanized harvesting is unachievable, research on small modern agricultural machinery can be developed to aid plantation workers in completing processes like harvesting and pruning.

One major reason for low mechanization rates in global cash crops is that developed countries like Europe and America themselves are not major producers of cash crops. Like the United States, primarily relying on controlling surrounding countries along the Caribbean Sea for surrogate production to meet domestic demands.

Whereas England and France lower production costs by utilizing cheap labor in colonies like South Asia, Southeast Asia, or West Africa.

The cost of labor in these economic colonies is already extremely low, further hampering research and promotion of mechanization in tropical cash crops.

East Africa, unquestionably, is the only country capable and in need of advancing mechanization engineering in tropical cash crops.

First, East Africa is an independent sovereign nation that can autonomously set its strategic development direction, a significant advantage not possessed by colonial territories in Europe and America.

Secondly, East Africa boasts immense advantages in the technological field compared to peers; its competitors are mostly backward countries and colonies with extremely poor technological levels.

Lastly, East Africa needs to advance the mechanization development of tropical cash crops. As the largest tropical cash crop producer, significantly surpassing countries like Brazil, East Africa cannot indefinitely rely on Black Slaves to ensure competitiveness in this field, as they will eventually be replaced by East African citizens.

Moreover, East Africa harbors ambitions akin to the United States' position in global commodity cereal agriculture, aspiring to become the future world's tropical cash crop industry dominator.

To achieve this goal, a comprehensive advantage must be obtained in this field to crush other competitors. Losing the price edge of Black Slaves means East Africa must invest heavily in technology to achieve this aim.

Therefore, realistic needs prompt East Africa to intensify investments in this area; otherwise, under traditional conditions, competing with Europe and America in agricultural domains is very challenging given East Africa's climate.

If East Africa completes the majority of tropical cash crop mechanization, future scenarios for Brazil and Southeast Asian countries could become difficult, but this is not East Africa's concern. Even without technological means to crush these countries, East Africa is currently the world's top tropical cash crop producer and a powerful entity.

However, considering the strenuous nature of tropical cash crop cultivation and the mechanization difficulty, if East Africa doesn't focus on this domain, its future agricultural economy will remain as labor-intensive as before.

East Africa cannot rely on labor-intensive industries indefinitely; this doesn't align with its current national strength, status, and ambitions.