Chapter 1,774 Reversal (Please Give Me a Monthly Ticket!!! Please Subscribe!!! Please Recommend!!)

I have mentioned the situation in Egypt before. With the collapse of sea transportation, Egypt's foreign exchange has been basically drained, but it still cannot feed the people, resulting in a large increase in domestic food prices, although the government also intends to regulate domestic agricultural production and produce a large amount of food.

But the problem is that domestic food production is basically controlled by foreign capital.

This means that even if the government wants to guide farmers on what to plant, it is useless. Food is always the foundation of a country. Only when the supply of food is guaranteed can you develop other things. Otherwise, if people are not full, what can you use to ensure production and life?

Transnational grain traders monopolize the global food pricing power and grab economic "huge profits". The "ABCD" four major grain traders, namely ADM, Bunge, Cargill, and Louis Dreyfus, monopolize more than 80% of the world's grain transactions, of which 3 are American companies. When international grain prices are high, the four major grain traders rely on their global monopoly position and strong capital strength to call the shots in the grain futures market, buy low and sell high, and reap the grain wealth of various countries. Western countries, led by the United States, use grain to consolidate their hegemony and reap political "real benefits". The United States took advantage of the panic of the international community, especially the food-deficient developing countries, and weaponized the "food crisis".

"As long as you are alive, you cannot escape the four major global grain giants."

Most of the rice, flour, grain, oil, sugar, chocolate, meat and seafood that people eat in their daily lives are controlled by the four major grain traders. When the war broke out, the international grain giants were busy making "war money" and took advantage of the shortage of food supply to push up food prices. The "killer weapon" of the four major grain traders to control global food prices is to control the progress of global food transportation. Take Cargill as an example. The company controls the world's largest water transport fleet (including inland river transport and ocean transport), has a dry bulk transport fleet of more than 500 ships, and loads cargo in nearly 1,000 ports around the world, with an annual transportation volume of more than 2 billion tons.

Perhaps most people have never heard of these four unfamiliar names, but they have dealt with these four major grain traders almost every day in their lives. From Western fast food restaurants such as KFC to cooking oil in daily kitchens, the four major grain traders have deeply penetrated into the daily necessities of every country on the earth. Simply put, in the field of agriculture, there is nothing they can't do except what you can't think of. From a vertical perspective, from the development of crop seeds, fertilizer production, to the processing and transportation of grain, storage logistics, and finally the terminal sales, you can see the strong presence of these four companies. From a horizontal perspective, with genetically modified crops as the focus, crops including soybeans, corn, wheat, rice, oilseeds, meat, bioenergy, coffee, rapeseed, cocoa, etc. have all been infiltrated by them. Even if a country does not buy food from the United States and instead buys from other countries, it can hardly escape the net laid by the four major grain traders.

Take soybeans for example. During the Sino-US trade war, although China reduced its dependence on American soybeans through tariffs and instead imported more from Brazil, it is intriguing that most of Brazilian soybeans are still controlled by the four major grain traders.

According to statistics, at the peak, the four companies jointly accounted for four-fifths of the world's food production. The dominance of these four companies over food even far exceeds that of the United States in the world's military field. Rome was not built in a day. The four major grain traders are all time-honored brands with a history of more than 100 years. Their rise is closely related to the rise of the United States. Take Cargill as an example. Founded in the 1860s, this company was originally just a small grain depot that resold farmers' grain. By the early 20th century, the new railway network invested by Cargill failed to make profits as expected, causing the company to fall into a financial crisis and was on the verge of bankruptcy. Fortunately, a gunshot in Sarajevo changed the course of history and gave many American companies, including Cargill, an unprecedented shot in the arm.

As European countries fell into the quagmire of war, fields were barren, and young labor was mobilized to the battlefield, the food supply in Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria and other countries declined rapidly while the demand for food soared. On the other hand, Cargill, with mountains of food, naturally did not want to miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a fortune. During the four years of war and the post-war famine period, it supplied old Europe with a steady stream of life-saving food products from the North American continent, which greatly improved the financial situation on the verge of collapse. 20 years later, the outbreak of World War II also made Cargill replicate this path, further growing into a global grain company, becoming the world's largest grain trader and the largest private company, forming a cornerstone of the hidden grain hegemony in the US hegemony.

