"Teacher, the grain shipped from Yangzhou today has reached seven cents per catty. If you include the freight, it costs almost ten cents."
"Because there are no waterways in the Huguang area, we can only take the official road, so the transportation cost is higher. The price of grain from the Huguang area has also risen to 12 Wen per catty."
Tong Yuan had to report to Liu Jin every day the latest food prices from the south, because there was a famine in the three northern provinces, which in turn led to an increase in food prices in the entire northern region.
In this era, when land output is extremely limited, food is extremely precious.
Ordinary people work hard for a year and often can barely survive. Once there is a famine year, famine will immediately break out.
Especially in the northern region, there are more people and less land. In addition, after a long period of development, the natural conditions are poor, and the ability to deal with natural disasters is far less than that in the south. Therefore, famines in the northern region have always been the most serious.
Now there is a famine in the three northern provinces. The adjacent northern provinces or regions of Shaanxi, Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu actually have no excess grain to transport. They can only transport grain from Huguang, Jiangsu and Zhejiang in the south. As for Tianfu, Sichuan, transportation in ancient times
Inconvenient, it is extremely difficult to transport food out.
Not to mention Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Yunnan and Guizhou further south, these places are far away. At this time in the Ming Dynasty, the cost of transporting grain was so high that even one pound of ten kilograms of grain could not be left in the capital.
So Liu Jin asked Tong Yuan to focus on the two lines of Huguang, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Huguang, Jiangsu and Zhejiang are the real granaries of the Ming Dynasty. The land here is fertile, the light is abundant, and the precipitation is abundant. Rice cultivation can be done twice a year, and there is excess.
The food can be transported out.
"Well, let's continue to make people stare at us, and continue to hang out our sign. Our people will continue to look for grain merchants to buy grain, and they must show that they are wealthy. As long as there is grain, we don't care what their price is.
, buy them all, buy them on a large scale.”
After listening to Tong Yuan's report, Liu Jin nodded, then thought about it and gave the order.
"But, mentor, these grain dealers have clearly targeted us now. It is difficult for us to buy grain on a large scale now. If we continue to look for people to buy grain, no one will buy it for us."
Tong Yuan said very puzzledly, he didn't quite understand what Liu Jin had planned.
"Just do as I say. You won't sell it to us. We also have to show that we are in urgent need of food."
Liu Jin said with a slight smile.
"yes."
Tong Yuan nodded quickly and said.
When Tong Yuan retreated, Liu Jin took out a map. This map was drawn by Liu Jin based on the memory of later generations and some maps he had collected now.
"I wonder if there will be a good harvest of food in North Korea and Japan?"
Liu Jin's eyes were fixed on North Korea and the Japanese country. Now he was sure that someone was deliberately targeting him. Originally, it was not too unusual to raise the price of famine food and hoard it. After all, this is the nature of businessmen. As long as there is
With several times the profit, there is nothing they dare not do.
But raising the price will raise the price. Only by selling the grain at a high price can the grain producers make money, so if someone buys it, they will naturally sell it. The current situation is that Liu Jin has no way to purchase grain on a large scale.
.
There seems to be an invisible hand restraining Liu Jin. Although Liu Jin is still breathing and has not been strangled to death, Liu Jin can clearly feel it.
Liu Jin's industries in Beijing and Tianjin are very large and employ a large number of people, so he always reserves grain in the past and has long-term cooperation with some grain merchants.
But now the food reserves are almost running out, and the food that can be purchased every day is very limited, so it won't take long before the food reserves in Liu Jin's hands will be exhausted, and the other party can use the food to keep Liu Jin hanging every day.
The grain sold to Liu Jin was considered good and was only enough for one or two days.
Wait until you need it, and then suddenly strangle Liu Jin's neck. At that time, you will be really sad.
Liu Jin walked back and forth in his study, constantly thinking carefully about countermeasures, and carefully considered all aspects to avoid missing things that he had not considered.
Coming from later generations, Liu Jin knew very well the cruelty of struggle in this era. In this era of imperial power, if he failed, beheading and losing his life would be a trivial matter. It might involve the whole family and all nine clans.
There are more than 30,000 people in Xishan Coal Industry, Glass Factory and Tianjin who rely on themselves to make a living. They also plan to build a cement road from Beijing to Tianjin. After the cement factory is built, they will definitely expand their recruitment. This
This means that there will be more people eating with him.
Once there is a problem with this food, someone will take the opportunity to fan the flames and cause something to happen, and their spokesperson in the court will come out to speak, and squeezing himself to death is no different from squeezing an ant to death.
So you have to be careful, be careful and be careful again.
Liu Jin kept saying this to himself in his heart.
"I remember that if later generations set out from Tianjin to go to Japan, it would take about 50 hours, which is about 2 days, and the round trip would be about 5 days."
"The ships of later generations were much faster than the current ones, but half a month should be enough to make a round trip to North Korea."
"The load capacity of a lucky ship can exceed 500 tons. It should be enough to send five lucky ships to and from North Korea to transport grain. If you make two trips in a month, you can collect a large amount of grain."
Thinking of this, Liu Jin's frown relaxed slightly, and then a smile appeared on his face: "If you want to cut off my food supply, I will make you lose all your money this time."
"I guess you don't have much food in your hands, otherwise the food from the south wouldn't have increased so fast. No one was prepared or expected this famine."
"Slowly collect food. The more you collect, the better."
"Well, we still need to have people continue to drive up the price of food from the south and increase your costs. It's still early and everyone still has some surplus food. In a few months, everyone's food will be gone and there will be a famine.
When it really breaks out, it's time for a decisive battle."
Thinking of this, Liu Jin did not hesitate any longer. Taking Zhao Erhu and Zhang Hu with him, Liu Jin also walked towards Tianjin Maritime Academy. After studying and training for so long, it was time to let these students from the Maritime Academy go to the sea.
