March is the time of spring ploughing, and when the north experiences drought, other provinces such as Liaodong, Hexi, Shandong, and several southern provinces are still peaceful.

"Folks, pay attention, from this year onwards, the price of grain harvested in Huangzhuang is 100 wen for sweet potatoes, 150 wen for potatoes, 300 wen for wheat, and 300 wen for rice!"

On a ridge in Fengyang Prefecture, Nanzhili, when a village official shouted, the people who were planting rice in the fields looked up at him.

It was only after he had said this that the people below whispered:

"Mother, the price of this grain has finally been raised."

"This imperial court, every day is called planting sweet potatoes, in the early years, eight stone sweet potatoes could only be sold for 600 Wen, and now the price has finally been raised."

"If it weren't for the military tun fields, I wouldn't have planted sweet potatoes."

"This year is good, eight stone sweet potatoes can also be sold for 800 Wen, I have five acres of sweet potato fields and two acres of potato fields at home, I think I can sell them to the imperial court for one or two six or seven dollars of silver."

"The imperial court has raised the price of sweet potatoes and potatoes, should we switch to sweet potatoes and potatoes next year? It's so tiring to grow rice......"

Huangzhuang collects grain, this is a policy formulated by Zhu Youzhen after the army in the world was abolished and the fields were distributed to the people.

He knew very well that it was unrealistic to blindly ask the people to plant potatoes and sweet potatoes, and the atmosphere in Beizhili had not spread so quickly throughout the Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, it is necessary to find a place for the people to sell grain, and this place is the Huangzhuang that has lost even a single acre of land under its name.

At present, Huangzhuang has become an institution specializing in the collection of sweet potatoes and potatoes, and because the situation has not been too bad in previous years, and sweet potatoes and potatoes are easy to grow, the management cost is low.

Therefore, the purchase price of sweet potatoes and potatoes opened by Huangzhuang to the people is not high, and the economic benefits of one acre of land are slightly lower than that of wheat and rice.

But from this year onwards, the ethos has begun to change.

Huangzhuang raised the purchase price of sweet potatoes and potatoes this time, and in the area south of the Yellow River, the economic benefits of one acre of land are equal to those of rice and wheat.

Once the price of potatoes and sweet potatoes that are easy to manage is on par with the price of rice, then some people who dislike the bitterness of growing rice will inevitably expand the cultivation of potatoes and sweet potatoes.

Although this increased the cost of grain collection in disguise, it increased the grain output of the Ming Dynasty.

However, it is impossible to grow sweet potatoes and potatoes blindly for a simple reason......

In terms of storage time, the two can't catch up with rice and wheat, even in a particularly good environment, the storage time of sweet potatoes is only half a year, and potatoes are about two months.

Such a short storage time is destined to be the most suitable for the interests of the Ming Dynasty only in convenient places.

Therefore, when the village saw that the people knew, he added:

"There are restrictions on the purchase of potatoes and sweet potatoes by the imperial court for each county, and the upper limit of our new city village is 2,000 mu, so those who want to plant will go to my house after dinner to discuss."

With that, the village turned around and left, leaving the people looking at each other.

Such a scene happened in various places in the Ming Dynasty, but Zhu Youzhen, who was in the capital, was very satisfied with his policy.

"According to your Highness, there is an upper limit of 4 million mu in Nanzhili, and one million mu in the rest of the southern provinces such as Sichuan, Shaanxi, Shandong, Liaodong, Shanxi, Hexi, Henan, and Beizhili are not restricted, and the old port does not participate in the ......"

On the eighth day of the third month, in the study room of the Qi Palace, when Bi Ziyan of the household department sat on a chair and had a long talk with Zhu Youzhen, Zhu Youzhen also looked at the document book in his hand and nodded.

There are no restrictions in the north and one Beijing and six provinces, and one Beijing and nine provinces in the south are restricted, and the old port only collects rice......

In other words, Huangzhuang's restriction on sweet potatoes and potatoes in the south is 13 million mu, while the restriction in the north will completely increase the proportion of grain output in the country for sweet potatoes and potatoes.

The reason for Zhu Youjian's restrictions on the southern provinces is very simple: if all these 13 million mu are used to grow sweet potatoes, the output of sweet potatoes will reach 100 million stones.

According to the calculation of 100 wen per stone, the imperial court needs to pay 10 million taels of silver to buy them.

