Chapter 532: Robbing while the fire is burning

  Chapter 520 – Striking While the Fire Is Hot

The agricultural crisis had actually been brewing for a long time, and the Russians’ Great Land Opening Campaign was just a fuse for the outbreak of the agricultural crisis.

After entering the 19th century, the development of agricultural production technology is very fast, especially the rotational plowing technology in Europe to promote, substantially improve the utilization rate of land.

New production tools were constantly being developed, opening the prelude to the era of mechanized agriculture, allowing a farmer to cultivate more land.

Agricultural production also began to grow substantially during this period. Food production in all countries continued to set new records, and in Austria, for example, the growth rate of food production increased by more than 3% for many years.

The population growth rate in the same period was far from being able to keep up with the growth in food production. The biggest benefit of the growth in food production is that it allows most people to fill their stomachs. The associated increase in agricultural by-products has also enriched people’s tables.

As the population grew, so did the agricultural population. Although with the development of industry, a large number of rural labourers have become workers in the process of urbanization, and the proportion of the agricultural population has been decreasing, the number has still increased.

Against this background, in order to gain access to more income, the people spontaneously began a movement of land reclamation. The Russians were not the first to do so, but it was Austria that made the first bad start.

The Austrian agrarian revolution was not perfect, the nobility still held a lot of land, and the Austrian Balkans were developed in order to satisfy the demand of the peasants for land.

Compared with 1850, the cultivated area of the Austrian mainland had doubled. With a bigger cake, the land problem in the country was naturally solved.

Alexander II’s campaign to open up the land was in fact to learn from Austria’s successful experience, since the farmers needed land, then increase the supply of land in the country. As more land became available, conflicts were naturally resolved.

In this way, food overcapacity is unstoppable. In the process of the development of Austrian agriculture, the Vienna Government is also intentionally guiding the people to plant cash crops.

For example: Lombardy and Venetia region of the conversion of rice to mulberry program, but also developed a supporting raw silk industry; Bosnia and Herzegovina region of the vineyard program, raisins, wine industry has also developed.

All these planned developments are trying to avoid food overcapacity as much as possible. But this is a drop in the bucket, and total grain production is still climbing.

This crisis would have erupted years ago if the Russo-Prussian War hadn’t broken out, and the Russian Empire also had a civil war that hit Russia’s agricultural production hard.

With one less major grain exporter, Europe hasn’t even had a food shortage, and now that the Russians are back in the grain export market with even more capacity than before, the market can’t be pocketed by any means.

There are only three countries in Europe that don’t worry about being hit by food prices, and the British are naturally one of them, or they wouldn’t dare light this fire.

The industrialization of Britain was carried out early, the industrial population has long exceeded the agricultural population, and the proportion of agriculture in the gross domestic product has been very low.

The smallholder economy collapsed early in the enclosure movement, and the land is relatively centralized and risk-resistant, and is itself the world’s largest importer of agricultural products, so naturally, it is not afraid of a bloodbath of food prices.

The other two countries are Belgium and Monaco, the latter do not need to know, look at the size of the country to know, a small village on the sea, there is no agriculture.

Belgium is also a food importer, the earliest industrialized country on the European continent, industrially developed agricultural output value is low, do not have to worry about the impact.

Purely from the economic point of view, after the outbreak of the agricultural crisis, Austria’s losses are undoubtedly the largest. As the largest exporter of agricultural products, it was also the most affected by the impact.

Simply counting the agricultural population, Austria’s agricultural population is still more than half of the total population, say Austria is an agricultural country are no problem.

However, with the development of the economy, many farmers with relatively little land actually have strong laborers in their families to work in the cities.

Farming and working at the same time, they cannot simply be considered farmers, or workers. Often both sides are counted when statistics are compiled.

The percentage of the agricultural population varies from province to province. In Bohemia, a more economically developed region, the proportion of the number of people in agriculture is already below forty percent; while in Hungary, a region with a developed agriculture, the proportion of the population in agriculture is still as high as seventy to eighty percent.

