Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 2110 Food and Xinjiang

359 Food and Xinjiang

"The Pampa Plain is really a treasure land! The wheat planted last year has been harvested again this year. However, is this level of harvest really a good thing? The drama of increasing production but not increasing income has been staged many times." On October 1690, 10, in Yancheng Port at the southern end of the Yanbu Railway, Lao Siji, a former cattle catcher and now a famous businessman in the Pampa Plain, shook his head while eating pancakes spread out.

The pancakes were bought at a restaurant on the side of the road. They used local extra-grade flour, but the price was still the same as ordinary flour in the past. If it wasn’t for the profit made by the restaurant owner, then the price of local food must have dropped, so that Precious extra-grade flour began to appear in the local market on a large scale.

The Pampa Plain was originally a first-class wheat producing area. Yancheng Port and its surrounding areas were the famous grain producing areas of the East Coast Republic decades ago. Wheat, sunflowers, hops, burdock, soybeans, corn, etc. were produced on the inland plains The crops will be gathered here, and then shipped to the north for sale.Of course, there are also a large number of local grain deep-processing enterprises, mainly flour production. This is not only to create some tax revenue and jobs for Yancheng County, but also to make use of local superior resources to expand and strengthen the food processing industry.

The flour produced in Yancheng County, like other places in the country, is divided into three, six, and nine grades according to their quality.Among them, except for a small amount of first-class flour for local consumption, most of it will still be shipped to developed areas in the north, where the most important market for high-priced special-grade flour is.Lao Siji has been in the south for more than ten years. In the early years, he used cattle catching as a career. Later, he started to collect cattle on the ground, and ran the business of cowhide, tallow, and corned beef. The business began to grow gradually.Naturally, a businessman like him, who has become rich, has gradually become more particular about his daily food and clothing. It is almost a matter of course to consume special-grade flour. Therefore, when he ate the pancakes he bought just now, he immediately understood This is extra-grade flour, but the price is the same as before, what does that mean?

"There is indeed a phenomenon of increasing production but not increasing income, and the government is also trying to solve it." Inigo, who has been promoted to the Yanbu Railway Security Commander, sat opposite Lao Siji.This is his office, so a burly soldier came over soon, holding a tray with two cups of brewed coffee in his hand.

"There are trains transporting grain on the Yanbu Railway every day, most of which go north and arrive at Nancun Port. After the grain arrives there, the government also has a headache. The national reserve grain depot has taken away most of it, but in fact they They don’t have a good market either, so I don’t know what to do.” Inigo took a sip of his fragrant coffee and said, “But they have to buy it! Because if the government doesn’t support the farmers on the Pampa Plains, then the future How do you let others come over to open up wasteland? How do you open up the frontier? Therefore, the national reserve grain depot has to buy it, but the price they buy is not very high, and the farmers are still a little dissatisfied."

"It's not bad to be able to do this. After all, it needs to be supported by real money, which consumes a lot. The national reserve grain depot probably needs subsidies from the Government Affairs Council. Increasing production does not increase income. This is life. What can you do? I just feel sorry for those pioneers. They have worked hard for a whole year, but their income is not as good as expected. It’s so boring.” Lao Siji put some soy sauce on the pancakes, and sighed while eating: “But now the government still has I am constantly immigrating to the Pampa Plain. Especially after negotiating with the Spaniards, more and more people have entered the west of the railway, what will these people do in the future?"

"The government is also trying to find a way." Inigo struggled to say: "Actually, the government has recently signed purchase and sales contracts with Spain, the United Provinces and France, and can export a large amount of my country's surplus grain to the above-mentioned areas, but I don't know when it will be implemented."

"This kind of contract is just to make a good sound. In fact, they are all intentional contracts. I'm afraid there is no one confirmed?" Lao Siji is also a person who has done a lot of business, and he still knows a lot about the famous tricks in it. , I just heard him continue: "The country of the United Provinces imports a large amount of grain from Poland and Russia every year. Well, the North German region is also their granary. Anyway, there are plenty of places to buy. Even if we can sell some in the past, how much is there? Moreover, such a long-distance sea transportation will inevitably cause serious losses, and their country is not blocked, and the food price is normal, so we can hardly make any money."

