1260 Shortage

On the first day of December, snowflakes began to fall over the capital of the Gaevra Empire.

In fact, it should have snowed here a long time ago, but although the air was very cold and humid some time ago, there was a lack of opportunities for snow.

No dark clouds, no snowflakes!

This time the snowflakes finally fell, and on the front page of the newspaper beside the table, it was written that the temperature in the Imperial Capital today was minus eight degrees Celsius!

This kind of climate is rare in Gefra. In previous years, it would only be so cold around the end of December, but now it is only the beginning of December.

Since last winter, everything has been a little different.

It can kill people with heat in summer and freeze to death in winter.

An ordinary worker put on his thick winter clothes and prepared to leave after kissing his wife and daughter. When his wife saw him off, she hoped that he would pass by the supermarket after get off work in the evening and bring back some food.

The man glanced at the newspaper on the corner of the table. On the front page of the newsletter, he noticed the newsletter "Efforts to Ensure Food Supply."

He nodded in agreement and left the comfort of his home.

As soon as he went out, the cold wind outside was like a knife cutting his face. He put his hands into his sleeves and grasped them tightly from the inside to prevent them from being ventilated.

He lowered his head and braved the cold wind.

In fact, his mood was not as bad as the weather. The white snowflakes made the whole world look extra clean.

Every step on the snow leaves a series of footprints in addition to making a "squeaking" sound.

He looked back and saw that the footprints in the distance had been covered by new snowflakes, and only the one at a close distance was still slightly clear.

Most of the pedestrians on the road are like this, and the cars on the road have also slowed down. The heavy snow is like pressing the slow-down button of the world.

A convoy passed by him. Looking at the two frozen flags above the headlights of the leading car, there was no doubt that this was a convoy of nobles.

The man turned his head and looked into the car. Behind the transparent glass were two nobles wearing very "thin" clothes. They were not affected by the coldness of the world at all, and they were chatting relaxedly with smiles on their faces.

"This is the nobility!" The man sighed and watched the convoy go away.

In fact, he doesn't need to complain. Life is much better now than in the past. It is said that after seeing a noble in the past, as long as he was a civilian, he had to stop what he was doing and stand on the roadside with his head down.

Now no one will ask him to do that, and he can not say hello to the nobles. This has changed a lot.

He walked for almost forty minutes and finally arrived at the factory.

In fact, he could take a car, but... the prices of various supplies have risen rapidly recently. The cost of taking a car is indeed not much, so maybe you can save a little, but it is not a bad thing after all.

Moreover, walking is good for your health and can also make your body warmer. Doctors recommend that people move more...

He found a suitable reason for not taking a car. Everyone has magnificent dreams, but unfortunately poverty is always a ruthless fist that crushes dreams.

He came to the factory and started working. The factory did not provide heating. The reason was that the workshop was drafty and the heating could not effectively raise the temperature, so they still wore thick winter clothes to work.

There is finally a smile on the man's face. He will chat with his coworkers while working, but the happy time is always short-lived.

After chatting about some fresh topics, everyone started working in silence as if they had agreed.

There was no smile on his face, just numbness. He couldn't even feel his own face!

At one o'clock at noon, everyone gets a thirty-minute break, where they can eat lunch, take a break, and get back to their busy work.

In fact, half an hour's rest time is not enough. The workers in Gefra also had troubles several times, but in the end nothing changed.

Their strike against the capitalists indeed caused a lot of trouble to the capitalists, but that was just trouble.

You must know that capitalists also serve the nobility. When the nobility feels unhappy, the police will arrest the workers or organizations leading the strike.

This is not a federation and there is no free soil, so everyone abides by a rule that does not exceed the line.

I had a cold lunch at noon, which was provided by the factory for free. I couldn’t say it tasted good, it was just edible.

The work in the afternoon was still heavy. The man worked until about 6:45 in the evening, and the roar of the machines in the workshop gradually stopped.

People started gathering their tools and leaving.

Thinking about what his wife had told him, he said goodbye to several co-workers who often went home together at a certain street corner and went to the supermarket alone.

There were still not many people on the road. It was a little after seven o'clock and the sky was already dark. He speeded up and lowered his head. As he approached the supermarket, he found that the supermarket was particularly busy today.

There were many people, so many people. He followed the gathering crowd into the supermarket in a daze.

Then he saw the long line at the food counter.

