My life is like walking on thin ice

Chapter 347 The Butterfly Effect
There is a problem with the storage of wheat!

And this is not a sudden and accidental case, but because of this case, it involves the objective problem that the Han Dynasty and even the entire Chinese civilization at this stage do not have a good way to store wheat for a long time.

For Liu Rong's overall plan, the emergence of this problem has a huge impact.

Many blueprints that were originally based on barley and pasta - or even had to be based on barley and pasta to be implemented - have been shattered with the emergence of this problem.

For example, Liu Rong once thought that the emergence of Sumai, since it instantly doubled the world's staple food output, would definitely reverse the market supply and demand relationship.

——In the past, the millet grown by all the people in the world was not enough for everyone to eat;

Most of the lower-class people can only eat until they are 60% to 70% full, or even half full.

In other words, during that period when millet was the only staple food and the lower-class farmers only relied on growing millet as their only means of income, the staple food of the Han Dynasty could only meet 70% - at most 80% - of the market demand.

To put it more bluntly, if all the millet grown in the world were distributed equally among every person in the world, at best the average person would only be 80% full.

It sounds like it’s really good;

After all, in China's feudal history, there were quite a long period of time when "whether most people could eat until they were 70% to 80% full" was used as an important criterion for judging whether a certain era was prosperous.

Not to mention anything else - if everyone in the world could be 70% to 80% full, then Liu Rong would become the third consecutive sage monarch of the Han Dynasty, following the reigns of Emperors Wen and Jing, and seamlessly continuing the rule of Emperors Wen and Jing!

Moreover, the prosperous era created by three consecutive Han emperors must have been centered on Liu Rong's reign, with the reigns of Xiaowen and Xiaojing serving as a foil!

Just think about it and you will know that the concept of average is actually very abstract.

——I will eat until I am 120% full and you will starve to death. Let’s be average, each of us can eat only 60% full.

I eat one bowl and pour another, and each of us takes up the portion for two people. You've been hungry for nine meals in three days, and you've eaten the last meal and have no next meal. Let's share it equally between the two of us - hey, each of us is full!
This kind of average has been the case since ancient times.

Take the example of the Han Dynasty, which used millet as its only staple food.

At that time, although the world's grain output - that is, millet output, was enough for everyone in the world to eat 80% full, it was obvious that there would always be people who wanted to eat 100% full, or even 120% full.

For example, soldiers in the army usually have two full meals a day during garrison training, which is considered very full.
If there is war, you can add one more meal, so that you have three meals a day and every meal is enough to fill your stomach!

In the Han Dynasty, where most people only eat two meals a day, soldiers in the army eat three meals a day, which is already "150% full";

According to the per capita ration quota of 80% full, it was equivalent to one person eating the portion for two people - for every soldier who had three meals a day during the war, a farmer's quota was occupied.

This is still good;

No matter how well-fed the soldiers were during wartime, the army's population accounted for only a very small minority of the Han Dynasty's population.

——The population of the Han Dynasty is now nearly 30 million, but the number of Han soldiers participating in a war is basically impossible to exceed 300,000.

One percent of the population base, that is, ninety-nine civilians each eat one less bite, saving one soldier's meal;
There's obviously no pressure.

But when the nobles "ate" millet, it was not as simple as a hundred or so peasants each squeezing a bite to make up the extra ration for one person.

——Instead, it takes tens of thousands of people contributing more than half of their quota to feed just a few meritorious nobles!
Let me give you a very representative example.

Five years ago, that is, in the third year of Emperor Xianjing's reign, after the rebellion of the Seven States of Wu and Chu was quelled, the price of grain in Guanzhong was jointly inflated by nobles and merchants.

Although Liu Rong's operations eventually stabilized the grain prices in Guanzhong and found a second staple food for the Han family: wheat, which greatly alleviated the supply tension in the grain market, everything that happened later did not develop smoothly in the direction Liu Rong had expected.

——The lower class people are extremely vulnerable;

At the same time, it is extremely sensitive.

When something happens that nearly destroys the family and life of the lower class, the entire lower class of society will focus all its attention on "preventing this from happening a second time."

At that time, for the people in Guanzhong - especially the lower-class farmers who had just experienced a wave of grain price fluctuations and were almost killed and separated from their wives and children, the top priority, which concerned their lives and even the continuation of the family, was to avoid being threatened by grain price fluctuations again.

