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The annual grain output of Red Leaf Ridge accounts for about thirty-five to forty percent of the entire Camelot.
Of course, this is not official statistics; this is information compiled nationwide by the Red Leaf Ridge intelligence unit annually, and its credibility reaches eighty percent each year!
Of this entire Camelot's grain, half is purchased at market price each year, while of the other half, sixty percent flows into other territories, thirty percent is exported, and ten percent is used as seeds.
Every two years, Red Leaf Ridge clears its stock, selling it at thirty percent below market price.
In fact, even after three years in storage, the plump barley and wheat still make excellent bread material.
Merchants target these grains.
Forget about being stored; besides Red Leaf Ridge, which lords' warehouses don't store grain for over ten years?
Only Red Leaf Ridge clears its warehouse every two years and sells it at a thirty percent discount; who would dislike Red Leaf Ridge's grain for being old stock?
It's a double profit in an instant.
If one takes a bit of risk and ships it to Rome across the sea, two to ten times the profit is insane!
So this year's merchants are particularly enthusiastic, because this year marks the biennial stock-clearing event.
Besides that, there is the assurance for farmers.
Because of the abundance of farmland, farmers, and workers, a union also emerged.
To seek welfare for the grassroots people, a large merchant association, led by several major merchants, was formed and boasts farmer members from across Red Leaf Ridge.
These major merchants certainly wouldn't be so far-sighted; everything is still controlled by Kayal's hidden hand.
The merchant association formed by these merchants achieves fair and just transactions with external merchants through negotiation and cooperation with the government.
Each transaction has at least one hundred contribution points, and for every one hundred contribution points, one point goes to the notaries, including notaries from the union and notaries dispatched by the government.
In other words, if the transaction volume reaches ten thousand, each notary would likely receive one hundred contribution points.
However!
Don't think that simply by trading at low prices and reducing buying and selling prices, you can easily obtain countless merit points!
The Red Leaf Agricultural Law explicitly stipulates that for any transaction below market price, both notaries must pay contribution points equivalent to the transaction volume.
In other words, if the transaction benefits the farmers, your gain is 100:1 of the transaction volume, but if your transaction causes losses to the farmers, you need to use your own contribution points to subsidize the farmers' losses, and the ratio here is 1:1.
To be honest, the profession of a notary is extremely difficult, because farmers are miserable and uneducated, sometimes cheated by merchants privately.
If they are asked to notarize, and they obstruct, the farmers might think they are cheating them.
If the farmers profit, they are naturally happy, but if they lose, it's truly agonizing.
In Red Leaf Ridge, besides the Grand Duke and Kayal, law is the most important thing.
To ensure the fairness of the law, Kayal does not allow anyone to cross this line.
Even his students, if they violate the law, need to go to the quarry, logging camp, or road construction for fifteen days to two months; more severe cases result in immediate execution: being eaten by Priscilla.
Due to Kayal's strong emphasis, the fair, just, rigorous, and open legal attitude has filled Red Leaf Ridge with vitality.
The positive and upward-looking attitude keeps the Red Maple Citizens in a good and excited state of mind, full of drive and motivation in both work and study.
These are the benefits for the farmers.
In industry, it is even more complete.
The introduction of the Labor Contract Law gave textile workers, blacksmiths, and carpenters their backing, making them stand tall.
Similarly, labor associations were also established.
Clearly, although not as powerful as the agricultural guild, Kayal's single decree: 'Professional Assessment and Determination' and 'Invention and Creation Rewards' immediately transformed them into highly lucrative professions.
Countless derivative industries constitute the entire Red Leaf Ridge.
Excluding the three thousand Demonic Horse Heavy Cavalry and the five thousand hidden City Guards, who are nominally city management, more than half of the people are working.
Farmers account for fifty percent, and most of the remaining people are women, making up thirty percent of the entire Red Leaf Ridge.
Although Red Leaf Ridge has good welfare, it is not without children working at a very young age due to extreme poverty.
Despite efforts to eliminate child labor, a small amount of child labor still exists.
These children account for ten percent of the labor force.
The final ten percent is made up of hardworking slaves.
And don't be fooled by the many merchants flocking to Red Leaf Ridge; in fact, there are fewer than twenty merchants here!
These twenty merchants are, of course, devoted to following Kayal.
After more than a decade of influence, they naturally know that Kayal only needs to leak a little something from his fingernail to provide them with endless enjoyment.
Having repeatedly earned large sums of money, what other thoughts could they possibly have?
A merchant is like a dog! If you give him enough profit, he will wag his tail and stick out his tongue for you.
Once they are well-fed, responsibilities naturally follow.
Merchants are driven by profit, and their status is never very high anywhere.
Without modern awareness, without realizing that merchants are the flowing bloodline, the status of merchants would naturally not be too high—no one would like those greedy, cunning, and unscrupulous fellows.
However, Kayal deliberately created an atmosphere of fairness and justice.
This treatment of merchants as ordinary people, even subtly superior, made them flock here despite the extremely high commercial taxes.
And what these twenty-odd merchants need to do is simple: establish a merchant association in a non-governmental capacity, ostensibly to contend with the government and fight for merchants' interests, but in reality, it is used by Kayal to better control the merchants.
Finally, there is the military industry.
The military industry is fully controlled by Kayal, with many of his disciples participating as scientific researchers, including a series of businesses such as research, armament, and production.
Besides simple weapons like the longbow, Kayal's research lab, utilizing a rotating system to extend the crossbow, even developed a six-shot crossbow under Kayal's inspiration!
Although not as terrifying as Zhuge's ten-shot crossbow, its advantage lies in its fast reloading speed: it only takes two seconds to unload one rotating cylinder and replace it with another!
In fact, many time traveler (transmigrators) fall into a misconception: why must one produce bullets? Gunpowder?
Before the invention of ballistics and stamping machines, any commander would scoff at a matchlock gun with a range of only two hundred meters and a firing rate of just three rounds per minute.
As for flintlock guns, which have a range of three hundred meters but are much slower than longbows, there's even less to say!
A rotating crossbow made from tough and highly elastic oil-soaked cow sinew fires twenty-four arrows per minute!
Once this type of crossbow arrow forms a barrage on the battlefield, it's like a missile, delivering unparalleled attack power!
And Kayal used this innovative technological development method to gradually expand the entire Red Leaf Ridge's military arsenal.
Red Leaf Ridge has five thousand City Guards; they are all spearmen, but two thousand need to be trained in the use of longbows, two thousand in the use of repeating crossbows.
A Macedonian Phalanx of one thousand men only needs one phalanx to stand at the very front; what do the remaining four thousand do?
Of course, they shoot arrows!
Currently, the land of England is uniformly heavy cavalry; if you wear a little less, you wouldn't even dare to greet your peers.
Heavy cavalry charges can reach the front in just fifteen seconds.
Besides face-to-face repeating crossbows, longbows have a job that repeating crossbows cannot accomplish: plunging fire!
Once the heavy cavalry's interspersed assault fails, losing their speed advantage, they will become heavy straw targets!
Longbow plunging fire, with precise calculations, will make any cavalry charging the Macedonian Phalanx incredibly painful.