Chapter two thousand and nineteen contradictory goals
This situation may not be noticeable to ordinary people, but officials from the Ministry of Agriculture are aware of the problem and realize its seriousness.
With the current import volume of overseas agricultural products, it is actually impossible to affect the empire's local food supply system.
But what about the future?
When the amount of grain imported from overseas territories increases significantly in the future, it will inevitably have an impact on local grain prices.
If food prices continue to fall, it will greatly harm the interests of local farmers.
Although this situation has not yet occurred, officials from the Ministry of Agriculture of the Tang Empire had already submitted a report in response to this possible situation.
Soon, the Tang Empire made corresponding adjustments to this possible situation.
The solution is simple!
Prepare for a comprehensive reduction in agricultural taxes throughout the empire!
The current agricultural tax policy adopted by the Tang Empire has been transformed into a stepped agricultural tax after many reforms, and this adjustment seems to reduce taxes across the board.
But in fact, the main targets of tax reduction are rural families with less than five acres per capita.
And where are these families mainly concentrated? Almost all of them are in the mainland.
This is because only in the eastern and central parts of the mainland, where there are many people but little land, the average land per capita is less than five acres or even less.
As for overseas areas, they generally have tens to hundreds of acres per capita.
Even in regions such as Central Asia and Northeast China, which are also home-grown, the amount of land per capita is relatively large.
This policy will greatly reduce the tax burden on farmers with little land, and this tax burden will be directly reflected in the cost of food.
This policy, to put it bluntly, is that the Tang Dynasty officials thought of ways to subsidize local farmers with little land.
However, this method is only a temporary measure. The most thorough solution is to increase the income of farmers in rural areas.
How to increase farmers’ income?
For the current Tang Empire, it has always been a huge problem.
If you want to increase the income in rural areas, opening up wasteland and cultivating land are all old tricks. They have been used by the empire, and they have achieved considerable results. At least for now, most of the rural areas in the Tang Empire, even if they are limited to
There is little land and a large population, but through various methods, we can still barely keep the farmers fed.
This alone cost the Tang Empire decades of hard work.
But this is still not enough!
The Tang Empire wanted to reduce the food index to 40%.
To achieve this goal, people must have high incomes, and at the same time, food prices must not be too high.
This is very contradictory for rural areas. If the income is high, the price of food will be directly raised. Then the income of farmers will naturally be high.
However, if food prices are too high, it will conflict with the goal of making everyone rich.
If food prices are lowered, farmers' incomes will be lower.
The best solution is to increase the income sources of farmers so that they are no longer limited to relying on farming land.
In fact, farmers in the Tang Dynasty began to explore various methods on their own very early.
At present, many people in rural areas across Datang have begun to move to cities to work and increase their income.
But overall it's still not enough.
This can be seen from the current proportion of urban residents in the Tang Empire. The vast majority of the population still lives in rural areas.
And what should we do to solve this problem and increase farmers’ income?
It's very simple. Providing more jobs can allow a large number of rural surplus laborers to go out to work.
This also required the Tang Empire to open more factories and expand the scale of manufacturing so that the city could provide more jobs.
The Tang Empire has been doing this kind of thing and has achieved results, but it still takes too long. In addition, the empire's industry is mainly concentrated in big cities, but there is still relatively little industry in some small and medium-sized cities.
In response to this situation, it is also to develop the economy of some backward areas.
In June of the 41st year of Xuanping, the Tang Empire issued a series of policies and began to encourage small and medium-sized cities to develop characteristic industries and provide more jobs in backward areas to absorb more and more rural surplus.
labor force and increase the income of rural families.
Under the general framework of the economic development plan, in the 41st year of Xuanping, the Tang Empire issued many policies in a short period of time, all of which centered on economic development.
The introduction of policies continued to stimulate the development of the empire's internal economy.
For a time, the people of the Tang Dynasty all focused their attention on the country, and they no longer cared much about external affairs.
Even the military is not doing much trouble during this period, because the Holy Emperor said, let the military wait for two years, don't bother, in a few years, after the economic development plan has been implemented to a certain extent, I will give it to you.
A sum of war expenses is wasted.
The navy actually doesn't care about this. Their navy spends a lot of money on military expenses every year, and it doesn't have any strategic missions. It's enough money.
But for the army, these words of the Holy Emperor are very important.
The Army has always had a hard time. The military expenditure seems to be a lot, but maintaining an army of nearly two million people costs even more, and the Army is still causing trouble all over the world.
At the same time, the Army has always been obsessed with conquering the West. The Army wants to capture large areas of Eastern Europe.
Many years ago, the Army was planning the third Western Expedition. However, due to various reasons, although the Army fought several battles with the Tatars in Eastern Europe, the vanguard troops all reached the Don River area.
But in fact, these wars were small-scale wars. A lot of troops were dispatched, but they were actually fought only a few times.
After subsequently capturing the Volga River Basin and the lower reaches of the Don River, the Army was restricted by military expenditures and actively stopped its plan to advance westward on a large scale.
After taking over this area, Datang Railway Corporation has built the railway to the Black Sea coast in one go, and established a new port city, Black Sea City, on the Black Sea coast at the end of the railway.
At the same time, the military also cooperated with other agencies to open up the Volga River and the Don River and built the Don River Canal, so that steam ships from the Tang Dynasty could use this canal to travel between the Volga River and the Don River, and then in and out of the Caspian Sea.
However, after the Tang Empire's expansion to the west reached this point, it stopped and continued to advance westward.
To the south, that is the Caucasus region, and it is also the Caucasus region of the Ottoman Empire. Although there is a partially localized area of Baku in the Tang Empire, the Tang Empire has no plans to start a large-scale war with the Ottoman Empire for the time being.
The Tang Empire still wanted the Ottoman Empire and the Tatars to continue fighting.
To the west, that is basically the core area controlled by the Tatars. If we attack further west, we can probably completely cripple the Tatars.
And this is also not in the interest of the Tang Empire!