Chapter 1529 Unexpected Troubles
On the tropical island, while morale was high due to the arrival of the Ironclad Ship No. 001, Zhou Xu, who was far away in Black Moon City on the mainland, was having a bit of a headache because of some new situations.
As a major grain-producing country, the Great Zhou had been doing grain business with neighboring countries as early as the coalition period.
The food business is often the best to do during wartime, as each country has to draft young and middle-aged people to join the army to fight. This will greatly lead to a decline in the domestic labor force, thus affecting the production of a series of resources, including food resources.
Even after the war, due to casualties, the internal population will suffer a large loss and productivity will not be able to recover in a short period of time, and the neighboring countries will still have a great demand for purchasing food.
However, as time goes by, this demand will definitely return to zero.
Since last year, the food orders from Copperforge and the Warrior Women have been decreasing. As of this year, this business can be said to have been completely gone.
Although as early as when this situation occurred, Zhou Xu had already begun to signal the Ministry of Agriculture to consciously reduce annual grain production.
But even so, their Great Zhou still suffered from a serious food surplus this year.
Low grain prices hurt farmers, and sometimes too much grain is not a good thing.
This situation will have an impact on their related domestic economic markets.
If Zhou Xu wants to avoid this situation and stabilize food prices, he can only control the amount of food entering the market.
But in this case, the grain will be piled up in the warehouse and become stale grain by next year, and will still depreciate.
This does not take into account the possible losses during the period of food stockpiling and the cost of storing food.
Of course, even so, this is actually a relatively easy problem to solve.
By controlling grain production in the next few years, with the rapid increase in new population and the continuous sale of stored grain, they will be able to complete this wave of digestion relatively stably within the Great Zhou.
Compared to this, what is more troublesome are the extra fields.
In the past, because the grain business grew, a lot of manpower and resources were invested to reclaim and compost the fields. We can't just leave them abandoned like that, right?
Isn't this a waste of resources? But what do you want to plant?
It seems that the internal market of their Great Zhou is currently saturated.
As for using the land for other things...
Telling the truth is troublesome.
Because those fields are basically on farms, it is not convenient to divide them.
Zhou Xu never imagined that one day he would be troubled by the problem of too much food and too many fields.
The most annoying thing is that there is really no perfect way to deal with this matter. No matter how he handles it, he will have to bear a considerable loss. This makes him a little uncomfortable, but there is no other way...
"How about this. After the autumn harvest is completed this year, Black Moon Farm will be closed and the silkworm farm originally in the Salt Lake District will be moved there to expand the scale and increase production!"
Although he could distribute the reduced grain production among the farms, the freed-up land would also be dispersed.
It would be difficult to deal with those pieces of land that were neither too big nor too small if they were scattered, so it would be better to just put them together and form a large piece of land.
Under this premise, there are not many farms with an area that meets this requirement, and Black Moon Farm happens to be one of them.
Black Moon Farm can be said to be the earliest farm in the Great Zhou Dynasty. Zhou Xu is still very conflicted about closing down this farm.
It's not a sentimental factor, but because Black Moon City is the capital of the Great Zhou, Zhou Xu hopes that in some extraordinary times, Black Moon City can be self-sufficient.
To achieve this, the city itself must have the ability to produce grain.
If it weren't for this, he would have closed the Black Moon Farm long ago. After all, starting from the Black Moon Port and taking the water route, it only takes two hours to reach the plain farm with the highest grain production in their Great Zhou.
With such a geographical advantage, how could Black Moon City possibly be short of food?
However, it was precisely because of this reason that Black Moon Farm was finally shut down by Zhou Xu.
Changing it into a silkworm farm was the result of his careful consideration.
The main outputs of a silkworm farm are silkworm pupae and cocoons.
Let’s talk about silkworm pupae first. It can be considered a food ingredient or a medicinal ingredient.
Currently, there is no shortage of food in Da Zhou, and basically no one uses silkworm pupae as food, so silkworm pupae are mainly used as medicinal materials, but the demand is not particularly high.
Therefore, the most important output of a silkworm farm is still the silk cocoon.
Silkworm cocoons are mainly used to make silk, which is not a necessity in life, but a luxury.
Previously, the silkworm farm was not large in scale and the amount of silk produced was not much. Very little of it flowed into the market and was basically all in Zhou Xu's hands. In addition to using it to make his own daily clothes, he also used it to reward his subordinates who had made meritorious services.
Now that the scale of silkworm farms has been expanded and output has been increased, the output of silk will naturally increase as well.
At that time, putting some silk into the domestic market can stimulate high-end consumption and obtain some economic benefits. More importantly, it can also be used for international trade and diplomacy.
Internationally, this should be able to become a good commodity and will surely be favored by dignitaries and royal families in various countries.
While Zhou Xu was arranging this matter, the autumn harvest work was also coming to an end. With a little arrangement, this matter could be seamlessly connected.
During this process, Peter began to send him greeting letters more frequently.
There's nothing much to say about what that guy was up to.
In fact, this time, Zhou Xu did not intend to drag it out any longer. In his reply, he directly gave the other party an affirmative answer.
After all, from the current perspective, the arms transaction with Peter is considered to be one of the more important foreign trade orders of their Great Zhou at this stage.
Peter had sent the relevant resources as early as the end of summer, which showed how urgent he was! Zhou Xu didn't waste time. When the time came, he had someone sort it out and pack it in place. With a full sense of ceremony, he packed the first batch of 500 matchlock guns, as well as the corresponding projectiles and gunpowder, and sent them to Peter.
By the time Peter received the 'express delivery', it was already the second month of winter.
Peter's excitement almost reached the point where it could not be increased.
In his opinion, this was not just a matter of getting a batch of weapons, but he was finally going to make it! To be honest, in recent years, with the weapons purchased from Zhou Xu, the Luosha Republican Party headed by him has established a firm foothold in the Smith Republic, but with Fisher around, their life is still not particularly easy.
Now, holding the matchlock in his hand, Peter's eyes were determined as if he was going to join the party. This time, he must let Fisher know what it means to have power from the barrel of a gun!
(End of this chapter)
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