Chapter 503: Promoting Pork
Chapter 492 – Promoting Pork
Agriculture accounts for too large a proportion of the total economy, and the entire industry chain employs as many as tens of millions of people, so once it fails to withstand the impact, the Austrian economy will be hit hard.
Despite the colonial flooding, the mainland is still the core. It was still far from the time to shift the primary industry, and the dividend period of Austrian agriculture would not end until the birth of fertilizer.
Forced by practical necessity, Franz could only push forward the development of farming and artificially increase food consumption.
The reason why it is said to be in advance, mainly because the people’s income level has not yet grown up, the market demand for meat food is small.
According to the original plan, Franz is ready to put the farming industry after 1875, which is based on the economic development of European countries to determine.
The study of the economy are accustomed to 1870 ~ 1890 in a cycle, mainly the second industrial revolution broke out, this period of time in Europe and the United States, the economy is growing rapidly, the people’s incomes have also been greatly improved.
Income growth was accompanied by an increase in the level of consumption, and according to the data analyzed by economic experts, five years later was the golden period for the promotion of animal husbandry.
Due to the limitations of the times, there is no need to worry about the impact of beef and mutton from Argentina, Canada and Australia in this era, at least not in the fresh meat market.
The freezing technology is not up to scratch, and if you want to send fresh meat to Europe, you have to send live ones.
To transport live cattle and sheep, from miles away to the European continent, is not an easy thing, the sea casually a little accident, will lose a lot of money.
Amortize these transportation costs, even if it is transported to the European continent, this price is not in the cheap. At most, you can sell beef jerky, or cured meat.
In the short term there are no competitors with these strengths, and it’s another agricultural dividend period. But this dividend period must be in the market demand for a strong point in time, only will produce.
Now that the development of the farming industry has begun early, it is still difficult to make the market in the early stages.
In fact the development of animal husbandry was not something that Franz came up with on his own. The Ministry of Agriculture has long made plans, just did not anticipate that the Russians will return to the agricultural export market so quickly.
After the tsarist government declared reneging on the debt, European countries took retaliatory measures, a little more aggressive direct confiscation of Russian exports against the debt, a little more moderate also added a debt tax.
Well, this debt tax was pioneered by Franz, which was to take a percentage of the tax on imports from Russia and use it to pay off the debt previously owed.
Because of the Russian-Austrian alliance, Austria only collected a symbolic amount of this debt tax, while other European countries were not so facetious.
The specific proportion is how much, completely depends on everyone’s mood, usually not less than thirty percent. As a result of this impact, in the last two or three years, the Russian Empire’s export trade has shrunk by eight layers.
Now the tsarist government proposes grain against debt, in fact, is to break these restrictions, otherwise their grain prices, even if they are cheaper, it is difficult to have market competitiveness.
It is easy to find a problem, but difficult to solve it. After sensing the Russians’ movements, the Austrian Ministry of Agriculture got busy.
Nearly seventy years old agriculture minister Christian, also had to take back the vacation report. Without solving this problem, he did not want to go on a peaceful vacation.
The time was not far off, perhaps from the second half of the year, when Russian agricultural products would again appear on the international market.
In another two or three years, Austria’s hard-earned supremacy in the export of agricultural products will cease to exist.
The international market is that big, and as long as the Russians ship out grain from the Ukraine and the Moscow region, they will be able to grab a large share of the market.
The main food importers in this era are just a few, Britain, the Italian region, the German Federal Reich, the rest of Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland, although also importing food, but the demand is not too large.
All in all, there was a market for about 30 million people in the European grain market.
Of course, this only refers to staple foods, and the demand for other agricultural products varies so much that it is difficult to make effective statistics.
This market is still growing at a rate of 2 million people per year, which is brought about by population growth in all countries, and the shortfall occurs in the absence of improvements in agricultural technology and the lack of a synchronized increase in population growth food production.
Nowadays, 24.6% of the agricultural products produced in Austria are exported, and it is this segment that is the hardest hit.
Organized the information, Christian sighed. Minister of agriculture is not good to do, to achieve results is too difficult, to problems and too easy.
Exports accounted for too large a proportion, easy to be hit by the international market, this is the biggest problem. Wanting to switch to domestic sales, the domestic market couldn’t consume it either.
Snow is still falling, this winter Vienna’s sky seems to be like a silver dress. The cold wind brushed his face, Christian, who had just come out of the carriage, shivered.
Without pausing, Christian quickly entered the palace and changed to another carriage.
Meiquan Palace covers a lot of area, after Franz succeeded to the throne after the rotten project and began to rebuild, now covers an even larger area.
Of course, the main thing is circled into a hunting ground, this is the Archduke Karl strongly requested, the reason is that the Empress Dowager Sophie worried about his health, do not allow him to go out hunting. In order to make it easier for his aging father to hunt, Franz naturally agreed.
Anyway, Vienna is the territory of the Habsburg family, most of the land is the royal family, there is no land cost, adding a fence will not cost much.
