"Your face." The owner of the small restaurant, which was actually a makeshift shed with a few tables set up outside, brought up a bowl of noodles with a few leaves floating on it.

Gao Jinzhong looked at it, and the color of his face turned black. He himself is currently running a joint venture in his hometown, and he knows too well what this color of noodles means, which is semolina mixed with a lot of impurities such as wheat bran! In the northern areas of Zhenhai and Xihu counties, this semolina, commonly known as black flour, was generally exported to Brazil, and local farmers would buy it in large quantities to make black bread and distribute it to slaves.

In other words, even in Brazil, it was the food of the slave class, and not many people on the east coast, where the average standard of living was higher than that of Brazil, not many people wanted to eat this crude food. Agnelli eats these things now, and Gao Jinzhong can't help but admire them very much—obviously the good food and drink in the east coast in the past few years has made him forget the difficult times in Shandong, when he couldn't even afford to eat these things.

Agnelli and Gao Jinzhong once served in the same company, and Agnelli joined the army two years earlier, and the relationship between the two was very good. After Agnelli was discharged from the army, the contact between the two sides gradually decreased for various reasons, but I didn't expect the two to meet again in the remote town of Hejinbao, and the world is more wonderful than this.

Gao Jinzhong recently started a steam mill in Rabbit Hole Village. The equipment was imported from Dafeng Agricultural Machinery Factory, which is a simplified version of the machine Qì powder making line of Dafeng Food Factory, but the price is still expensive. Gao Jinzhong himself went to the county soldiers' committee for this reason, pulled a few veterans who also didn't know how to invest, and invested in this machine flour making line with them.

Of course. The price of a full set of steam equipment is quite expensive. So they inevitably have a lot of loans. However, Gao Jinzhong and the others were not worried. Because the construction team of the Ministry of Communications, which is building Highway 2, has already contracted out the business of supplying flour to the construction site, as long as they can supply the daily flour of the construction team of 2,000 people with quality and quantity, then they will not have to worry about whether they have a business for at least a year.

Nowadays, the domestic grain market is gradually being liberalized, and apart from requiring grain farmers to sell the specified amount of wheat to the state grain reserves, they have basically left the surplus grain in their hands alone. Laissez-faire means that as long as the grain does not flow out of the country, then you can sell it to whomever you like, and you can sell it to the national grain reserve. They will also take the full price according to the latest price, but you can also choose to sell the grain to a familiar miller or trader, no problem.

This policy was a great relief to the country's private millers, because it meant that they no longer had to buy grain from the state grain reserve or risk being denounced to deal privately with the grain farmers, but they could openly sign purchase agreements with the farmers in their villages, and then pull the tons of grain back to their barns, where they began to process it into refined flour and sell it everywhere for a profit.

However, now that the domestic grain market has just been opened, most farmers are still accustomed to selling their grain to the national grain reserve. The reserve grain depot has also become the largest grain "merchant" in China by virtue of its strong network and golden signboard. In addition to supplying large quantities of grain to the Dafeng Food Processing Plant, they also sell grain to millers of all sizes in the country. Profit a lot.

Of course, units such as millers and Dafeng food processing plants are not fools. They are all enterprises, so they naturally know the importance of controlling costs, and they also know how important it is to control a stable source of raw materials for production. Therefore, they began to work directly with food producers, bypassing the state grain reserves.

The "luxury" milling line at the Dafeng food processing plant can consume more than 8,000 tons of wheat a year, accounting for almost one-sixth of the country's total wheat production. As a result, they sent a large number of agents to buy wheat all over the country, and at the same time they also extended their tentacles into the countryside through the connections of some flour sellers, trying to buy the surplus grain directly from the peasants.

They are really optimistic about the future of refined flour, because at the Qingdao Autumn Commodity Fair a while ago, many businessmen have ordered a total of about 3,000 tons of refined flour. In addition, the Genoese and the Dutch West India Company have placed orders for about 1,000 tons, which has removed more than 90% of the plant's annual capacity. The mill has now secured a special loan from the United Industrial Credit Bank to start a second flour production line, and in order to be able to produce raw materials after the production line is completed, the mill is now also frantically hoarding wheat, which has caused the supply of wheat in the market to dwindle rapidly, and the price has begun to gradually climb.

The rise in wheat prices has inevitably been transmitted to the final consumer flour, and this irrepressible upward trend has also boosted the reluctance of many farmers to sell. Especially in Xihu County, the country's largest grain production base and the county with the highest agricultural commercialization, it is common for farmers to be reluctant to sell, and they decide to wait for grain in their hands, thinking that they are seeking greater benefits.