The preservation time of sweet potatoes is destined to be the sweet potatoes in the south of Beijing and nine provinces, and it is impossible to use them as relief for the disaster areas in the north during most of the time.

They will be used as fodder, for making wine, and secondarily for temporary relief for local victims.

100 million stone sweet potatoes, if all used to make wine, and sweet potatoes can produce about a quarter of the weight of alcohol.

These days, Zhu Youzhen has probably figured out the price of civilian drinks in the Ming Dynasty, that is, it is roughly twelve wen a pound of wine.

Sun Yuanhua has already led people to make wine and gave Zhu Youzhen an answer, and the wine produced by 100 million stone sweet potatoes is 3 billion catties.

If it is sold according to 10 cents per catty, excluding labor and freight, the liquor tax revenue of the liquor department for civilian liquor alone will be about 25 million taels.

Of course, three billion catties of wine, unless the people of the Ming Dynasty drink them as water, they can't consume so much at all.

But let's not forget that the drought will be accompanied by a wide variety of diseases.

The amount of alcohol needed to deal with them is also terrifying, and the high concentration of alcohol used to treat the wounded in foreign wars is also extremely high.

Therefore, the imperial court needs spare alcohol, so the amount of wine flowing into the market is roughly about 2.5 billion catties.

In addition, for the price of wine, Zhu Youzhen also reduced it to a very low price that had never existed in the Ming Dynasty.

To put it bluntly, the same method he used to crack down on illegal salt, the liquor on the market sold for 12 wen, and he sold it for 8 wen.

Cracked down on moonshine on the market, and it was not too late to increase the price after that.

Even if it is reduced to eight wen, 2.5 billion catties of wine can still be sold for more than 15 million taels of wine tax revenue after removing labor and freight, surpassing the 10 million taels of revenue during the Tianxi period of the Song Dynasty.

"The number of imperial stores needs to be expanded, and every market town and countryside in my Ming Dynasty needs a medium-sized and small imperial store, and the county town should reach one in each of the four cities in the east, west, north and south."

Zhu Youzhen turned his head to look at Wang Chengen who was standing in the corner, and Wang Chengen also responded:

"The construction of the imperial store is not a problem, but according to your Royal Highness's requirements, the scale of one store in the countryside, five people in one store in the market town, and forty people in the four stores in the county town is ......."

Wang Chengen paused, and then said with a sad face: "In the Ming Dynasty, the prefecture and county government, the market towns and villages, the required Huangdian employees must reach 300,000 people. ”

"In this way, the wages of the hired workers alone will probably reach three million taels of silver......

The wages of the workers employed in the imperial store were divided according to the size of the city, and Zhu Youzhen had already set them.

Liangjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Chengdu and other big cities are 30 wen per person a day, and 900 wen a month.

The second-class such as Jinan, Luoyang, Xi'an, etc., is 25 wen per person a day, and 750 wen a month.

Again, the first is 20 wen a day, 600 wen a month, and the second is a small royal shop in the countryside, with a fixed 500 wen a month for one person.

300,000 hired laborers spent 3 million taels of silver, which is comparable to the expenditure of more than 20,000 officials in the Ming Dynasty.

However, the Imperial Store must exist, because whether it is honeycomb coal, salt, tea, or various commercial goods that will appear in the future, as well as the sweet potato wine that will appear soon, the Imperial Store will be responsible for the sale.

The expenses of the Imperial Store are large, but the amount of silver that can be earned is also sufficient.

Adding up, it is normal for the imperial store to earn more than 20 million taels of silver every year, and the annual income of an institution is enough to compare with the treasury income of a Ming Dynasty during the Wanli period.

The more than three million taels of silver will eventually be returned to the hands of the emperor in the form of trade.

"As long as the income from the business tax of the imperial store, the city and the household department can pay the salaries of the hundred officials and the army, the remaining land can be used for disaster relief......

"Don't be reluctant to spend three million taels of silver, Cheng En." Zhu Youzhen commanded, and when he saw the mention of money, Bi Ziyan also said:

"If this wine division wants to digest these ten thousand stone sweet potatoes, it needs to build at least one wine farm in each province."

"Each liquor farm produces 100,000 catties to 200,000 catties of wine every year, which requires at least 300 helpers and nearly 50,000 ......."

"The treatment of the wine house can't be too bad...... Zhu Youzhen said when he heard this:

"On the basis of the wages of wine apprentices and masters in the market, increase by 10%."