"Spain can actually be handled well, but it's more complicated. Inigo, do you have relatives in Spain? You should know that the drought there is not as severe as in France, right? In fact, there is still a shortage of food." Lao Si Ji said again: "But the problem is that they have no money, and they don't plan to ask us to import food. It can be seen that this country wants to use precious funds for war, and it doesn't want to care about the lives of the people. In this way It will be difficult."

"No, I don't have any relatives." Inigo shook his head with an ugly face and said.

"Oh, even if you don't have relatives, you should understand. Did you read the newspapers? It has already reported several droughts in France, Spain and Portugal. The grain harvests have suffered greatly and domestic stocks have almost been exhausted. The Portuguese have already Imported food from the Baltic Sea, this is really damn, why not buy ours? Is it because the price is a bit more expensive? The Spaniards are even more extreme. They simply gave up buying food to help the victims. Currently only the church is doing these things, but They also import food from England and Italy, so it has nothing to do with us." After finishing the last pancake on hand, Lao Siji burped and said, "As for France, uh, this seems a bit wrong..."

"Sell grain to the Kingdom of France?" Just as Lao Siji and Inigo were discussing the food issue in the Pampa Plain, at Nancun Port at the other end of the Yanbu Railway, famous food merchants Agnelli and Gao Jinzhong were also present. small talk.

"France is at war with the United Provinces and Spain. Isn't it appropriate for us to sell grain door-to-door?" Gao Jinzhong asked, holding a pipe on his left and a horse in his right hand, wandering on the green grass on the outskirts of Nancun Port.

"But what can we do now?" Agnelli took off the top hat on his head, let the wind blow his silver hair, shook his head and said: "Solving the food problem and solving the problem of farmers increasing production or not increasing income is the top priority and is politically correct. This is a policy set by the higher authorities, and it can no longer be controlled so much. You Dutch people have the ability to eat all our food? Can’t you? If you can’t eat it, why do you care who we sell it to? Now the golden lily flower merchant The museum is buying real money, so we have no reason not to sell it."

"As for Spain? Spain doesn't even care!" Agnelli criticized unceremoniously: "I think their king Carlos II doesn't care about his citizens at all, and completely loses his responsibilities and obligations as a monarch. Knowing that he was at war with the French regardless of the terrible economic situation at home. He dumped the responsibility of importing food to feed the people to the church, and turned his attention to a sick war. I have never seen such a shameful people."

"In fact, I think the monarchs of the old continent are basically such shameful people." Gao Jinzhong echoed, and then said: "Let's not talk about this, let's talk about how to sell the goods. This time the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Industry and Commerce jointly Say hello, we want us to organize a batch of grain to be sold abroad, and the profit margin is not bad. Although there are some risks, we have to do it if we don’t do it, and we have no choice.”

In fact, as Gao Jinzhong said just now, the state has taken a series of measures to solve the food problem for farmers.In addition to increasing exports to their own colonies and raising the import tariff on foreign grains to 70%, they also vigorously developed overseas markets.

The first is New Courland and Portuguese Brazil, two markets that are within easy reach.The two places are already dominated by cash crops, some of which are self-produced and some are imported.This time, the East Coast government came to the door and strongly demanded that they increase the import of grain from the East Coast, and signed a series of agreements, with the State Grain Reserve and the local colonial government as the signing parties, which solved part of the problem.

Secondly, the people on the east coast sent people to ask the Spanish ambassador and the Madrid court at the same time, asking them to purchase a batch of grain for disaster relief.The Spaniards were surprised and ironic that the East Coast government cared so much about the lives of their citizens, but they did not plan to use funds to purchase food, even if the wheat grades provided by the East Coast people were not low, and the price was not too expensive .Even when the people on the east bank proposed to change part of the payment to be paid in the land purchase agreement currently being negotiated in an orderly manner into food, the Spaniards refused without hesitation. They only wanted to get real money, Then go to subsidize the financial deficit.