Couscous pasta?

It's useless.
The Crown Prince stabilizes grain prices, and the Ministry of Rites produces government-produced grain without a time limit?

Whatever you want;
Anyway, I, an old farmer, only know that when merchants drive up the price of grain, as long as I have enough food to fill my stomach, I will not eat the sky-high priced rice that costs hundreds of coins per stone.

My neighbor’s eldest brother might not have starved to death, and nine out of ten children in my second uncle’s family would not have starved to death—and the remaining one would have been sold to a human trafficker as a slave, and their generations would have had no hope of getting out of this predicament.

Therefore, the lower-class people began to hoard food based on a very simple and direct logic.

——Nothing to say!

——You must have food in your hands!
——As long as I have food in my hands, no matter how much the food price goes up or down, it can’t harm me, an old farmer!

——Anyway, I, an old farmer, will keep the grain for myself. No matter how high the price is, I won’t sell it. No matter how low the price is, I won’t buy it!
——No matter which direction the wind blows, I will remain motionless!
From a sociological perspective, after a market fluctuation with a wide range and extremely severe impact, it is understandable that the lower-class people instinctively protect themselves in this way.

It's like a person who is afraid of poverty, so no matter how rich he is, he dare not spend it freely. It's just like a person who has experienced hunger, no matter how good his life is, he will always subconsciously hide a few bags of food for emergencies.

Perhaps these bags of food hidden away will never be used;

But the existence of these foods itself can bring them peace of mind.

And the crux of the problem lies here.

The people hoarded grain in panic, and acted as if they would "never participate in grain trading again", which frightened the court in Chang'an!
——Most of the lower-level farmers do not have storage capabilities!

They say they are storing grain, but in fact they are just piling bags of grain in places like woodshed!
If not for this, there would be no need for lower-income farmers to sell their grain to grain merchants at low prices after the autumn harvest and then buy it back at high prices the following year.

This buying and selling is not so much a buying and selling as it is using the price difference as storage fee or something like that.

In this situation, if one or two families do this, the court will not bother to intervene - when the grain gets moldy and spoils next year, God will teach you a lesson;

But most, or even the vast majority of farmers, started to do this, and the court had no choice but to become anxious.

There is only so much grain in the world; if your family does not store grain properly, the world will have 300 dan less grain.
When the number of 'smart' fools like you reaches tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions, you are no longer committing suicide as a family unit.

It is suicide by counties, towns, and even by countries and civilizations!

Lessons from the past: 'The corpses are still warm' - after the war, food in Guanzhong was a little scarce, and immediately the price of food soared;
If there is another drama of 'millions of farmers destroying their stored grain', it will not be a matter of soaring grain prices anymore.

So Liu Rong came forward again.

After successfully stabilizing the price of grain, Liu Rong once again stepped forward and, using his reputation as the regent prince as a guarantee, issued hundreds of thousands of IOUs to old farmers who insisted on hoarding grain but had no storage capacity.

The general content is: I, the regent crown prince Liu Rong, have an urgent matter and need grain. I would like to borrow so many stones of millet from farmer so and so in so and so village so and so county so and so township so and so village.
With this IOU, the farmer can go to the Shaofu treasury at any time to withdraw the several hundred shi of millet that I lent him.

Then, the old farmers handed the grain to Liu Rong with some doubts - they said they were lending it to Liu Rong, but Liu Rong was actually responsible for collecting the grain and storing it in the warehouse in Chang'an.

As for the follow-up, most of the old farmers were still giving face and no large-scale bank runs occurred.

From the beginning of doubt;

Later, when they found out that the IOU written by Liu Rong could indeed be used to get their own rice from the Shaofu treasury, the old farmers were relieved and directly used the major granaries of the Shaofu treasury in Guanzhong as food banks specifically for the grassroots farmers.

If they had grain that they couldn't store, they would "lend it to Liu Rong," which meant keeping it in the Shaofu.
When they needed food, they would take the IOU written by Liu Rong to get some back - take as much as they needed to eat, there was no need to rush to get it all back.

With this "credit grain bond", Liu Rong was finally able to stabilize the situation and truly completed the task of stabilizing grain prices throughout Guanzhong during those years.

