CHAPTER 173: CHAPTER 162: MEAT

Mwanza Fish Processing Plant.

Workers are pouring freshly purchased fish into wooden barrels, sending them to the workshop for further processing.

This is a factory purely built on manual labor, primarily producing salt-cured fish.

Salt-cured fish can be preserved for a long time, is easy to transport, and can even be used as military rations.

In this era, where preservation technology is still underdeveloped, East Africa can only produce such traditional products.

Canned goods are somewhat feasible, but the cost is too high. Cans require materials like metal or glass as containers, neither of which East Africa can produce; it can only be considered after subsequent ironworks and glass factories are established.

Moreover, this is just the first step. Even with materials, machinery and other processes still need to be considered.

In this era, any metal, even bones, are important materials that need to be recycled in many parts of Europe, and East Africa cannot afford to lavishly provide canned goods to immigrants.

Production incurs costs, and recycling materials also incurs costs; after recycling, they need disinfection or remanufacturing, which is truly not cost-effective.

For profits, sales must target Europe, but Europe itself is highly competitive, and canned goods are not widely accepted, only popular in the military.

Various national armies have stable canned food suppliers, and Ernst currently has no entry unless during wartime when demand outstrips supply, leading to large military purchases.

Currently, the primary agricultural products sold in Europe by the Heixinggen Consortium include flour, logs, and other primary agricultural products.

In this era, relying on machines to process fish is basically a fantasy; even the first step of removing fish scales is a challenge, so the salt-cured fish produced in the East African colonies are entirely handmade, without any machinery involved.

Every day, the Mwanza Fish Processing Plant receives a large batch of freshly caught freshwater fish from fishermen.

Workers at the plant first use tools to remove fish scales and other debris, then the next stage workers cut open the fish, remove the innards and gills, wash the surface clean with water, place the fish in large barrels for salting, and finally hang them on rods to dry.

Simple and straightforward processing methods, but on a relatively large scale, result in considerable output. The Mwanza Fish Processing Plant currently has over 500 workers and is the largest salt-cured fish processing plant in East Africa, mainly supplying the East African interior and arid regions.

With the ban on consuming wild animals in the East African colonies, alternative meat sources have become especially important.

With the East African government carrying out unilateral slaughter of wild animals and land enclosure, reducing the range of animal activities sharply and eliminating large numbers of wild animals.

East African immigrants, engaged in manual labor, need protein supplementation. There are three solutions: developing East African aquatic products, raising livestock, and planting soybeans.

Among these, aquatic products are readily available, as East Africa has vast water areas, especially many lakes. Both freshwater and saltwater fisheries are relatively rich in resources.

Livestock needs time to breed and is not large in scale, as most are imports. Without a decade or so of breeding and growth, it’s hardly reliable.

Soybeans are the easiest source of plant protein, and the East African colonies have widely planted many for crop rotation purposes. Soybean root nodules have nitrogen-fixing properties and are generally rotated with wheat; the tropical plateau is also suitable for soybean cultivation, but replacing meat entirely is impossible.

Thus, East African immigrants mainly rely on East Africa’s abundant fisheries for protein, as fish are inherently safer to consume than other wild animals on the East African plains.

After initial salting processing, it can effectively kill bacteria and parasites in the fish.

In places like Mwanza, a large amount of fish meat is harvested, scales and innards are removed by hand, salted, and sun-dried to make fish dried that can be preserved in East Africa for several months.

In coastal, lakeside, and riverside areas, residents can obtain fresh fish. In areas lacking bodies of water and fisheries, only salted fish can be consumed.

Of course, just eating fish is not enough to solve the problem; animal husbandry is the real future path.

The East African savannahs are natural pastures, though not of high quality, but the areas are vast. The uneven distribution of rainfall over time is the biggest constraint on East African animal husbandry development. Furthermore, cattle and horses, etc., cannot be replaced in the next hundred years.

East Africa cannot only have large livestock like cattle and horses; poultry like chickens, ducks, and geese hold a significant position.

However, large-scale poultry farming is not easier than large livestock like cattle and horses; free-range and home-raising are safer and less susceptible to epidemics, so East African poultry farming mainly relies on immigrants themselves.

In East Africa, there’s also a unique species of poultry called guinea fowl, promoted by the East African government.

This creature was once introduced to Europe by the Ottoman Empire, known as the "Turkish chicken," and has fairly good meat quality.

Primarily, as one of the few native African species, it has much stronger disease resistance, and guinea fowl will incessantly cry when they see fire, making them useful for fire prevention.

This is crucial for the East African colonies, especially during the dry season when dry weather can easily cause fires.

Poultry farming holds an important position in East Africa but mainly relies on immigrants spontaneously running it, with needed grains etc. also needing immigrants to resolve on their own.

Thus, the scale of farming is limited to families; the more they raise, the more they consume, even though East Africa has much wasteland for cultivating feed.

However, every immigrant must first complete tasks on the land assigned by the East African colonies before having time to manage the wasteland they develop themselves.

The East African colonies allocate significant plots, not small ones, usually more than ten acres, which, even with slaves, require considerable effort to cultivate.

Thus, after completing all the Heixinggen Consortium’s lands, immigrants have little extra energy for land development.

Moreover, immigrants have no property rights over the developed lands; the East African colonial government can reclaim them at any time, since East Africa currently lacks land the least, so immigrants are left to develop on their own.

However, to develop wasteland, immigrants generally can only rely on the women in their households. Women’s assigned work in East Africa is relatively lighter, so they can spare time for family extra income.

Poultry farming and vegetable garden care are mainly handled by the women and children at home.

Back to the fish processing plants, currently, slightly larger lakes and seas near East Africa have such plants, providing meat supplement for the entire East Africa.

According to the proximity principle, these plants are responsible for the meat supply within the region, combined with other permitted meat sources in East Africa, which can basically meet the meat demand of East African immigrants.