I decided to secure food and establish an environment friendly farming methods In this village, and use the results to secure people who would be abandoned by village rules as human resources.

I will also try hunting and greening the surrounding area.

My goal is to achieve it within a year. It will be tough, I don't see a good future but if I can't do that much.

First, I will revive the abandoned fields of the village.

Although it has been a while since the field was left unattended, there are not many weeds growing, so it is possible that only the upper layer of the field is lacking in nutrients.

I just need to dig it deeper, till it further, and adjust the water so that the ground does not dry out.

Since the area was originally used as a field, there is already a water path.

The water flow is clogged in places along the path, but by removing trash and making some minor repairs on its path, the water should be able to reach the area.

I thought these preparations would be difficult, but they turned out to be easier than I expected.

In addition, I repaired and improved the worn-out agricultural tools I found during my explorations.

Utilizing the superhuman strength granted by mana, I dug up fields by pulling agricultural tools like a horse or cow.

Where the ground was too hard, I brook it down forcibly by carving like I did with the rock in the waterway .

It took time because the field were large, but since I was not clearing wasteland or forests, there were almost no obstacles, which made it much easier.

Mana manipulation was enough to do the work of one horse.

I felt my body and skills growing quickly and my strength getting stronger and stronger.

Currently, it has reached 1 horsepower, but I need even more power.

Among the fields in the village, the rosemary had survived, and the field where it grew wild had basically remained the same.

I pulled out the dead ones, tilt them lightly, and propagate them by cuttings.

Since there were no useful crops left in the other fields, I planted seeds taken from the village.

The main seeds brought from the village were tomatoes, eggplants, pumpkins, olives, and sorghum (grain), all of which are resistant to heat and lack of water.

Since olives were growing wild outside the village, other things should be able to grow in the fields within the village.

(I failed in the waterway, but I think some will grow here.)

Among seeds, tomatoes and eggplants are prone to continuous cropping failure.

If this happens, the growth of the plants will be inhibited and they may even die.

If continuous crop failure occurs, unless countermeasures are taken, the land will lose its strength and the yield will drastically decrease.

If the cause of continuous crop failure is not understood and the land where the yield has declined is abandoned and new farmland is expanded in its place, in this world where plants grow rapidly, this action can become a cause of desertification.

What happened in my previous life may have happened more than twice as fast here.

If the cause of the communication failure cannot be determined and  assuming that desertification is occurring and spreading simultaneously around the world, then fertile land should be quite limited.

For example, unless the land is surrounded by a large river and nutrients are constantly brought in from upstream, crops cannot be grown continuously, and it is expected that there will be competition for such land.

(It doesn't seem to matter here since there is only poor land.)

Tomatoes and eggplants are not particularly suitable for continuous cultivation.

Once harvested, it is best to refrain from planting in that area for three or four years.

On the other hand, pumpkins and sorghum are less prone to continuous cropping problems, so continuous cropping problems can be avoided by planting them after harvesting tomatoes and eggplants.

In this way, I will work to establish a farming method based on the method of crop rotation, in which other crops are planted after crops that are not suitable for continuous cropping.

By the way, Rosemary, which survived, is less likely to have communication problems.

Planting crops from the Poaceae family after Cucurbitaceae (tomatoes, eggplants) is generally compatible.

In addition, two patterns of crop rotation will be carried out based on the fact that tomatoes are a good successor crop to sorghum, and pumpkin is a good successor crop to eggplant.

・Pattern 1 (Tomato ⇒ (Sorghum ⇒ Pumpkin) x Repeat ⇒ Sorghum ⇒ Tomato)

・Pattern 2 (Eggplant ⇒ (Pumpkin ⇒ Sorghum) x Repeat ⇒ Eggplant)

Just to be sure, I will verify whether continuous cropping failure really occurs in the first place by varying a number of consecutive crops of pumpkin and sorghum.

(It would be nice to have leafy vegetables like cabbage to increase variety in crop rotation.)

Sorghum is a super crop that is not only resistant to continuous cropping problems, but is also useful in other ways.

As sorghum grows, it absorbs nitrogen, an important nutrient.

Therefore, if you plow the leaves and stems together with the soil, it becomes a good fertilizer (green manure) containing nitrogen.

After harvesting the edible fruit of sorghum, it is often plowed in as green manure and allowed to decompose before the next planting, which is effective for both harvesting and land recovery.

(T/N: I have always wondered where the isekai MC learned all those things. I am sure we don't learn those things (fire powder, paper making, cement recipe) at school in my country, just some chemical formula that will useless later on)

With that alone, the amount of nutrients that can be recovered will be uneven, so I would like to increase the amount of other fertilizers as well.

My goal in a year's time is to stably secure food for 30 people, but how much food will each person need?

I've never really paid much attention to it, but I'm trying to quantify it in order to get an idea of how much area to plow.

(I want to take into account the possibility of crop failure and see if I can afford it.)

Due to the crop rotation pattern, sorghum (grain) is considered to be the staple food as it is planted frequently.

In my old days, there was a novel written by a Japanese person who ate brown rice as their staple food, and there is a line that goes, ``Eat four cups of brown rice, miso, and a few vegetables a day.''

1 cup is about 150 grams, 4 cups a day is 600 grams.

Assuming that the number of days in a year in this world is 365, 600 x 365 = 219,000 grams = 219 kg is the grain needed for one person in one year.

If someone were to eat pumpkin instead of grains, he would probably need less than that.

(However, I don't have to eat too much, like 600 grams of brown rice a day.)

Approximately 200 kg of sorghum is required per person per year, which means 6 tons for 30 people.

Nine tons of sorghum can be harvested from one farmland (a square of just over 30 meters).

The harvest rate will be lower if we take into account the effects of the climate and the immaturity of farming, but considering the growth rate of the plants, it is possible to harvest twice a year.

One farmland is enough to secure food for 30 people.

One farmland is quite wide, but since I can produce one horsepower, it is a realistic enough area if I manage my time well.

Since there is a shortage of seeds, I will start planting from where I can on the farmland, harvest and increase the number of seeds, and continue working with the goal of securing one plot of farmland.

(At this level, I think I can spare time to work on other things.)

I didnt forget to transplant bamboo for greening purposes.

Regarding greening outside the village, my basic idea is to fix the land with bamboo and sorghum as a measure to prevent wind and water erosion, which are the causes of desertification.

Unfortunately, I don't have enough seeds for bamboo or sorghum, so I have no choice but to put it in a lower the priority for now.

For the time being, this is the rough plan and the goal of my preliminary preparations.

As soon as finish preparing the field maintenan, planting will begin.

Let's first see how things are going for the next 3 months while continuing to explore the surounding.