This year’s summer grain harvest in Gaoyang was far from good.
There were many reasons.
First, last year’s floods had damaged the soil quality, affecting the yields.
Second, there was a shortage of sufficient farming tools and draft cattle.
Third, there were very few people who knew how to plant wheat; suddenly switching to winter wheat brought many problems.
This wasn’t something a transmigrator could just lightly “teach” and have done with.
Who would teach?
How well could they teach?
How many people were needed to teach? Were there enough willing to come and learn?
Could others even understand what was being said? Were they willing to listen?
What if the people of Gaoyang resisted?
What if their impression of wheat was bad and they didn’t want to plant it?
What if the teachers weren’t earnest and the learners were too slow?
Too many problems existed—this was destined to be a half-cooked pot of rice; everything would take time to digest slowly.
With the poor summer grain harvest, there was originally a backup plan: planting miscellaneous grains in June.
Many people knew how to do this and it didn’t require much teaching.
But unfortunately, that too was ruined by the floods.
So, even though the people of Gaoyang had technically harvested a season’s grain this year, it was hard for them to survive until the end of the year.