But this time it's not up to them.The executive committee has issued the highest instruction, requiring the negotiating team to add this item, and use at least 60 yuan in cash from the land purchase price to purchase [-] tons of wheat, and "suggest" the Spaniards to purchase an additional [-] yuan on this basis. tons, because if the final purchase volume reaches [-] tons, people from the east bank can give an additional [-] tons of corn as a gift, which is a little discount for big customers.

The negotiators of the Kingdom of Spain have seen the latest documents, and they naturally protested strongly, but they were ignored by the East Coast side.The negotiators of the people on the east coast even threatened that if the Spaniards did not accept this clause, they would not rule out the possibility of terminating the negotiations, putting the Kingdom of Spain, which was already in the quagmire of war, in a dangerous situation.They predicted that the Spaniards would eventually succumb to the pressure from the people on the east coast, obediently return to the negotiating table, eat these tens of thousands of tons of grain, and solve the inventory for the farmers on the east coast.

Compared with the Kingdom of Spain, the problems on the French side are a bit more complicated.First of all, they took the initiative to approach the East Bank to discuss the issue of food procurement, and asked the people from the East Bank to deliver the goods to avoid risks.You must know that although their navy has grown in strength over the years, and defeated the navies of England and the United Provinces in the previous two battles, they are still a little scared in the end, fearing that one day the fleet will be wiped out by the enemy and the coastline will be destroyed. Block it, that would be troublesome.Therefore, Louis XIV directly instructed the Golden Lily Merchant in Qingdao Port to purchase grain locally on the east coast, hire ships, and then transport it to France.Louis XIV specifically pointed out that as long as the price is moderate and not too outrageous, purchases will be made at an amount of 1000 million livres.In the past two years, France was either suffering from drought or floods, and the grain harvest was greatly negatively affected, so it had to increase its purchases from foreign countries. For this reason, Louis XIV did not hesitate to kill several "fat pigs" and obtained them through ransacking their homes. Huge wealth to pay for food purchases.

To be honest, the purchase volume of the French is very huge, and it has a very obvious effect on the destocking of grain. Therefore, after a little consideration, they agreed to the purchase request of the French, and then negotiated with them on the details of delivery and payment.In order not to make Spain and the United Provinces feel "betrayed", the people on the east coast also played a trick to hide their ears and steal their bells, that is, the State Grain Reserve, which represents the government, does not come forward, and the major domestic grain producers and traders , Grain deep-processing enterprises and even agricultural cooperatives trade with the French, exporting various foods including wheat, corn, potatoes and barreled flour.Among them, the well-known Rabbit Hole Flour Factory has naturally undertaken the task of producing 3600 tons of barreled flour. This is also a big deal for them, and it is worth discussing.

After France and Spain are settled, the pressure on people on the east coast to destock food will be greatly reduced, and the income of farmers can also be rapidly increased.Since then, pioneering and reclamation has become a profitable economic activity again, the finances of local governments can be maintained again (mainly by selling land), the frontiers can be enriched again, immigrants have continued to come in, and the whole country seems to have regained its prosperity. Back to the perfect state of stable operation in the past.However, some people pointed out that the east bank government’s artificial maintenance of the scale and living standards of the peasant class is actually a serious violation of economic laws. It is tantamount to asking all social strata to subsidize farmers. serious negative impact.

There is no doubt that the upper echelons of the government are aware of the situation.But for various reasons, they are not willing to adjust the current policy, and intend to continue to maintain the middle class status of the peasant class - to be honest, this is getting more and more difficult, and the difficulty is increasing every year - In this way, it will continue to attract outsiders and expand the scope of actual control of the country.

And if such a policy continues to be implemented, it means that the cross-border reclamation activities of people from the east coast on the Pampa Plain will not stop, and on the contrary may show a trend of acceleration.

Yesterday someone asked me if I made up the pot of braised mutton.Khan, really not.Interested book lovers can watch episode 293 of the CCTV special program "Belt and Road: Homes Far Away", about how Serbs make Saky.I think this is a relatively "Chinese" food, which is very good. If you have the conditions, you can try it. The country is visa-free to China.

(End of this chapter)