In heavy fog, Boss Wei stood on the dock of Jinshanwei, waiting for the buyer to arrive.
Jinshan Guard is a guard station in the southeast of Songjiang Prefecture, adjacent to the East China Sea. There are several seaports on the coast of the guard station. Because it is far away from the city, it has always been a paradise for those who are prohibited from going to sea.
But today, there are not only two private ships anchored here, but also five steamships with towering chimneys. The steamers are filled with white-flowered Liaodong rice noodles, ready to be dumped to buyers.
Boss Wei waited on the pier for a while, feeling a little bored, and asked Old Man Han, the company commander next to him: "Company commander, why do we have to sell our rice and noodles to the south?"
Old Man Han sat on a high platform, tapped the dry tobacco pole on the sole of his foot, and said: "Do you still need to ask? This year, six provinces and one town have a bumper harvest. The prince's granary is full of grain purchased at protective prices, and he will not sell it.
When you come to the south, are you going to feed all the pigs?"
Boss Wei touched his head and said, "It's good to feed pigs. How about raising more pigs for meat? Why sell the grain to the gentry?"
Old Man Han snorted coldly and said: "It is not cost-effective to feed pigs with sweet potatoes instead of feeding them with grain. There is too much grain now, and the prince has ordered that Taiwan is not allowed to grow rice starting this year, and all crops will be planted with high-yielding sweet potatoes to feed pigs."
When the pigs eating sweet potatoes gain weight next year, the price of pork will be even cheaper."
"However, part of the extra tens of millions of shi of grain produced by six provinces and one town this year must be sold to the south. Otherwise, it would be a pity to rot in the granary."
Boss Wei nodded and stopped talking.
Six provinces and one town are facing serious food problems.
However, the food problem is not too little food, but too much food. After nearly ten years of development, the cultivated land area in Tianjin and Shandong has doubled. Adding to the tens of millions of acres of dry land in Liaodong and the rice fields in Taiwan, six
The area of cultivated land in one town in the province has reached an unprecedented amount.
In addition, the weather this year has been particularly good, with good weather from south to north. As a result, granaries were filled with grain produced in various places, and grain prices plummeted on the market.
For the "service teams" who operate industrialized farms, the sharp drop in food prices is still bearable. It is just a problem of declining profits. But for some small people with limited arable land, they count on exchanging food for salt throughout the year.
Bu, if food prices plummet, daily living expenses will face big problems.
Therefore, Li Zhi had to use fiscal funds to purchase at protective prices to maintain grain prices in the market.
As a result, all the problems of private grain storage have been concentrated on the government. Tens of millions of dan of grain are in urgent need of a way out.
In fact, the problem of too much food is not a specific problem that Li Zhi encountered. In the history of mankind, any country that expands its territory is often a large agricultural country, and often encounters the problem of too much food and falling food prices.
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The reason is very simple, because powerful countries often expand territories through war, and the territories they develop are often vast and sparsely populated areas. As a result, food production in new territories often increases dramatically, and in the end powerful countries often become
A large agricultural country has to export a large amount of food.
For example, the United States in later generations continued to fight expansion wars for hundreds of years. Starting from the small thirteen colonies, it continued to plunder territory from France, Spain, Britain and Mexico, and eventually became a huge country spanning the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
Because it has acquired a large amount of arable land through hundreds of years of aggression, the United States has also become the largest agricultural country in the world. The United States exports hundreds of millions of tons of food every year.
In the 21st century before Li Zhi traveled through time, what American diplomats talked with other countries every day was to coerce and induce other countries to lower their food import tariffs and allow the private sector to import large amounts of American agricultural products.
The problems faced by Li Zhi are similar to those in the United States. Li Zhi needs to exchange grain for foreign supplies. Of course North Korea and Japan can solve some problems, but the bigger market is the southern part of the Ming Dynasty with a population of nearly 100 million.
Different from the vibrant six provinces and one town, Jiangnan in the Ming Dynasty was still in the dead cycle of the late Ming Dynasty. Due to the rule of the gentry, the social order was collapsing little by little. Not only were the land taxes burdened on the hardworking people, but also the civil society
Robbery is also very common. Litigation in government offices depends entirely on who is powerful, and the property rights of the weak are not guaranteed at all.
Any piece of cake served is a feast for the powerful. As for who created the cake, no one cares at all.
In this chaos, the development of new fields has become a matter of making wedding clothes for others. There are fewer and fewer people doing the maintenance of existing water conservancy facilities and even fertilizing existing land, and food production continues to decrease.
According to the "Yuanting Miscellaneous Notes" written by Huguang literati in the late Ming Dynasty, in the 16th year of Chongzhen's reign in Yongzhou Prefecture, Huguang, "the price of rice was four liang and seven qian per stone, and wheat was three liang and seven qian per stone." It can be seen that not only production in the north collapsed in the late Ming Dynasty,
Food prices in the south have also risen to an extremely exaggerated level.
With such high food prices, it is natural that some people will not have enough to eat. In Jiangnan, where the gentry ruled, although large-scale famines have not yet appeared, food shortages are still common. When food prices are at their highest every year during the lean years, the people at the bottom do not have enough to eat and go hungry.
Things are very common.
On the pier, Old Man Han took a puff of his cigarette and said: "The people in the south are oppressed by the gentry and don't have enough to eat. They are pitiful. The prince sold cheap rice and noodles to the south of the Yangtze River so that the people could have more food during the lean period.
, and it’s also a good thing to do.”
Boss Wei asked curiously: "Don't all the gentry in the south hate the prince? Who will sell these tens of millions of dan of grain?"
Boss Han took another puff of cigarette and said: "The magistrate and county magistrate stir up the emotions, curse the prince a few times, and ask the southern gentry to donate a few hundred taels of silver to save their own destiny. The gentry is willing. But the profit can easily be tens of thousands of taels.
It is impossible to prevent grain merchants from selling large amounts of grain for the benefit of the world's gentry."
"If the gentry had such noble conduct, there would be no war in the country."
"If this family doesn't do business, there will naturally be another family who is willing to do it. Our grain business is carried out in remote seaports in various provinces. Grain merchants buy grain and sell it without making it public. People eat cheap grain without asking where it comes from. This
Isn’t that enough?”
After hearing what Old Man Han said, Boss Wei seemed to understand and nodded.
After waiting for half an hour, when the thick fog gradually dissipated, the contacting grain merchant arrived.
Hundreds of oxcarts transporting supplies brought in supplies for exchange for grain. The most common items on the oxcarts were saltpeter, which was in urgent need in Tianjin, and dozens of carts were loaded there. There were also commonly used supplies such as cotton, raw silk, and bauxite.
Three big businessmen dressed in fine silk sat at the front of the team on tall horses. As soon as they arrived at the dock, they rushed onto the ship to inspect the goods.
Old Man Han looked at the merchants from a distance and cursed: "Impatient fellows!"
Banging the cigarette pole on the mound, Old Man Han said: "Let's go, the mission is here. Let's see how the saltpeter goods shipped from Sichuan are like."
