Chapter 448: Low Grain Prices Hurt Farmers
When they were buyers before, they naturally hoped that the goods would be as cheap as possible. Now that they are helping to sell peppercorns, of course they hope that they can be sold at the highest price possible.
But it doesn't take any brains to know that's impossible.
After all, the price of Sichuan peppercorns is there. If it is too expensive, why not use Sichuan peppercorns?
And even if there is no peppercorn, it is too expensive to eat because it is too costly. The next step is to remove it or replace it with something else to reduce the cost.
They don't know how to do business, but they still understand these simple principles.
Old Master Huo looked at Shen Qing and asked sincerely: “There are these small trees everywhere on the hills of the village where we were exiled. I don’t know the exact number. Because they can’t be sold, the local villagers only use some when cooking meat dishes or making dipping sauces;
Each household would dry some and store it for later use. It would not be a problem to pick a few dozen kilograms at random. I roughly estimate that one village alone could have at least several hundred kilograms, and the surrounding areas could easily have several thousand kilograms. The whole of Bashu would have even more.
As for pricing, to be honest, we know nothing about it, so I'll leave it to you to decide."
Shen Qing settled the accounts.
The hot pot base she uses is two taels of Sichuan peppercorns and one tael of Sichuan peppercorns. If she serves fifty or sixty tables at noon and night, that means five or six kilograms, and about two thousand kilograms a year.
This is just a store in the capital, and its sales volume is enough to cover the village where the Huo family was exiled and the neighboring villages.
Not only do the Huo family know everything about the peppers in their village, they also know about the surrounding villages. It seems that they have had dealings with them before. But it is also true that villages that are close to each other will mostly intermarry, and for other reasons, they will move around more often. After all, the Huo family is not a family that lives in a corner and has been to the battlefield, so their observations are naturally more careful and comprehensive than those of ordinary farmers.
Or maybe, they were also looking for opportunities to survive in the land of exile, seeking a livelihood for themselves and the locals. Now they have returned to the capital and regained their wealth, but they still miss the villagers in the land of exile in Bashu, so they took the initiative to come to her when they heard that she opened a spicy hot pot restaurant.
Find a livelihood for them.
"One ounce of dried Sichuan peppercorns costs eighty or ninety wen, and one ounce of dried Sichuan peppercorns costs forty-five wen. What do you think?"
"One tael, forty-five cents?" Huo Qingyang swallowed and asked again.
Of course he knew that Sichuan peppercorns were expensive, but he didn't expect that Ma peppercorns could be sold for forty-five cents.
After all, no matter how expensive Sichuan peppercorns are, the royal family, the rich and powerful will buy them and will not switch to buying Ma peppercorns just to save money;
No one buys peppercorns. Things that no one buys are just weeds on the branches of trees in the mountains. Is Shen Qing willing to pay forty-five cents for it?
Speaking of business, to be honest, even if it is just a dozen or even a few cents per pound, poor farmers are willing to put in a lot of effort to pick, dry and sell them. After all, they can make money by selling them.
The others also thought of this. General Huo spoke on behalf of the Huo family, saying, "You don't have to pay a high price just for our sake. How can you do business without making money?"
She couldn't transfer the Huo family's favor to Shen Qing. Her main purpose in opening a hot pot shop was to make money. Besides, renting the shop and paying the employees' wages were all huge expenses. She couldn't buy seasonings at a high price just to help them.
Shen Qing said: "I'm not trying to help you, but I'm thinking that if the spicy hot pot becomes popular, there will be a lot of imitators. The food business is very profitable, especially since it's the wealthy who come to eat hot pot. They don't care about the price, they only care about whether it tastes good.
Forty-five cents per pound of peppercorns is a lot considering the cost, so a higher price wouldn't have any impact. But if we set the price too low at the beginning, it will only get lower and lower, and low grain prices hurt farmers."
"Low grain prices hurt farmers." General Huo chewed on these four words over and over again.
There was this sentence in ancient books. He could understand it when he read it, but he had never looked at it from this perspective.
Yes, doesn’t it include everything that farmers rely on for their livelihood, not just the food from the fields!
Shen Qing said affirmatively: "Yes, we have been buying at this price. If someone wants to make spicy hot pot food in the future, there will naturally be merchants to buy it. We will be the bottom line. If they bid too low, how can the farmers sell it?
This will prevent merchants from maliciously lowering prices, and will also create a healthy market, allowing local farmers to not only not become wealthy but at least support their entire families with their labor, rather than having to work hard and still go hungry."
The price keeps getting lower and lower, and in the end, after all the hard work, you still can't make ends meet. You work hard but don't earn any money, so life won't be even harder and more tiring.
Like some farmers in China, after working hard and calculating the costs, they only made a little money. But at least China had high production, and the minimum living standard of having enough food and clothing was not a problem. The Jing Dynasty was different. It was a dynasty where "there was no idle land in the world, but farmers still starved to death."
She must eliminate it at the source!
Everyone in the Huo family was moved.
General Huo forced himself to stand up, picked up the teacup, and said solemnly: "I would like to offer you a cup of tea instead of wine."
Shen Qing stood up in a panic and refused, "I don't deserve it, I don't deserve it~"
She just did what a normal person should do.
She quickly winked at the other members of the Huo family, asking them to persuade their old man.
Really, how can she let the elders respect her?
The Huo family members came back to their senses, walked to General Huo, and said in unison: "Dad, let's toast together."
Shen Qing: ...Isn't it normal for her to buy raw materials for business?
"There's no need to be so polite when both parties benefit."
Huo Qinglin was moved and said: "Shen Qing, you don't know how many ways we have thought of to make money over the years. It's really hard to make money;
Although our Huo family lived frugally in the past, that was only relative to the high-ranking officials and dignitaries in the capital. It was only after we went to Bashu that we realized how hard life could be.
I also realized what it meant to be a hero with only a penny, and what it meant to be powerless. I tried every possible way.
But a good cook cannot cook without rice. Even if you find something good and send it to the city, either no one wants it, or the price is very low, so low that it is only enough to feed the whole family for three days. Then you have to worry about where the food will come from after three days.
Huo Qingyang sighed deeply: "It's not that we're lazy, nor that we don't work hard, but even if we use all our strength, it's only enough to survive."
Just staying alive is already extremely difficult.
"One tael is forty-five wen, and one catty is four hundred and fifty wen. We have two sacks at home now, which weigh at least two hundred catties. That means these two sacks alone are worth ninety taels of silver?" Huo Qingbai was stunned for a moment after calculating the number, and looked blankly at the other family members.
Huo Qinglin nodded affirmatively and replied, "Yes."
Ninety taels of silver were collected by the thirteen households in their village, which means that each household could get nearly seven taels of silver!
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