In such a situation, the major private millers and grain processors immediately complained. They complain that the government exports a large amount of wheat to foreign countries every year, only to increase the price of domestic food, which is simply unreasonable! It's just that complaining is complaining, in order to continue to open their small workshops and small businesses, and at the same time to make profits, they have to cross the sea to show their magic powers, and try their best to pound wheat in the market. Some people even travel long distances to try their luck in order to buy wheat, and Gao Jinzhong is obviously one of them.

Gao Jinzhong was a cripple, he was injured in one leg in the war, and he still has difficulty moving, but he still came to the south without fear. He first went to the Invalids Farm in Luoqia County, and took advantage of his special status as a disabled soldier to buy fifty or sixty tons of wheat from those farmers who were also disabled soldiers—a figure that almost envied the millers of all sizes in the country.

After purchasing the wheat, Gao Jinzhong found that he still had some surplus money on hand, so he took a train or steamboat to Hejinbao, hoping to try his luck in these towns and villages that are not traditional agricultural areas to see if he could buy some surplus grain. In today's East Coast Republic, the market is far from saturated, with the most productive Dafeng food processing plants currently focusing on foreign markets with the highest profit margins, while many small private millers are fighting fiercely in the domestic market.

Everyone is not a fool, at present, Dafeng plant this domestic leading enterprise has begun to build a second milling line, if the line is installed, commissioning, then the annual processing capacity of the plant will reach a terrifying 1.7-18,000 tons, although then they may still be the main export market, but will still pose a huge competitive pressure to many small mill enterprises in China. As a result, at a time when such behemoths have not yet taken care of the country, there is fierce competition among many private companies in the country, and bankruptcies occur almost every week.

Originally, almost every village had one mill merged into two or three villages, and then this year, there may be only a few in one township, which shows the fierce competition. In addition, the traditional animal, water and wind mills have also been gradually phased out because they are not suitable for the market, and now the mills of the country, especially in the northern regions, have begun to use steam power and add mechanized production lines - of course, this is limited to the enterprises run by veterans who are not short of money and are willing to spend large sums of money to make an upfront investment.

Gao Jinzhong and others' mills were further developed after the competition overwhelmed the two mills in a neighboring village, and then they were lucky enough to get an order from the Route 2 construction team, so they immediately began to bring in new investors, add machinery and equipment, and expand production capacity to cope with the increasingly fierce market competition. Several of their partners have a hunch that with the great development of the domestic infrastructure industry, when the traffic conditions will be greatly improved in a few years, the originally closed and semi-closed local markets will gradually be connected, and the logistics and transportation costs will be greatly reduced, and the scale of the enterprise may be further expanded.

Doing business is like sailing against the current, and if you don't advance, you will retreat. This was what Gao Jinzhong heard from one of the people who had invested in them, so their only thought now was to seize the precious time, expand production capacity and further reduce costs - they even burned wood for the steam boiler to save fuel costs, and then continued to develop, because the pressure on the leading enterprise of Dafeng Factory was too great for everyone. If you can't take advantage of the fact that the market is not saturated to become bigger and stronger, you will inevitably be squeezed into no business in the future.

"So you're here to buy wheat?" Agnelli shook his head and said, "Gao, you're wrong, this township couldn't even be self-sufficient in food last year. Although this year's wheat harvest is good, it is only self-sufficient, and some farmers may have surplus food at home, but they may not want to sell it, and they may choose to raise a few large livestock. ”

"There is no here, and there is no Chengshan Fort and Tieling Fort." Gao Jinzhong seemed to have expected this result a long time ago, and he didn't look very disappointed.

"You should try your luck in Ningjin Fort or Onuma Township to the south, where there should be some peasants who are in a hurry to cash in on their grain. Many of its inhabitants are French, and they are happy to exchange their food for money, which they can then buy for something else to enjoy. I've been there and I know their virtues well. Believe me, Gao, this is a conclusion that has been observed by the tinkerer for many years. Agnelli expertly ate the noodles with chopsticks and forks, and then said.

"Okay, I'll go there and have a look." Gao Jinzhong said, "But seriously, old man, you can't do the business of a pot tinker for a few years, you might as well come and help us, at least you are very familiar with the situation in various places, which is very important to us." ”

"Is this a formal invitation?" Agnelli laughed, then said, "Maybe I'll think about it seriously." (To be continued......)