The governor's office in the New World decided to use food to control the number of gold diggers, and the imperial army in Jidu was also worried about the food problem!
"What are you doing at the Ministry of Household Affairs? The imperial court has issued an order to find a way to sell more grain to the New World. Why are there only 5 million shi of grain to go to the New World this year? What is enough food? Why can't the 10 million shi be completed? !”
Wang Guojun found that too much land reclamation was not a bad thing. Daqian has now entered a prosperous era, especially after the improvement of medicine. Daqian has millions of new babies every year, and the number of pregnant women who die due to childbirth has also plummeted. It has dropped from the original one-tenth to one percent. In addition, there are still nearly one million foreigners who seek refuge in Daqian every year.
Therefore, during the few years that Wang Guojun has been prime minister, the population of Daqian has increased by more than 3 million every year. Such a large increase in population can be regarded as solving the problem of labor shortage a few years ago, but it also brings about a new problem, that is The labor force is too abundant, and the results of the first industrial revolution cannot accommodate such a large increase in population. Employment is somewhat insufficient.
This problem is placed in front of the Royal Army, and the method to solve this problem is also extremely simple. One is to transport population to colonies such as the South China Sea and the New World. In recent years, the islands in the South China Sea have been continuously replenishing their population, but even if there are millions of people who want to go out to sea, Although there are many people in Daqian, they are still a minority. Immigration cannot completely solve this problem.
The second method that Wang Guojun thought of was to open up wasteland. The land area of Daqian was several times larger than that of Dahan, and the area of wasteland was also extremely large.
Moreover, Daqian has a tradition of reclaiming wasteland, so most of the newly registered people in recent years have been assigned by Wang Guojun to reclaim wasteland in Jiangnan and Liaodong, and these people have been placed in rural areas to solve the employment problem!
For the adult Daqian people, the imperial court gave them loans to buy farm tools, cattle, etc., and organized them to reclaim wasteland in Jiangnan and Liaodong. A large number of new people were settled in these two fertile lands.
This has brought about an extremely big problem, that is, the production of grain continues to increase, and the more wasteland is reclaimed, the more grain there is! Liaodong was originally the largest granary of the later dynasties, but now it has become the granary of Daqian 2000 years in advance. Liaodong Not counting cash crops here, hundreds of millions of grains can be saved every year, but Liaodong’s hundreds of thousands of industrial people alone cannot eat up this much grain!
The same goes for Jiangnan. Jiangnan has been developed for decades since Liu Bei developed it. It can be said that Jiangnan now has three parts of what it will look like in later generations. A complete Jiangnan can support hundreds of millions of people, and three parts of Jiangnan are enough to support it. The population is over 100 million, but now the entire Daqian population is only over 70 million. You can imagine how much food there is in Jiangnan.
The two granaries of Jiangnan and Liaodong bring hundreds of millions of grain stocks to Daqian every year. You can imagine how much pressure Wang Guojun has to destock!
Xi Zhong, the Minister of Household Affairs, said helplessly: "There are no major maritime merchants willing to transport cheap goods like grain!"
Compared with foreign trade commodities such as silk, ironware, porcelain, and tea, grain is not only large in size and low in price, but also susceptible to moisture. Few maritime merchants are willing to carry grain to the New World tens of thousands of miles away (high grain prices in the New World It hasn’t reached Daqian yet!)
However, Xi Zhong still said: "But this year, Nanhai has increased its grain exports by 20 million shi, and Liu Bei of Tianzhu has also increased its grain exports by tens of millions of shi because he has been at war with the Kushan Empire! The granary in Jiangnan is still safe. On the cordon!”
The senior officials of Daqian have intentionally or unintentionally developed the South China Sea into the origin of Daqian's cash crops and tried to suppress the productivity of local grains. One is to consume the food in Daqian Jiangnan, and the other is that they want to use food to control these areas in the South China Sea. area.
In order to quickly balance the income and expenditure of their territory, the leaders of Nanhai also tried their best to plant high-priced cash crops, and handed over all the low-value grain to maritime merchants to buy. Anyway, Daqian had plenty of grain, and it was transported to them by sea. It’s not expensive, and it actually helped Wang Guojun and his friends complete their plan to control the South China Sea with food!
Although Jiangnan's 30 million more consumption made Wang Guojun excited, thinking that there were still hundreds of millions of grains in the granary, and it was still increasing, Wang Guojun felt helpless. After the last exchange with the governor, he also knew the minimum guaranteed price of grain. It is important to Daqian, so I dare not say anything about not acquiring it!
He could only say helplessly: "There is too much food. Even though there have been constant natural disasters in the past two years, our food storage capacity is still increasing by hundreds of millions of dan every year. If this continues, it will be very difficult for the imperial court's finances." To keep it going, is there any way for you to consume some food!"
Faced with this situation, Xu Wei could only say: "The cheap grain hurts the farmers!"
But Xu Wei's words made Wang Lei laugh for a while, and this made other senior executives also laugh out loud, and it soon became a roar of laughter.
To a certain extent, having so much grain is the best compliment to people like them. Food is an important standard in any prosperous age, and they have done better in their work. They have borne the cost of low grain and hurting farmers. , although this problem troubles them, it also gives them a sense of accomplishment. They have protected the food problem of millions of people!
Wang Lei thought for a while and said, "Duan Peng and the others have received news and want to ask the imperial court to sell grain to them! And it seems that their demand is very large. It is said that it exceeds tens of millions of dan. I just don't know if the tracks in Xiliang and the Western Regions can Withstand such a large volume of cargo transportation!”
Xu Wei asked curiously: "How come they suddenly want so much food?"
The Western Region is vast and sparsely populated. Even if Duan Peng and his friends are not very good at farming, they can only cultivate millions of acres of farmland to have enough food for them. Now they need tens of millions of dan. This saved food is enough to feed hundreds of people. population of 10,000.
Wang Lei said: "Liu Bei has been attacking the Kushan Empire, so a large number of people from the Kushan Empire fled to the Western Regions and went to Duan Peng's territory. It is said that there are hundreds of thousands of people, and Duan Peng and the others have been fighting for There is a population problem. Now that so many people have been sent to their territory, of course they will not let them go, but they just don’t have enough food to eat!"
Xi Zhong shook his head and said: "It's beyond our reach. Duan Peng's country is more than 7,000 miles away from Chang'an. Even if the food from Chang'an reaches their hands, it will cost more than ten times. We don't care about such consumption, but they can afford it." How much money do you have for this food?”
Land transportation is the most expensive mode of transportation, so most of the merchants going to the Western Regions transport precious and light materials such as silk. If they really have to use horses to transport food to the Western Regions, the consumption involved is unimaginable.
Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty sent the generals of the Second Division to conquer Dawan, which directly destroyed the finances of the Western Han Dynasty!