Is food useful?

Of course, it is useful, China's thousands of years of history have never completely shaken off the shadow of food shortage. That is to say, since the modern era, the explosion of science and technology, the emergence of various new planting technologies has led to a surge in grain production, and the total number of Chinese talents is able to eat enough.

Beacon Fire is a world of magic history, but the importance of food has not diminished in the slightest.

Without relatively convenient transportation channels and a lack of strong means of regulation and control, grain prices in the beacon often rise or fall sharply in the region, which is very unstable.

When Shang Ji first entered the game, one stone of grain in Liaodong was about 300 Wen (the average grain price in Jizhou in the same period was less than 200 Wen), but later encountered the Xianbei invasion, and the price of grain in Liaodong skyrocketed to six silver and one stone when it was the highest, which was a full 20 times!

After the outbreak of the Yellow Turban Uprising, the price of grain in Liaodong soared to eight silver and one stone at its peak, which was sixteen times higher than the normal price.

It was not until Shang Ji took charge of Pingzhou and spent a lot of effort to stabilize prices that the price of grain in the ruling area was relatively stable.

Later, with the large-scale expansion of the merchants, grain prices also fluctuated, but because of the effective regulation and control, the changes in grain prices were not too large, and at most they fell by two or three times.

Because the foundation is too weak, even with the help of the children of the peasants, Pingchen Erzhou has not yet fully achieved self-sufficiency in food (mainly because Chenzhou and the grassland are dragged down by the Protectorate, and Pingzhou has achieved self-sufficiency, and there is even a surplus). According to Deng Yan's statistics, in order to initially ensure that there is no famine in Pingchen Prefecture, at least 12 billion stone of grain is needed a year.

Seeing this, do you think that it is unnecessary to go crazy about water conservancy construction?

Under Shang Ji's rule, grain output is now about 11 billion yuan, and the demand is 12 billion yuan, a difference of 1 billion?

The above thinking is very wrong!

12 billion stones is only the basic consumption, and the grain output is to double again, and the merchants still feel that it is not enough!

Although the beacon fire has magic and internal power, it still obeys the laws of biology in some aspects. For example, when energy is transferred from primary consumers to secondary consumers, the transfer ratio is 10:1; For example, the consumption of an individual's life is closely related to the amount of absorption.

There were nearly 1.2 billion people under the rule of Shang Ji, and if they were all the most ordinary civilians, 12 billion stone of grain would be enough. But the reality is that in addition to civilians, there are also a large number of troops, rangers, and Taoist priests!

The food that a ninth-order soldier needs to consume from ordinary civilians is obviously not the same concept.

For a ninth-order soldier, in order to maintain combat effectiveness, the amount of energy that needs to be consumed every day is an astronomical amount. There are two solutions, one is to fill the quality with quantity and eat a lot of ordinary food every day, and the other is to supplement the quantity with quality and eat high-grade food.

The former is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and the soldiers do not like it, which seriously affects the morale and combat effectiveness of the army, and is generally only used for emergency purposes at critical times. The more common solution is the second one, which is to eat high-end foods instead.

What is Premium Food? Spirit Valley, the flesh and blood of fierce beasts, medicinal food, and so on.

Linggu is the most common, and the most widely planted area in the Baicao Garden is Linggu. However, there is no need to repeat how the output of Linggu is, with the double help of Baicao Garden and farmer disciples, Linggu's current annual output is only 120,000 stones, which can only be said to be a drop in the bucket.

The cost of medicinal diet is too high, and there is no possibility of promotion at all, so it can be passed directly.

At present, the supply method of the high-level army in the Shang Ji army is the cooperation of spiritual rice + pearl rice + elixir + fierce beast flesh and blood, which barely solves the problem of eating for the high-level army, but life is still tight.

And because the scale of the high-level army is getting bigger and bigger, the output of spiritual rice has never been able to make a breakthrough, so the proportion of fierce beast flesh and blood in the military food is getting higher and higher.

However, the beast is not a flock of sheep on the grassland, and it can be eaten if it wants.

Hunting ferocious beasts is a very dangerous activity that only seasoned hunters would dare to try.

What's more, the beasts are scarce in number, unpredictable in their whereabouts, and very unstable in supply, which can be a deadly threat to the military.

In order to solve this problem, it has long been proposed to domesticate ferocious beasts like cattle and sheep, and provide a continuous supply of high-grade flesh and blood through artificial breeding.

This approach has proven to be feasible.

With the efforts of high-level trainers, domesticating ferocious beasts proved to be completely feasible. Artificially domesticated ferocious beasts can still provide high-grade flesh and blood, although the quality is slightly worse, but it does not affect the use effect at all.

The only problem is the cost!

But anyone who can be called a fierce beast, none of them are vegetarians (vegetarians are generally spirit animals, have normal spiritual intelligence, and will not eat them unless they are in special circumstances, and most of the spirit beasts they eat are spirit strains).

Domesticating ferocious beasts does not raise the fixed cost of raising the level of trainers and farms for the time being, and the food fed every day alone is an astronomical amount. Fierce beasts must eat meat, and they have a very picky appetite, and the selected beef and mutton are suitable for their taste.

Moreover, the fierce beast generally eats a large amount of food, and the growth rate is quite slow, a fierce beast grows from a cub to an edible adult, and it needs to consume hundreds of times the same volume of cattle and sheep!

If you want to raise fierce beasts, you must have a large number of cattle and sheep to lay the foundation, and large-scale breeding of cattle and sheep can not rely only on the natural environment of the grassland, there must be artificial input of animal husbandry feed, which is still grain in the final analysis.

Some high-level beasts even feed on low-level beasts, and the gap between them is even more exaggerated.

If converted into ordinary grain, each beast is a mobile granary!

From this point of view, not to mention 20 billion stone of grain a year, even 40 billion or 80 billion yuan is not enough.

In addition to the army, ordinary people also aspire to improve their lives, and often eat a piece of beef and mutton or even beast meat, which further indirectly increases the consumption of food.

In addition, in addition to direct consumption, grain has other functions, such as winemaking.

Because Pingzhou has always been short of grain, the Shang Dynasty strictly controlled the production of grain and wine in order to reduce the consumption of grain. But for the environment of Pingzhou, wine is a very urgent consumable, and the demand from the people is very large, and it is also a troublesome thing to have no supply for a long time, which is easy to reduce the people's morale.

In addition to its own needs, food is also a strategic weapon. When there is a general food shortage, if you have enough food in your hands, then you can do whatever you want, which Shang Ji has deeply experienced during the national war.

All in all, for any force, the more food the better, and no matter how much grain there is, there is no need to worry about sales. Under the rule of Shang Ji, the grain output was increased tenfold, and there was a place to digest it.