Chapter 815 Crisis

St. Petersburg, Alexander III has rarely seen a smile on his face since he received news of the French ranch plans.

Now that I have received the news that the British Parliament has passed the "Food Self-sufficiency Plan", it is conceivable how Alexander III feels.

No way, grain exports are too important to the Russian Empire. It not only accounts for the largest proportion of the country's foreign exchange income, but also involves the livelihood of tens of millions of people.

Since Alexander II completed the agricultural reform, the Russian Empire has fallen into the dilemma of oversupply of food. Except for the years of the Russian-Prussian War, the tsarist government has to worry about food sales every year.

This has something to do with a decree from the time of Alexander II.

At that time, when preparing for the second Prussian-Russian war, the government needed to raise military supplies, and it happened to catch up with the agricultural crisis. The civilian population had no money to pay taxes, so Alexander II ordered farmers to pay taxes with grain.

This policy enabled the tsarist government to raise enough military rations in the shortest time, laying the foundation for winning the second Russian-Prussian War.

The aftermath is that the tsarist government receives a large amount of grain every year, especially in remote areas, and almost all farmers pay taxes on grain.

It is impossible to change it back. The transportation in Russia is very bad. The food in remote areas cannot be sold at a high price at all, and in some areas it is not even sold at all. It is far less cost-effective than paying in kind.

If this decree was repealed, it would be against tens of millions of peasants, and Alexander III naturally did not dare to do such a thing.

If the tsarist government had so much food in their hands decades ago, gods would have blocked and killed gods and Buddhas would have swept across the European continent.

It is a pity that today is different from the past. What the current tsarist government wants most is to realize the grain.

There is no need to think about it in China. The price of grain in the market itself is not high. If so much grain is released, the grain market must collapse.

Internationally, there is also overcapacity in grain production. Coupled with political factors, Russia's grain export road is not smooth.

If it hadn't been for Austria to take the lead in establishing a grain export alliance, and everyone would reduce grain export volume and stabilize grain prices, it is estimated that the international market would have been broken long ago.

After the international grain price stabilized, the tsarist government was only slightly relieved, and the share allocated to them was still unable to digest the grain received by the government every year.

Of course, the rest is not all wasted. The tsarist government also thought of many ways, such as: raising livestock, brewing wine...

The former is naturally a failure. It is easy to raise animals, but unfortunately it is difficult to sell them.

The domestic market seems to be huge, but unfortunately ordinary people are poor, and it is not easy to fill their stomachs, and they cannot afford to consume at all.

Although the international market is larger, the problem is that it is difficult to transport live animals, and they cannot be kept fresh after slaughtering, and cured meat cannot be sold at a high price in the international market.

Originally, there are many hidden dangers in food safety these days. If you hear the word "Made in Russia" again, it is estimated that 99% of consumers will be scared away.

This is the brand effect, and Russian food is so reassuring.

Other countries export food, but there may be problems; but the food exported by Russia basically has problems.

This is the conclusion that Europeans have come to through their own experience.

In order to change this image, the tsarist government also made efforts, but all came to nothing under the joint efforts of bureaucrats and capitalists.

For details, you can refer to the sales of meat products in the Russian market. The high-priced meat products are imported, and the domestic products cannot be sold at a high price.

Whenever the economic situation allows, everyone will buy more reassuring imported food. Not just meat products, but flour as well.

Even if many people know that these flours are wheat produced in Russia and exported to Austria, and they are sold back after processing, everyone would rather pay a high price to buy one and rest assured.

As a result of the development of animal husbandry, farmers in the border areas also benefited in the end, and they could drive their animals to sell in Austria next door.

Don't count on industrial development, because these animals have been labeled from the beginning - Russian imports.

Once the inherent cognition is formed, it is not so easy to change.

With this label, there is no market for this part of meat products in Austria. Many were processed into cured meats, canned, and finally returned to the Russian market.

Compared with the aquaculture industry, the winemaking business of the tsarist government is booming. Now it is the largest supplier of wine in Europe, and it sells cheap wine.

It's really cheap, even if someone wants to imitate it. Because according to the price of grain on the market, these grain wines are not enough to recover the cost after they are sold.