The four major grain traders are unwilling to work silently behind the scenes. Their prosperity and wealth are closely related to the rise and fall of the United States. When necessary, they often jump to the front stage and directly intervene in major US national policies. As mentioned at the beginning, William Pierce, the former vice president of Cargill, one of the four major grain traders, entered Nixon's presidential team as the spokesperson for the interests of the grain trade group, served as a trade negotiator, and planned a food national policy for the United States that has influenced decades. Pierce believes that the goal of the United States should be to become the granary of the people of all countries in the world and to hold the rice bowls of the people of all countries in the world in the hands of Wall Street. To this end, the United States must try its best to break down the various unpleasant tariff trade barriers set up by various countries to protect their respective agriculture.

That is to say, under the banner of "free trade", with the four major grain traders as white gloves, with the help of food aid, relying on the strong financial capital of Wall Street, the unique technological advantages and scale advantages of American agriculture, the United States can calmly launch a dimensionality reduction attack on the fragile agriculture of third world countries and occupy their industrial chain. When these countries are deeply dependent on the seeds, fertilizers and capital provided by American grain companies, the United States, which has mastered the pricing power of grain, can also make these countries bow down to itself.

The means by which the four major grain traders control global food is not to do it themselves in every link, but to pocket the most valuable in the industrial chain and leave the most laborious and risky links to others. In other words, in agricultural production, the four major grain traders are responsible for providing high-value-added seeds, fertilizers, processing and sales, but let the most vulnerable farmers in developing countries bear the most risky and hardest planting links.

It is also worth noting that under the wind of the genetically modified revolution, the seeds sown by farmers are no longer reusable as in the past. In the second year, they have to continue to buy seeds from seed companies to ensure that these seed companies can monopolize a huge market share.

In addition to these, these companies also prepare many means for farmers in various countries.

The main purpose is to control.

I provide your seeds and fertilizers, and the crops you grow must be sold through me.

So the pricing power is mine, and you have to listen to me about what you grow.

The infiltrated countries have no ability to lead farmers to grow anything, because if you grow it, they can make you unable to sell it.

With the collapse of sea transportation, a large amount of grain is piled up in grain-producing countries. If you grow grain in Egypt, how can they make money? The prices of other cash crops have also increased. If you don't grow cash crops, how can the four major grain traders make money?

Therefore, Egypt has no control over what its domestic farmers grow and what price they sell.

In this case, what can Egypt do?

This is the helplessness of small countries.

But this time, Apocalypse has regained the initiative! Do you think food is a problem for domestic people to eat?

No!

It is also an economic problem!

With the arrival of large quantities of cheap food, the first thing Apocalypse did was to sell the food at a loss!

→

Without any middlemen, the country directly sold it at a very low price!

Who loses the most?

Of course, it is the domestic compradors and international grain traders!

Don’t forget what the grain price they paid to Egypt before was.

Now Apocalypse has directly hit the national grain price to an outrageous level at an extremely low price, and even a huge loss is considered a profit. After all, the freight is there.

So many speculative compradors and international grain traders have lost all their money.

It is also relying on this move that Apocalypse directly took back the grain pricing power in his own hands through means! After all, when he negotiated with those Western countries, he asked for a lot of things. Coincidentally, those things are actually nothing to Western countries.

But it is very important to Egypt.

Of course, this cannot change anything. Egypt is still a small country.

Even if you get the grain pricing power, what’s the use? As long as you are still in the international framework, then they have plenty of opportunities to "recover lost ground" from Apocalypse!

After all, Egypt can’t produce fertilizers and seeds by itself... They can still strangle it.

But Apocalypse didn’t think about ascending to heaven in one step. What he wanted was to give the people hope, an illusion, an illusion that would allow Egypt to defeat the West!