The ones who caused all this were the Che marquises who had fiefs of thousands of households and could collect tens of thousands of shi of grain as rent and taxes from their fiefdoms every year.

——In order to sell the food they have at a good price, they can do whatever it takes to drive up the price;

In order to maintain the price of grain, they would even do something as unbelievable as "preferring to pour the grain into the Wei River rather than lowering the price to sell it to the people"!

What's more, on this basis, people instinctively hoard a batch of food, under the pretext of preparing for emergencies.

The standard for "preparing for emergencies" is roughly the fief of the Marquis Che's fiefdom multiplied by twenty base numbers.

For example, a marquis with a fief of 1,000 households would store about 20,000 dan of grain as the final savings for the entire family;
A marquis with a fief of 5,000 households would, in addition to storing 30,000 to 50,000 shi of grain, also purchase a savings certificate from the treasury of the Shaofu, which allowed him to withdraw 50,000 shi of grain at any time.

And so on.

In the past when millet was the staple food for people all over the world, this was the reality that the Han Dynasty had to face.

So Liu Rong once thought: With wheat, everything seems to be different.

——People who can eat millet to 60% full can at least eat enough to fill their stomachs by planting a crop of old wheat, and even have some food left over;
The millet that was originally only enough to satisfy 80% of the people's hunger would be supplemented by wheat of almost the same yield. This would reverse the grain supply and demand relationship of the Han Dynasty from "slightly in short supply" to "in short supply"!
The change in supply and demand will significantly reduce food prices and significantly reduce the living costs of the lower-class people!
You can even achieve certain strategic and political goals by selling surplus food!
For example: Han people mainly eat wheaten food, and only eat millet when it is not enough.

The extra millet was sold to the Baiyue in Lingnan, the Yi in the southwest, or the "foreign vassal states" on the Korean Peninsula.

Over time, these foreign people will inevitably realize that "Han people's noodles are sweeter", and thus develop a natural psychological identification and yearning for Han people...

And so on and so forth - Liu Rong formulated countless plans based on the common staple food of wheat and millet.

But with this seemingly extreme case of stored grain deterioration in Taicang exposing the disadvantages of old wheat, which is that it is not easy to store and cannot be stored for a long time, everything has to be started from scratch.

——Before this, Liu Rong had always believed and had been committed to promoting wheat to the same status as millet as the staple food.

With millet and wheat, the two main crops that are grown in different seasons, the Han Dynasty will no longer have to worry about food problems and food security.
People eat whatever they want - if they want to eat something more refined, they eat pasta; if they want to save more money, they eat millet.

The Chang'an court focused on storing wheat as a strategic reserve to cope with the future, which would inevitably involve years of endless border wars.

And now, Liu Rong had to admit helplessly: millet was still the Han people's first staple food.

As for wheat, it is the second staple food with a yield close to millet, better taste and higher nutritional value, but its storage period is not as long.

Granted, something is better than nothing.

Having wheat as the "second staple food" is better than having only millet as the staple food in the past, when people all over the world were generally unable to get enough to eat.

However, from now on, wheat flour pasta, in addition to its high nutritional value and good taste, will also have the disadvantages of "cannot be stored for a long time" and "must be eaten as soon as possible".

The country's strategic grain reserves can only be millet;

The strategic reserve grain is millet, which means that one day, the soldiers in the army will have to eat this strategic reserve grain.

The best outcome would be that at that time, the imperial court would open its warehouses to release strategic reserve grain and exchange it for nearly two years' worth of wheat on the market as military rations.

Obviously, all of this was far from what Liu Rong had originally expected...

"Wheat grains are not easy to store, let alone wheat flour."

"——Alas~"

"From now on, the palace will have to eat more pasta~"

···
"It's the first month of spring."

"I don't know what the situation is like over there."

"Who will the old Junchen send as an envoy this time to make a wish to our Han family..."

Tiredly closing the file in front of him, Liu Rong lightly fell on the rocking chair, slightly closed his eyes, and took advantage of this rare leisure time to take a nap.

——In recent days, Liu Rong’s energy has been more or less exhausted.

Especially after winter, what awaits Liu Rong is not leisure, but even more busyness...

(End of this chapter)