The proportion of migrant laborers, in turn, accounts for a significant portion of this population. In some densely populated villages, up to 90 percent of the young labor force works in the cities.

The situation is even worse in France, with the Italian regions seriously dragging their feet, especially in Southern Italy. If one counts urban and rural incomes one realizes that there is not much difference at all, and there are even cases where urban workers earn less than farmers.

This does not show that Italian regions are agriculturally developed, but only proves that Italy’s cities are economically depressed. Despite the early development of these cities, Italy’s industrial development has been very difficult due to resource constraints.

This was the main reason why the Russians moved closer to the British and not to the French. The British could dare to let in Russian agricultural products without fear of a shock to their agriculture, the French could not.

France’s native agricultural population is already large, coupled with the economic vulnerability of the Italian region, once the price of food plummeted, the market was impacted, it may be necessary to smoke and mirrors.

“Food prices have a great deal to do with the risk of impacting the markets of various countries, bringing a backlash is bound to be very violent.

Moreover, agriculture is different from industry, even if there is overcapacity in the market, the producers will not be adjusted in a short period of time, and even production will continue to increase.

We can regulate the domestic market and guide the population to reduce the area under food cultivation, but we can’t influence other countries. At least we don’t have the means to make Russian farmers reduce their production, at best we can bankrupt them.

Crush the market of agricultural production in various countries and establish a monopoly in the field of agricultural exports. Frankly, I am not optimistic that this program will succeed.

In this world, the area of land suitable for farming is too large, and the consumer market for agricultural products is too small.

Other than that, one only has to know about the situation in Austrian Africa to realize that Austria’s food production capacity can be multiplied several times at any time if needed.

The British, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, they likewise have no shortage of colonies producing food. As soon as they see signs that we are monopolizing the international grain export market, a blockade is bound to happen.”

Clearly, Prime Minister Felix was a sensibleist. Instead of supporting the great plans of the Ministry of Agriculture, he preferred the protracted war proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

With the advantage in cost of production, it was only necessary to grind on slowly, and Austria was destined to occupy an important position in the agricultural export market.

As for the potential biggest competitor, the Confederate States of America, it was not a threat at all. In the face of profit, the plantation owners would naturally make the right choice.

The original time and space in the United States did not take place in the split, after the Civil War, the United States lost the hegemony in the international cotton market, the food plantation industry has only developed.

Now the United States of America is a rich agricultural country, continue to dominate the dominant position in the cotton production market. Without the defeat and suppression of the war, there is no way for other cotton producers to compete with them.

Who would have enough to eat, there are rich profits do not take, run to jump the huge pit of the grain export market?

That’s right, the international grain export market has now become a giant pit. Before there is a winner and a loser, for a long time to come, the food producers of various countries will not have a good time.

If Austria had been as well endowed as the Americans, it wouldn’t be in a dead heat on the grain market either. Now the Ministry of Agriculture proposes to crush the agricultural production system of European countries, which is actually pushed by the big nobles.

Ostensibly, the profits from agriculture can no longer satisfy their appetite, and they want to monopolize the food supply in Europe in order to obtain greater benefits.

In reality, more or less want to abolish that series of taxes, increase their own income. Monopolize the food supply in Europe, everyone knows that there is little hope, but tax cuts everyone likes ah!

Beforehand, Franz has received a lot of lobbyists, only to say that the country is already rich, not lack of agricultural income, is not it ……?

As a spokesman for the interests of the aristocracy, Franz naturally could not refuse, but as emperor he had to consider the national interest, so this agricultural economic conference appeared.

The end result was naturally that the government cut a portion of the taxes to make up for their losses in the storm and to appease the noble class. Considering the purse strings, not all of it was waived.

As for the peasant class, they were riding on the bandwagon. Otherwise, how could tax cuts and protected prices for food, policies that looked after their interests, have been proposed by the bureaucrats?

The reason is not important, as long as the actual benefits can be gotten, then it is right. To this day, compared to the nobles, the Austrian peasants actually own more land, occupying about 3/4 of the land area.