Franz did not much like to reside in the original palace, and took the opportunity to add a few more buildings as daily living quarters.
This put the palace gates even further away from the Emperor. For security reasons, the palace prohibited any outside carriages from entering. It was either switch or walk. The choice was a good one, and Christian didn’t want to freeze yet.
……
The telephone was a good thing, as soon as Christian entered the palace, someone informed Franz.
Franz, who was sympathetic to his old minister, had not already had coffee prepared to his liking.
Of course, if someone knows that the palace is always prepared with various beverages and changed every fifteen minutes, perhaps the effect of buying people’s hearts will not be great.
Of course even if someone knew about it, most likely they would pretend to be confused. Have a drink is good, where so much nonsense, if all tell the truth, this day can not live.
The personal preferences of the minister, how can Franz remember, never only subordinates pay attention to the preferences of the boss, which emperor is full of running to care about the personal preferences of the ministers?
Taste hobbies, is not specifically someone in the record. In case of mistake, the big deal is to change a cup of good. European monarchs and ministers relationship is not so complicated, daily life is not worth mentioning, do not have to worry about accidentally fall head.
After taking a sip of coffee to dispel the chill and resting for ten minutes, Christian reported to Franz.
“Your Majesty, this is the data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s statistics, the current supply and demand of meat products in the country is basically balanced. If you want to expand domestic demand, the best way is to bring down the prices.
It’s not that the populace doesn’t like to eat meat, it’s just that the current domestic meat prices are still a bit on the high side compared to their income.
The international market is even worse, although the supply and demand of the fresh meat market is still balanced, but the supply of beef jerky and cured meat food is a bit on the large side, and most of these products come from the United States of America.
Initially, an annual increase of 600,000 tons of beef supply, 400,000 tons of lamb supply, 400,000 tons of pork supply, and 350,000 tons of other types of meat products is the limit of what the market can bear.
If this supply is exceeded, it will have a tremendous impact on the market, and will probably cause prices to go through the roof.”
Flushing out the market is something Franz obviously can’t do. As the largest exporter of agricultural products, the one who loses the most when the market is hit is Austria.
After thinking for a while, Franz opened his mouth and asked, “What if we put this time in a year, or two years?”
Livestock breeding also takes time, this era and not popular feed, are grass plus grain, the time to produce is also longer, the shortest is more than a year.
Minister of Agriculture Christian thought for a moment and replied, “Your Majesty, although the population of Europe is steadily growing right now, the farming industry itself is also expanding its capacity. If we put the time into two years, it will only grow by about ten percent at most.”
After wandering around the chamber for a few steps, Franz made a decision, “The Ministry of Agriculture is prepared to promote the farming program, based on an increase of two million tons of meat products.
First, we’ll push the price of meat products down a bit to cultivate the market. If the market can’t digest it, we increase the strategic reserve supplies. It’s about two or three years, it won’t take much money.”
The direct grain consumption of cattle and sheep was not large, but planting grass would inevitably crowd out the land that was originally planted with grain, thus reducing grain production.
Unlike later generations, pork this thing, in this era is not very popular, this is the dietary habits decided, want to change still need a long time.
In fact, the per capita consumption of meat products in Europe in this era is not too low, perhaps pulled up by the rich. In Austria, for example, per capita consumption of meat products 82 lbs. (about 37 kilograms)
After a pause, Franz added: “Pork production can be increased, compared to beef and mutton, pork prices are relatively cheap, the public is more acceptable.
If pork production goes up, I am prepared to add 300 grams of pork per week to the tables of children in compulsory education.”
Don’t say whether you like it or not, those who are qualified to be picky eaters go to private schools. Compulsory education schools in Austria are not as well equipped as private schools, and are attended by the children of the common people at the bottom of the ladder.
It’s good to have meat, and you know that nowadays the school only provides meat once a week. Don’t even think about beef or lamb, unless it’s a holiday or Franz’s birthday.
In normal times, the only meat the school supplied was fish. There was only one reason for this, and that was that it was cheap. The same amount of money could buy more meat, and the finicky Ministry of Education could only provide this cheap meat.
Promoting pork that was also not an option, the price of beef and mutton was too high. It’s not something that can come down just because you want it to. Pork is cheap, so promote it.
Before that, the government has promoted fish, popular in the market is only sea fish.
This is the aftermath of industry, with the development of industry, the inevitable environmental pollution, many rivers in the fish and shrimp mutation.
Mutated fish and shrimp is not a good thing, there have been food poisoning, no one dares to eat. The government of Vienna has also legislated to prohibit the sale and consumption of mutated fish and shrimp.
This took down the entire freshwater fish population and made them all unpopular. Almost no one eats freshwater fish unless they are inland in mountainous areas.
It’s hard to get used to not having book reviews, I can’t live without them. I miss being able to copy book reviews.
Keep asking for votes so I can add more!
(End of chapter)