Now that Su Shuochi had successfully guided everyone in planting medicinal herbs, the next step was to get them to start raising pigs.
Raising more pigs meant more pig manure for fertilizer. Using this kind of organic fertilizer to grow the herbs would also improve their medicinal properties—that's what his wife had said.
The villagers liked using pig manure and chicken droppings as fertilizer to save money, since chemical fertilizer was too expensive.
They had no idea that organic fertilizer was actually more effective for medicinal herbs than chemical fertilizer.
Furthermore, chemical fertilizer was, relatively speaking, much more expensive than pig manure, which meant the cost of growing the herbs would also be higher.
Pig manure not only contains nutrients, but these nutrients are mostly in an organic state, making them easier for crops to absorb directly.