Without realizing it, the nobles actually became the political spokesmen for the interests of the peasant class. This result was totally unexpected by Franz.

Seeing that the meeting was almost underway, and that the radical plans of the Ministry of Agriculture had been rejected by the cabinet, Franz knew that it was time for him to perform.

“Monopolizing the European food supply success rate is too low, the impact of the national agricultural production system should be done, but not too extreme.

The Finance Minister’s suggestion is good, we can start with the Anglo-Russian agreement first, to see how strong the Anglo-Russian friendship is, and in the meantime clean up our stale grain.

The Ministry of Agriculture’s plan to take it back and redo it to minimize our presence in this fiasco, the cause of the collapse in food prices has to be due to the Russians.

Once the agricultural crisis is in full swing, a wave of peasant bankruptcies is sure to erupt in Europe, lasting for what could still be a long time.

The Colonial Ministry would also have to act immediately to pull people from European countries. Especially the Russian Empire, they will be the hardest hit by this crisis, and as an ally it is their duty to help them eliminate the hidden dangers.”

The German region was the hardest hit area in this agricultural crisis in the original time period, during which millions of Germans emigrated to the United States.

Now that the situation has changed, Austria has repeatedly solicited immigrants in the German region, and the overpopulation has been resolved.

The best proof of this is the German Federal Empire, which has been established for so many years, and its total population has yet to break through 10 million, and is completely standing still.

If one sees their immigration figures, one will not be surprised. From 1854 to the present, the outflow of population from the German Federal Reich is as high as 3.5 million.

With so many running out, the local population naturally can’t rise. If so many people had stayed in place to reproduce, based on the local birth and death rates, the population of the German Federal Empire would have exceeded 16 million by now.

When the wool was almost sheared here, Franz extended his hand to the Russian Empire. Even after losing the Russo-Prussian War and several million square kilometers of territory, the Russian Empire still had a population of more than 74 million.

Franz has played around with stimulating births, and the birth rate in many parts of Austria is still lower than the Russians. If Austria didn’t have a much lower mortality rate, the population growth rate would never have kept up with the Russians.

According to sociologists’ analysis, the Russian Empire will continue to experience a baby boom in the coming years, and peasants who have been given land will give birth to babies so hard that the birth rate is expected to exceed 6%.

This data is not surprising, the Russian Empire’s per capita life expectancy breaks, the demographic structure is mainly minors, teenagers, middle-aged people, more than forty-five years of age are very few people.

Analyzing the data, that is, more than half of the Russian Empire are of childbearing age, such a high proportion of young adults, coupled with the lack of recreational activities of the population, nothing to go home to make a baby, the birth rate is naturally high.

Not only does the Russian Empire have a large fertile population, but almost every country has a high percentage of fertile people, with most of them above forty percent.

Entering the nineteenth century, the population of Europe entered a period of upsurge, the population growth rate of all countries was fast, the slowest growth rate was the French, followed by Spain and Italy.

The main reason for this was economic. Farmers without enough land could no longer afford to have children. Workers, not to mention the high number of abandoned babies, were enough to illustrate the problem.

Of course, the government’s policies also contributed to the low population growth rate in the three countries. Looking at them in this day and age, it cannot be said that these policies were entirely wrong.

The economic development of the country is not improving, if the population growth is not curbed, how can the extra people be supported?

The exception is the French, whose problem is not that they can’t afford it, but that they’re completely screwing themselves.

The Russian Empire, with its bloodbath of food prices and high birthrate population, is definitely the hardest hit, and families with lots of kids definitely can’t afford to feed them if they stay at home.

This time to emigrate, but in Alexander II to relieve the pressure. No matter how reluctant the Tsarist government was, there was no way they could stop the population from leaving in the meantime.

In this respect, both sides also had what they wanted. For the Tsarist government, where stability came first, the aftermath was not worth mentioning when it was able to eliminate the internal dangers.

Push the book: “The Excellent Youth of the Great Ming”, the dog emperor’s new book, very well written, worth collecting.

(End of chapter)