After Zhu Youzhen finished speaking, the scribes who were arranged in two rows at the door of the study began to "click" and fiddle with the abacus, and only after half a sound did someone walk in and say:

"After increasing by one percent, the apprentice will have one or two dollars a month, the master will have three taels and three dollars, and the 1,627 government needs to invest 780,000 taels of silver to build a field, and the annual expenditure will be more than 624,000 taels of silver."

"The investment is not very large, and it is no wonder that the two Song Dynasty are so obsessed with the liquor tax." Zhu Youzhen said to Bi Ziyan when he heard this, and then said:

"If 10,000 stone sweet potatoes are put into wine making in this wine field, more than 70 million stone of wine residue will be left."

"These wine residues were later made into feed and sold to the people at a price of 100 catties a bag and 10 yuan a bag in the imperial store."

A hundred catties of wine residue only cost ten yuan, which is a very cheap price, and this is also a kind of subsidy for the people of Huili after drinking.

As a result, as the imperial court gradually acquired various daily necessities such as salt, wine, tea, etc., Huangdian also became another form of supply and marketing cooperative.

"The construction of the liquor field should be accelerated, and after the establishment of the liquor division in October, it is necessary to start cracking down on bootlegging, and before the end of the lunar month, it is necessary to ensure that the liquor division is profitable."

Zhu Youzhen explained to Bi Ziyan, and Bi Ziyan also bowed his head and said that he would care.

However, in addition to his heart, Bi Ziyan's expression was a little strange, and he stopped talking.

"What's wrong?" Zhu Youzhen sensed Bi Ziyan's awkwardness and began to ask, and Bi Ziyan said:

"There is a great drought in the north, and the war in the southwest is about to start again, and the Yellow River is repaired, and the treasury has been overdraw......n."

Bi Ziyan didn't mention the battle of sweeping captives, but he was mentioning the battle of sweeping captives.

Zhu Youzhen heard this clearly, and Zhu Youzhen also frowned when he heard this:

"The war of sweeping the captives is imminent, and if the drought spreads even more, our DPRK will fall into the quagmire of drought and disaster relief."

"At present, Jianlu is slaughtering the Han people who have been plundered under his rule, and there are not a few acres of land that have been reclaimed, and they have stabilized for the time being."

"If they are allowed to recuperate, then their injuries in the Battle of Fuliao will recover in a few years."

"At that time, our dynasty will be busy with internal governance, and we can only maintain a large number of troops to defend Liaodong."

"What's more, there is no Great Wall to protect the three prefectures of Taining, as well as Yidong River City and other places, and the Jianyu horse infantry comes and goes like the wind."

"Instead of spending more than 3 million taels of military salaries per year in the Eastern Army Governor's Mansion to defend, it is better to spend 10 million taels of silver in one go."

"The matter of silver, tomorrow when the Western fleet returns, I will give the feudal lords time to think, and then discuss the matter to enrich the treasury, you don't have to worry."

"Having said that, ......" Bi Ziyan was still a little worried, and after a moment he said:

"In the past, there must be locust plagues after the great drought, and the locust plague of the great drought in Shandong that year, I think your Highness still remembers."

"Are you afraid of a plague of locusts?" Zhu Youzhen was reminded and frowned slightly.

If there is a plague of locusts, then the battle of the capture may really have to be postponed.

"This year's drought has affected the four provinces, and if there is a locust plague, I am afraid that it will be difficult to preserve the grain in Henan, Shandong, Hexi and other places......

Bi Ziyan said worriedly, and this also made Zhu Youzhen's face cloudy.

He is well aware of the power of the locust plague, and if there is really another locust plague this year, then Shandong can be said to have not been stable for seven years since the first year of the Apocalypse.

Shaanxi has not been stable for three consecutive years......

"In your opinion, how should the locusts be cured?"

Zhu Youzhen asked Bi Ziyan, there is no way, the scale of the locust plague in later generations is completely impossible to compare with the scale of the locust plague in this era.

The methods he knew of to control locusts in later generations would not work at all in this era.

In later generations, the control of locusts was from a biological point of view.

For example, an important factor in the survival rate of insects is fungi, and in general, there are a lot of fungi in the soil.

Together with a variety of pathogens, they infect insects with so many diseases that only 1%-5% of a batch of locust eggs often survive to the next breeding period.