Of course, "cheap" alone is not enough to make the Russians the largest supplier of alcohol in Europe. More importantly, the Russian Empire itself is the largest consumer of alcohol in Europe.

Austria, which has a similar population, consumes less than half the amount of alcohol per year as the Russian Empire. The gap is even bigger when alcohol consumption is calculated.

In a sense, the overcapacity of grain has promoted the development of the Russian people's alcohol culture, making the "Keg Country" worthy of its name.

This is all forced out, and the Tsarist government is not willing to be so extravagant, but if you don’t use the excess grain to make wine, you can’t pile it in the warehouse and rot!

It took a long time to get rid of the excess food, and now Britain and France are starting to toss again.

Although it has little impact in the short term, he

Once their plan became a reality, the tsarist government's biggest foreign exchange-earning project was completely gone.

The gloomy Alexander III asked: "The British Parliament has passed the food self-sufficiency plan, without any regard for our withdrawal from the free trade system, so who can tell me what the Austrians are doing?"

This is a very obvious problem. The Austrian government certainly did not try its best to prevent the British Parliament from passing the proposal so smoothly.

With Austria's influence, even if it is impossible to influence the British's decision-making, it is still no problem to delay in parliament for a period of time.

Combined with what happened during this period, Alexander III had reason to suspect that the Austrian government had secretly made deals with Britain and France, selling out the interests of the Russian Empire.

Foreign Secretary Oscar Jimenez: "Your Majesty, the government of Vienna issued an announcement on agricultural upgrades not long ago.

According to the above, in the next five years, Austria will reduce: 5% of the wheat acreage, 3% of the potato acreage... to deal with a new round of agricultural crisis.

If this plan is fully realized, their domestic market will be enough to consume the domestic grain production capacity and basically get rid of the dependence on the international market. "

In essence, Franz was forced to do so. Needless to say, the importance of food, if he can monopolize the food export market, he will fight to the end even if he loses money.

Unfortunately, Austria does not now have the conditions to monopolize grain exports.

Even if it occupies the largest share in the international agricultural export market, the market share is close to a monopoly, but this dominance is not stable.

If you want to consolidate your dominance, you must first suppress several grain-producing countries, especially the Russian Empire next door.

The international situation is changing. Today Britain, France and Russia are still enemies, but they may become friends tomorrow.

Given the ability of the Russians themselves, it is not enough to want to develop the agricultural product processing industry, but with external support it will be different.

If one day the Russians and the French or the British reach an agreement, a group of British and French capitalists will come to invest.

The consequences of setting up agricultural product processing factories in coastal cities are serious, after all: "advanced technology + cheap industrial raw materials + cheap labor + vast market = success."

When encountering such a combination, Austria can only passively follow the price war, relying on financial resources to hurt others.

Knowing that the "money way" is dark and the interests of tens of millions of farmers are involved, Franz is naturally impossible to run wild on this road of no return in order to get angry.

In order to minimize losses, it is natural to promote the transformation of domestic agriculture before overturning the table.

In this era of rapid technological development, reducing the area of ​​grain planting does not mean reducing the total production capacity of grain. These are two completely different concepts.

Of course, in the eyes of the outside world, the Vienna government was out of skill and had no choice but to cut food production capacity to deal with the ensuing agricultural crisis.

With a "bang", the coffee cup in front of Alexander III had already flown out. Austria is now backing down, which is not good for the Russian Empire.

Since grain production can be withdrawn, the agricultural product processing industry can also be withdrawn. Once Britain and France are really self-sufficient in food, Austria can also give up this part of the benefits.

With the continuous development of the economy, the proportion of agricultural products processing industry in Austria's domestic economy is also getting lower and lower.

Moreover, the loss of some foreign markets does not mean that the agricultural product processing industry is over. The real impact is on some raw grain processing enterprises such as flour mills.

Other agricultural and sideline product processing enterprises will basically not be affected, and it is actually not that big for the entire agricultural product processing industry.

The real unfortunate is the exporter of raw materials like Russia. After all, processing enterprises can transform and pass on losses, but the tsarist government has no way to pass on losses.