After starting the iron smelting work, all three aspects entered a relatively stable period of development.

  The beasts around the base have been mostly cleared out, so for now, there shouldn't be any battles.

  Nanjiang has been closely monitoring the development of the farmland, and soon it will be the 50th day since they came into this world.

  The farmland has already been soaked with organic fertilizer, and he decided it was time to start planting.

  They brought a lot of crop seeds, such as Lingyu, which is the main staple food. Lingyu is the most common major crop on the entire Zhonghe Star. The seeds of this crop are about one centimeter long, mostly green, but other colors have already been cultivated.

  This crop becomes very crispy when stir-fried, and besides that, it can also be deep-fried. These are the two main ways to eat it.

  Most of the ingredients are carbohydrates, about 80%, and besides that, there are some proteins and other nutrients.

  The yield is approximately 10,000 kilograms per hectare. For an average person, about 50 kilograms of Lingyu seeds are needed each year.

  However, the immigrants in the fleet are all superhumans who have undergone biotechnological modifications, significantly surpassing ordinary humans in physical fitness, memory, and intelligence. They require three times the energy consumption of ordinary humans.

  If we are to supply the 30,000 immigrants on the entire Haiwo ship, we would need more than 4 square kilometers of farmland.

  And their cultivated land area is only 5.5 square kilometers; they have already depleted the surrounding organic matter and cannot continue to expand.

  "We'll first designate a 3-square-kilometer area for producing Lingyu, and use the remaining arable land for other vegetables," Nanjing began planning. "Then we can collect some local materials."

  He also knows that these farmlands cannot meet everyone's needs, so he says they need to obtain local resources. It's not just limited to foraging and hunting; more importantly, they need to gather ingredients for synthetic food. Synthetic food can meet their needs to a certain extent.

  Subsequently, specialized seeders were dispatched, and farming officially began.

  "Do I need to use fertilizers and pesticides now?" a worker leader asked him.

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  "Of course we need it, production is about to start."

  Fertilizers and pesticides are also important materials for agricultural production. The use of fertilizers can increase the total yield by at least 40%. The use of pesticides can maintain production levels without reducing yield. If pesticides are not used, food production will decrease by 20% to 10%.

  A large amount of pesticides and fertilizers are stored on the spaceship, which can be used for a period of time. They need to complete the production of pesticides and fertilizers before the stored pesticides and fertilizers run out.

  As long as food self-sufficiency is ensured, Nanjiang has decided to compete with Xining and Tianyin.

  Nanjing mobilized a large number of workers from the spaceship and established a fertilizer production plant and a pesticide production plant to the south of the village.

  The production of chemical fertilizers is not complex; the main type of chemical fertilizer is nitrogen fertilizer.

  The primary substance for producing nitrogen fertilizer is ammonia.

  During the production process, natural gas and steam are pumped into a large container. Next, air is pumped into the system and oxygen is removed from the gas and steam through natural combustion. This primarily leaves nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide. Removing carbon dioxide and producing ammonia introduces current into the system.

  Catalysts such as magnetite are used to enhance the speed and efficiency of ammonia synthesis. Any impurities are removed from the ammonia, and it is stored in tanks until further processing.

  First produce nitrogen fertilizer, then gradually produce other fertilizers.

  As for pesticides, there are many types, including but not limited to: insecticides, herbicides, nematicides, virucides, and rodenticides.

  The main ones are herbicides and insecticides, which account for 40% of all pesticide usage, followed by rodenticides (17%) and fungicides (10%).

  Nanjing has decided to produce the most common pesticide, organophosphate (also known as phosphate ester or OPE). This is the main type of insecticide.

  The synthesis method is also very simple; chlorophosphonates readily react with alcohols to form organophosphates. This is the dominant industrial route, accounting for almost all organophosphate production.

  Chloroxylenol can be synthesized by oxidizing phosphorus trichloride with oxygen.

  Alcohols can be synthesized using the carbonyl process, producing linear alcohols from ethylene and triethylaluminum, followed by oxidation and hydrolysis.

  They have all the necessary production equipment, so there's no need to worry about not being able to produce the insecticide.

  Herbicides can use glufosinate, a naturally occurring broad-spectrum herbicide produced by several species of actinobacteria soil bacteria.

  This compound irreversibly inhibits glutamine synthetase, an enzyme essential for the production of glutamine and ammonia detoxification, giving it antibacterial, antifungal, and herbicidal properties. Applying glufosinate to plants leads to a decrease in glutamine and an increase in ammonia levels in the tissues, halting photosynthesis and causing plant death.

  The use of these two pesticides can solve most problems.

  The use of fertilizers and pesticides in Nanjiang is done through aerial spraying by aircraft.

  The aircraft he chose is a large drone, and after installing the sprayer at the bottom of the drone, it can spray in the air.

  This spraying method is very efficient.

  Due to the farmland being divided into six plots, Nanjiang used 12 drones and completed the first round of spraying in less than 50 minutes.

  In order to use pesticides and fertilizers, they have been intermittently working for five days. During this period, Commander Andor was dispatched to collect local supplies.

  Colonel Ando also just arrived on the ground with the transport plane in the past few days.

  He is a very young commander, having joined the military at 17 and now being 25. If we don't count the time spent on space travel, he is actually only 21.

  He was promoted from private to lieutenant colonel in just one year.

  As for why the situation escalated so quickly, he achieved excellent results in suppressing an extremist organization's rebellion.

  One person repelled an attack by 400 extremists, killing 27 of them in three hours without sustaining any injuries.

  After the end of this rebellion, he also became an officially promoted war hero.

  In this operation, Colonel Ando's first priority is to search for aquatic plants. Because if we want to synthesize food, algae are a very important ingredient.

  In large rivers like the Changjiang with relatively fast currents, it is difficult to find a sufficient number of algae, so he looked for calmer lakes.

  He is flying in a Dragon-type armed helicopter, circling in the air, using drones to inspect the lakes below one by one.