The fungus has an obvious suppression effect on locusts, but it has a fatal drawback, that is, it is afraid of heat.

To what extent are fungi afraid of heat? Human body temperature is enough to kill most fungi, which is why there are very few diseases caused by fungi in humans.

Therefore, it is only possible to contract fungal diseases, such as athlete's foot, in places where the temperature at the end of the body is low.

In times of drought, the surface soil cracks, and the sunlight directly shines into the cracks of the ground, killing a large number of fungi, which is equivalent to directly disinfecting the locust eggs, which improves the hatching rate of locust eggs.

The policy of controlling locusts in later generations began in this direction.

In the past, when the locust plague occurred, people always thought of killing it with chemical agents, or using the natural enemy attributes of chickens and ducks to restrain it, but this year's locust plague was extinguished, but there will still be a large-scale locust plague in the future.

Therefore, what the future generations did was basically to prevent the locust eggs from hatching and so that they could not harm the crops.

To do this, it is necessary to protect the fungus, and to protect the fungus, it is necessary to create an environment conducive to the growth of the fungus, that is, to shift the focus of the work from killing locusts to protecting the ecological environment.

The easiest way to do this is to build a dam at the site of the event to control the water level so that the locusts have nowhere to lay their eggs in the first place.

The lake beach wasteland is then cultivated, the local vegetation and land are protected, and the fungi produced in the natural environment are used to fight the locusts instead of humans.

After these efforts were carried out, although there will still be some locust plagues in various places, it is basically difficult for large-scale locust movements to occur again, and the great locust plagues and famines of the past will never return.

But the problem is that what Zhu Youzhen is facing right now is the most widespread drought in 5,000 years.

From the Zhengdan Festival to now, it is still spring, the streams in the provinces have dried up, and the silt in the weir embankment has dried up......

In such a situation, how else can he cure the locusts? It is nothing more than relying on the means of the ancients.

In the face of his inquiry, it is actually difficult for Bi Ziyan.

Ancient methods could not effectively eradicate the locust plague, so he could only bite the bullet and say:

"Prevention is difficult to achieve, and the only way to do it is to trap and kill them with bonfires, dig ditches, trap them, catch them with utensils, or drive the people to dig up the locust eggs and drive away the locusts with sound."

"In addition, it is necessary to order hunters not to kill beneficial birds in order to protect locust birds, raise locust birds, and prevent viruses."

In particular, it is necessary to "prohibit the fishing of robins" and give rewards according to the Hongwu period of "the people catch locusts and give them a bucket of locusts". ”

Bi Ziyan said most of the methods he could name to control the locusts, but then again, these methods could only control the scale of the locusts, and could not completely eliminate the locusts.

These methods are still inadequate in dealing with large-scale locust attacks......

It's just that there isn't much to do at the moment, so Zhu Youzhen can only hold his forehead and say:

"Let's issue these policies first, and then ......"

Zhu Youzhen thought about it, but couldn't think of any good way for a while, and finally could only sigh.

"Increase the encouragement of sweet potatoes and potatoes cultivation in one Beijing and six provinces in the north, no matter how severe the locust plague is, it is impossible to burrow into the soil and eat all the sweet potatoes, right?"

Zhu Youzhen made the worst plan, that is, after the locust plague broke out, nearly 50 million people in one capital and six provinces in the north ate sweet potatoes and potatoes for several months, waiting for the rice harvest in the south to be transported north.

"The Battle of the Capture ......"

Zhu Youzhen thought about it, and finally could only frown and say, "Shelving ...... for the time being"

He was a little unwilling to say this, and he was also a little helpless, after all, if he could pacify Jianyu, then more than 100,000 soldiers and horses in the Eastern Army Governor's Mansion could be liberated.

Where will these soldiers go? Needless to say, they will go to Japan to completely solve the border troubles of the Central Plains Dynasty for nearly a thousand years.

As long as they are solved and the steam engine is made, then the Ming can go north to North Asia to Melica.

Not to mention that after solving them, silver mines in Iwami and other places can increase the income of millions of taels of silver for the Ming Dynasty every year.

Thinking like this, Zhu Youzhen felt a little difficult.

Even if he has taken the risk of taking too big a step to carry out various reforms, but the Ming Dynasty has accumulated shortcomings for a long time, and it can not be solved by blindly using medicine, even he is particularly small in the general trend.