In fact, the people really bought into this.

They were as happy as if it was Chinese New Year.

Defeating the enemy was a joy.

Defeating the West was another joy.

The key point was that the price of grain had reached the lowest point in recent years, and it even felt like we had returned to the era of the founding father decades ago.

The people, nationalists, and government elites were all happy.

What else was there to be dissatisfied about?

…

Unlike the neighbors next door, the atmosphere on the Little Overlord's side was much worse.

Being beaten up by the surrounding forces together... naturally, they were not happy. This was not the key point. The key point was that these surrounding forces were all little Karami that the Little Overlord did not take seriously at all! In the previous war, they were not the ones who crushed them and beat them to tears.

What about now?

The blow was too big, too big.

It was a bit of a blow to the point of being exhausted... It was really not an exaggeration. After all, this was not a normal country. The establishment of a normal modern country was basically based on the awakening of nationalism, and then relying on resistance to oppression, to establish a country of its own on the land where they had lived for generations.

Many modern countries were created in this way, especially those established after World War I and World War II.

But the Little Overlord is different.

It is a country created from scratch.

So in order to ensure cohesion, he naturally has to take an extreme approach. So religious ideas and extreme nationalist sentiments naturally emerged.

Because otherwise, there is really no way to ensure cohesion.

After all... they are the invaders!

Otherwise, the negative impact cannot be eliminated at all. After all, no one likes their country to be a villain in the eyes of everyone, right?

But whether it is religious ideas or extreme emotions, they need to win again and again to ensure rationality.

Otherwise, who will believe you!

And the Little Overlord did a good job, winning all the time, so much so that they didn't even consider what would happen after failure?

After all, the whole country is being pushed forward by a kind of fanatical sentiment. Who would pour cold water at this time?

That would be rejected by everyone.

So, now it has become like this. The chicken blood has been pumped too much. When the heat subsides, some people will naturally start to reflect... Well, that reflection, why did we fail? Why do people hate us? What did we do?

This reflection is not important, and then the problem comes.

This is not the era of fewer channels for receiving information. Although Atlantis smashed the global shipping industry, it did not cut off the Internet for the whole world. Just look at it online and you will know how much evil they have done over the years.

Next is what the government does not want to see.

Some people protested against the government.

There is no way. So many people died and so much money was spent. Not only did they not win, but they also lost a lot of money to others.

There must be an explanation, right?

The most direct way is to make trouble for the government.

Especially many affected families, they are the most emotional. Their houses and relatives were lost in the war. It is normal for them to ask for an explanation.

Next is the domestic opposition.

It is very normal for any country to have opposition parties, even in an abnormal country like Xiaobawang. Their interests in some aspects are consistent with those in power, so they will not come out to make trouble during the war.

But now that the war is temporarily over, they will naturally fight for power!

This is still good. Just look at the Donglin Party and you will know that this group of people still have integrity. Fighting for power and profit has to wait until the war stops. If you encounter the Donglin Party, they will sell out the country for power and profit.

So a huge wave of protests appeared. The war failed, and someone was responsible for stepping down. Isn’t it too much?

But for those in power, this is too much, quite too much!

Who is willing to give up their power? Saints will not run to power.

So in order to keep their position, those in power naturally have to do something.

How to do it?

Of course, fight back! It doesn’t matter if you lose this time, as long as you win the next time, it will be fine.

Is it very similar to a gambler?

In fact, sometimes politicians think like gamblers.

Don't think too highly of them. After all, if they step down at this time, they will be completely finished. That means they admit defeat. How can a loser have a future?

So they can't admit defeat!

They want to turn the tables!

So how can they do it?

At this time, an archaeological discovery came into their eyes.

A news about the Atlantis artifact!

...

"These murals... These murals are definitely thousands of years old! This can't be fake! This may be the greatest archaeological discovery in modern times. Our ancestors once communicated with the Atlanteans! Even our nation may come from Atlantis! We come from greatness!"

An archaeologist who spread enthusiasm frantically promoted his theory to a group of senior officials.