"What happened?" He walked to the back of the team, looked at the person in front of him who was dressed similarly to himself, and asked in a friendly manner.

The man in front seemed to know something, "Those things are now in limited supply, and there is a limit to what each person can buy."

The man was a little surprised, "Why do you do this?"

The man standing in front of him was silent for a while, "Maybe it's because there aren't enough things!"

The man who originally thought about going back if it didn't work out gave up the idea.

More than half an hour later, it was his turn.

"Each person can only buy two pounds of wheat flour, two pounds of bread, five pounds of potatoes and one pound of beef. What do you want?" the superior teller asked the man.

Of course, being aloof is not his status or his tone, but he does stand in a relatively high position. This is designed for the convenience of tellers.

When people need something, they just move it to their feet and someone outside the counter can pick it up.

If they are standing at the same height as the customer outside the counter and constantly lifting heavy objects, they will soon be unable to continue working.

The man was a little confused, "Are there unlimited supplies of vegetables?"

He planned to buy some vegetables, but the teller shook his head, "We don't supply vegetables..."

The weather is so cold that the growth cycle of vegetables becomes extremely slow, and it is easy to freeze to death at night.

The few vegetables are used to supply the nobles, and the prices are so expensive that ordinary people cannot afford them, so it is better not to supply them.

The man spent money to buy everything he could. In fact, the food was not enough to feed his family for three days, and the price of these items had increased by about 10% from last month, which made him very worried.

Because while queuing up in the supermarket, he heard someone say that prices may continue to rise.

After returning home, he told his wife these things and asked her to reduce the family's supply.

My wife was a little embarrassed, but finally agreed.

During dinner, my daughter looked at the pieces of beef on her father’s plate and was very greedy.

She looked at her mother eagerly, but the latter could only pretend not to see it.

Outside the window, the cold wind was still biting, and it was the same for many families in the entire imperial capital, throughout Gaevra.

Suddenly, it seemed as if there was not enough food in the world. Gaevra had never been in such a situation before, leaving many people wondering what to do.

"Not enough food?"

"There's not enough food to eat!"

The Prime Minister's head hurts because there is not enough food.

In fact, after the weather suddenly turned extremely cold last winter, he realized that he needed to store more food for this winter. He did the same and imported a lot of food.

Gefra is an island country with limited land for agriculture and animal husbandry. In the early years, nobles enclosed land everywhere. Many lands that were obviously suitable for farming were the private territories of nobles.

The nobles would definitely not farm and graze. These lands were abandoned. Even if the winter was not as cold as it is now, Gefra's food would mainly rely on imports.

It's just that more are being imported now, but I don't know where the news came from that there is no food in Gefra, so people start to rob it.

Some grain merchants have also begun to raise prices. The extent of the price increase may not seem very impressive, with the highest price only being 15%, but this is grain!

This is not something else, not an expensive luxury product. The 15% increase is enough to make many families hungry!

The Prime Minister met with a group of grain merchants, and limited supplies emerged.

They no longer liberalized supply to the public, but began to limit supply, and limited supply under the premise of ensuring that the price increase did not exceed 10%.

This makes those rumors more and more scary!

Someone has strangled the food bag, which means that the current food supply has become a problem, and the Prime Minister must solve this problem.

Otherwise he would have to face only two choices.

First, people are always living in an environment of food shortage, which is likely to cause more terrible social problems and phenomena, unless the Prime Minister compromises with these people and allows food prices to float freely.

The second option is that once he agrees to the free floating of food prices, more people will be unable to afford food!

When many people face these harsh problems, they often choose to go hungry, which will only make the country worse and worse.

The best way now is to use the emergency budget of the national treasury to purchase a batch of grain from outside, solve the current problem first, and then start considering the follow-up matters.

He wasn't the only one in the room, there were others.

The official in charge of agriculture and animal husbandry spoke softly as if talking to himself, and as if he was reminding him.

"Your Excellency Prime Minister, unless we deal with those nobles, the price of food will never come down!"

Gaevra, who is based on power, has rules for many things. At least the capitalists cannot interfere in politics with money on the island.

Those aristocrats are much richer than the capitalists, especially the big aristocrats. They are constantly searching for wealth that has been passed down for hundreds of years, which is definitely not comparable to a young man who entered the stock market with a hundred yuan and suddenly became rich!

The nobles did not agree with the increase in food prices, so the capitalists did not dare to increase the price of food.

Behind this matter, the nobles are still causing trouble!