"Your Highness......"

Just when Zhu Youzhen and Bi Ziyan were struggling with how to control the locusts, Lu Wenzhao walked into the study, and after seeing Bi Ziyan and Wang Chengen stunned for a short time, he regained his demeanor and said:

"News came from the south field that Cao Bingbi had ordered people to make 230,000 hydraulic looms from the Armaments Institute, build farms in Nanzhili, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi and other places, and recruit more than 164,000 female workers......"

"Cao Bingbi ordered someone to report the good news to His Highness, and the weaving cloth produced by the loom this year should reach 30 million horses, and asked if the price of weaving cloth in the imperial store should be reduced."

"What is the price of weaving cloth in the imperial store?" Zhu Youzhen rarely heard a piece of good news, and turned his head to look at Wang Chengen.

"A horse of weaving cloth is 200 yuan, and the price of selling it to a Europa merchant is 500 yuan." Wang Chengen replied honestly, while Zhu Youzhen pondered for a moment when he heard this, and then said:

"The price of white cloth in the two capitals and sixteen provinces of the Ming Dynasty has been reduced to one hundred and fifty wen per horse, and the price of selling to Europa merchants remains unchanged."

Being lenient with the people and being strict with barbarians is the basic criterion for Zhu Youzhen's actions.

Even if the white cloth is 500 Wen, the merchants of Europa countries will still continue to compete for it, after all, it will be sold to Europa and the profit will be doubled.

If it weren't for the need to maintain the enthusiasm of Europa merchants, Zhu Youzhen might have raised the price of white cloth even more.

Now that Europa is in the midst of a thirty-year war, and the economies of all countries are in tatters, it is better to maintain stability for Europa merchants first.

If the Thirty Years' War in Europe had ended earlier, it would have been much easier to start raising tariffs and commodity prices at that time.

Thinking about it this way, Zhu Youzhen wondered if he would take the opportunity to intervene in the Thirty Years' War.

Of course, he would not sell ordnance and artillery to the Europas, after all, the Ming Dynasty was not yet a generation ahead of Europe in technology.

However, selling something to make the Thirty Years' War in Europe more intense, and finally letting all countries end the war early because of casualties, this can still be done by the Ming Dynasty.

As for what is being sold? This is naturally gunpowder......

Due to the fact that the Central Plains has been frequently bullied by Western forces with firearms in modern times, many people have a wrong idea, that is, our Central Plains Dynasty has ordered the wrong technology tree and used all the technology of making gunpowder in the production of firecrackers.

However, in fact, the development of gunpowder and firearms in the Central Plains Dynasty was synchronized, but the development of firearms was not as fast as in the West.

In this development, although the power of firearms is not as good as that of the West, the number of firearms of the Central Plains Dynasty can crush the West.

For example, during the Qianlong period, the Qing army spent more than 4 million catties of gunpowder to attack Jinchuan, and used up the amount of gunpowder used by the United States in the Revolutionary War for eight years in almost a year.

The reason for the low amount of gunpowder is that gunpowder in the West is too expensive, and for Europeans such a move as the Ming Dynasty, fireworks are set off during the New Year's holidays.

The amount of gunpowder used by the people of the Ming Dynasty to set off firecrackers during the New Year was enough to wage a war in Europe that lasted for several years.

Take the consumption of fireworks and gunpowder on the night of Zhengdan Festival, not long after the seventh year of the Apocalypse, according to the cost accounting of gunpowder in Europe, the gunpowder consumed by the people of the Ming Dynasty on the night of Zhengdan Festival can be sold for hundreds of thousands of taels of gold in Europe.

Although Zhu Youzhen doesn't know the price of gunpowder in Europe, how can anyone know......

Thinking about it, he instructed Lu Wenzhao: "Order someone to find the missionaries of the Ming Dynasty in the past two years and ask them about the price of gunpowder in Europa. ”

"In addition, let Sun Liang of the Ordnance Bureau start to build a branch of the Gunpowder Bureau in Palembang Province, to achieve an annual output of two million catties of gunpowder."

"Wait for everything to be clear, and tell Shen Tingyang that the imperial store of the Little Western Supervision Division is responsible for selling gunpowder, and it will be sold at one-half of the price of Europa gunpowder."

After the order, Zhu Youzhen narrowed his eyes:

"Two million catties of gunpowder, I want to see how much silver I can sell......"