In the thick fog, Boss Wei stood on the dock of Jinshanwei, waiting for the arrival of buyers. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

Jinshanwei is a guard station in the southeast of Songjiang Prefecture, adjacent to the East China Sea. There are several harbors on the coast of the ashika, and because they are far from the towns, they have always been a paradise for those who are forbidden to go to sea.

Today, however, there are not only two ships that sail out to sea, but also five steamers with towering chimneys. The steamship was filled with white rice noodles from Liaodong, ready to be dumped to buyers who came to buy the goods.

Boss Wei waited on the dock for a while, a little bored, and asked the company commander next to him, Old Man Han, "Company commander, why do we have to sell our rice noodles to the south?" ”

Old man Han sat on a high platform, knocked the dry tobacco stick on the sole of his foot, and said, "Do you still need to ask?" This year, there was a bumper harvest in six provinces and one town, and the prince's granary was full of grain purchased at a protective price. ”

Boss Wei touched his head and said, "It's good to feed the pigs, how good is it to raise more pigs to eat meat?" Why sell the grain to the gentry? ”

Old man Han snorted coldly and said, "It's not cost-effective to feed the pigs with sweet potatoes and feed the pigs with grain." Now there is too much grain, and the prince has ordered that Taiwan will not be allowed to plant rice again this year, and all high-yield sweet potatoes will be planted to feed pigs. When the pigs that eat sweet potatoes grow fat next year, the price of pork will be cheaper. ”

"However, this year, the tens of millions of extra stone grain in six provinces and one town still have to 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 a serious food problem.

However, the food problem is not that there is too little food, but that there is too much food. After nearly 10 years of development, the cultivated land area of Tianjin and Shandong has doubled, and with the addition of tens of millions of acres of dry land in eastern Liaodong and Taiwan's rice fields, the cultivated land area of six provinces and one town has reached an unprecedented amount.

In addition, this year's annual situation is particularly good, and the wind and rain are smooth from south to north. As a result, the grain produced in various places was piled up in the granary, and the price of grain in the market plummeted.

For the "service team" of industrialized farms, the collapse in grain prices is still bearable, but it is only a matter of declining profits. However, for some small people with limited arable land, they are counting on exchanging grain for salt and cloth all year round, and if food prices plummet, their daily living expenses will face a big problem.

Therefore, Li Zhi had to use financial funds to purchase grain at a protective price to maintain the price of grain in the market.

In this way, the problem of private grain storage is all concentrated in the government. Tens of millions of stone of grain urgently need 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 has expanded its territory has always been a large agricultural country, and it has often encountered the problem of excessive grain and falling food prices.

The reason for this is simple, because powerful powers tend to use war to expand their territory, and the territory they open up is often sparsely populated. As a result, food production in new territories tends to skyrocket, and eventually powerful countries tend to become agricultural powers and have to export large quantities of food.

For example, the United States in later generations has been fighting wars of expansion for hundreds of years, starting with a small thirteen colonies, constantly plundering territory from France, Spain, Britain and Mexico, and finally becoming a huge country spanning the Pacific and Atlantic. Because of the vast amount of arable land acquired through centuries of invasion, the United States has also become the largest agricultural country in the world. Every year, the United States exports 100 million tons of grain.

In the 21 st century before Li Zhi's crossing, US diplomats talked to other countries every day about coercion and inducement to demand that other countries lower their grain import tariffs and allow the private sector to import large quantities of American agricultural products.

The problems faced by Li Zhi are similar to those of the United States. Li Zhi needs to exchange grain for supplies abroad. Of course, North Korea and Japan can solve some problems, but the bigger market is still the southern part of the Ming Dynasty, which has a population of nearly 100 million.

Unlike the vigorous six provinces and one town, the Jiangnan of the Ming Dynasty was still in a dead cycle at the end of the Ming Dynasty. Because of the rule of the gentry, the social order is collapsing little by little. Not only is the land endowment pressed on the hard-working small people, but the people's expropriation is also very common. The government and the yamen are completely determined by who is powerful, and the property rights of the weak are not guaranteed at all.

Any piece of cake is a feast for the powerful. As for who created the cake, no one cares at all.

In this chaos, the development of Nitta became a matter of making wedding dresses for others. Maintaining existing water conservancy facilities and even fattening existing land is becoming less and less manable, and food production is decreasing.

According to the late Ming Dynasty, Huguang literati notes "Yuanting Miscellaneous Notes" recorded, in the sixteenth year of Chongzhen's reign in Huguang Yongzhou Mansion, "the price of rice is four taels and seven yuan per stone, and wheat is three taels and seven dollars per stone". It can be seen that at the end of the Ming Dynasty, not only did production collapse in the north, but grain prices in the south had also risen to a very exaggerated level.

With such a high price of food, it is natural that some people will not have enough to eat. In Jiangnan ruled by the gentry, food shortages were still common, although mass famine had not yet occurred. Every year, when the price of grain is the highest, it is very common for the people at the bottom to be hungry.

On the dock, Old Man Han took a puff of cigarette and said, "The people in the south are oppressed by the gentry and can't eat enough, which is also pitiful. It is also a good thing for the prince to sell cheap rice and noodles to the south of the Yangtze River, so that the people can eat a few more bites of rice when the green and yellow are not available. ”

Boss Wei asked curiously, "Don't the gentry in the south all hate the prince?" Who sells these tens of millions of stone of grain? ”

Boss Han took another puff of cigarette and said: "The prefect and the county instigated emotions, cursed a few words of the prince, and asked the southern gentry to donate a few hundred taels of silver to save their fate, the gentry are willing." However, it is impossible for the grain merchants not to buy and sell for the benefit of the gentry of the world. ”

"If the gentry had such noble conduct, this big picture would not have been in full swing."

"This family doesn't do business, so naturally there is one that is willing to do it. Our grain trade is carried out in remote seaports in the provinces, and grain merchants buy grain to sell without saying anything. When the people ate cheap food, they didn't ask where they came from. Isn't that it? ”

Boss Wei listened to Old Man Han's words, seemed to understand, and nodded.

After waiting for half an hour, when the fog gradually cleared, the grain merchant of the joint came.

Hundreds of ox carts carrying supplies hauled in the exchange of food. The most ox carts are saltpeter, which is urgently needed in Tianjin, and dozens of carts are fully loaded. There are also common materials such as cotton, raw silk, bauxite, etc.

Three large merchants dressed in fine silk rode at the front of the procession on tall horses, and as soon as they reached the wharf, they rushed to the ship to inspect the goods.

Old man Han looked at the businessmen from a distance and scolded: "Impatient goods! ”

Knocking the cigarette stick on the mound, Old Man Han said: "Let's go, the task is coming, go and see how the saltpeter goods from Sichuan are doing." ”