In July, the weather began to cool. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

However, for the people of Beijing, the sun overhead is still blazing, and the heat has not diminished at all. As soon as the joy of the summer harvest had passed, the people began to worry.

For more than half a month, I haven't seen a drop of rain.

Every day is sunny and the sky is clear.

Half a month ago, such weather made the people happy, because such good weather is the best for harvesting and drying grain, and the summer harvest grain can be dried and put into the warehouse, and there will be no loss. But this sunny day has lasted until now, and everyone can't be happy.

After the summer harvest, autumn ploughing will begin, and no matter what you do, you need water.

Continued sunny days, which is a disaster for autumn planting.

"There has been no rain for eighteen days."

In the political affairs hall of the province, Li Shimin sat with several prime ministers to have a meal, discussed things for a long time in the morning, was tired and hungry, and set up lunch in the hall, and Li Shimin also stayed to eat together.

Today's dinner is a bit special, there are no routine twelve dishes.

There are only a few bowls of boiled water for disaster relief cakes, and there are several flavors of disaster relief cakes, as well as several convenience foods, such as dried noodles, instant noodles, ham, bacon, salted fish, dried vegetables, etc.

Li Shimin ate a piece of disaster relief cake with locusts and grain bran as the main ingredient, which was very choking and tasteless, but he still put it in his mouth piece by piece.

The hard-to-swallow locust cake in front of us will be a lifesaver for the people when it comes to a catastrophe.

"The Yellow River has stopped." Xiao Yu also chewed a pickle.

The emperor said that he wanted the prime ministers to experience these dry foods together and experience the sufferings of the people, so the prime ministers could only eat a hard meal.

The dried cabbage pickled cabbage is really nothing delicious, it is dry, salty and smelly, it tastes like slag, and it is stuffed teeth.

The Yellow River is cut off, which means that the summer locusts will not drown after laying eggs on the river beach, which means that there will be more locusts in the autumn, and once the drought continues in the autumn, then a large number of autumn locusts will lay more eggs on the river beach, and there will be more summer locusts next year, which is a vicious circle, and it is getting worse and worse.

"Is the grain reserve counted?"

Li Chao bit a small dried fish, which is a common small white strip in the river, and the taste is very ordinary. In particular, the processing process is very simple, even the internal organs are not removed, and the method of drying is used, and the result is a small white strip that is already very ordinary, which is more bitter and fishy.

This kind of dried fish, if it is in the Li family, even the subordinates may not eat it, and the group of dogs who feed it will not eat it. Every bite Li Chao takes is like taking Chinese medicine.

Li Shimin asked three times, and Li Chao remembered that he was the right servant of the school inspector and Pingzhang, or the head of the household.

"Your Majesty, the minister has read the data reported by the Ministry of Households, and the summer harvest situation in various places this year is good, and the summer grain should be able to be collected in full. However, although it has been six years since the founding of the Tang Dynasty, there is not much grain in warehouses around the country until now. To cope with the upcoming drought and locust plagues, food is still insufficient. ”

"Inadequate? How much is it not enough, is it too late to speed up the transportation of summer grain to the disaster area? ”

Li Chao shook his head in the face of Li Shimin's expectant gaze.

"This locust plague will be a huge locust plague, not only once every few years, but also very likely once in twenty or thirty years. With a severe drought and a major locust plague, only 30 percent of the grain may be harvested in various places this autumn, especially in the Central Plains, and there may be no grain harvest next summer. The disaster is estimated to be distributed in Guanzhong, Henan, Hebei and other places, Shannan, Huainan, Hedong will also have many places in the disaster, these are expected to be the disaster area, the existing food is not enough to cope with the famine after the disaster, the surrounding area is affected by the disaster, and it is difficult to transfer too much food. ”

After Li Shimin said before Li Chao that there might be a major drought and a big locust plague next year, he had already begun to let the people of Qin Tianjian study it, and also asked many historians to study history, and the answer they got was that there would be a great drought next year. After the great drought, the probability of locust plague is extremely high, and every time a locust plague appears, it is almost always accompanied by a major drought.

If there is a great drought, there will be a great plague of locusts.

"We have to step up our efforts to store food and prepare for disasters!" Li Shimin sighed.

In the first year of Zhenguan, the result will be locusts and drought, and Li Shimin will be exhausted.

"If you want to postpone the change of yuan in the unknown year, you still use the name of the martial arts year."

Li Shimin really didn't want Zhenguan to be so bleak at the beginning.

The prime ministers are sad one by one, and the matter of changing the Yuan Zhenguan has been announced a long time ago, but now it is not changed, which is not good.

However, Li Shimin also has his own insistence, and it was a bit improper to come to power, if he changed the yuan, and in the end there would be a catastrophe, wouldn't his legitimacy be even more questioned?

Forget it, let's use the Wude era name for another year, and when this disaster year passes, it's not too late to change the yuan.

"This year's autumn harvest in the Central Plains is expected to be only 30%?"

"There will be a drought this autumn, and there will be a plague of locusts, although it will not be a large plague of locusts, but if the locusts become a plague, it will also cause very bad results. In all parts of the Central Plains, it is already a very optimistic estimate that the autumn harvest can be guaranteed for three years. ”

Fang Xuanling said helplessly to the emperor, "Although there is a bumper harvest this summer, many people now know that there will be a bad harvest this year, and there will be a catastrophe next year. ”

The people grew grain and paid taxes, but only a small part of the payment was made, and most of them were kept for their own use and sold in the market. In normal years, of course, there will be no shortage of grain in the market, and the imperial court will often close its positions, and will collect grain at a fair price in a good year, and produce grain at a fair price in a disaster year, so as to avoid those landlords buying low and selling low, suppressing grain prices, and controlling the grain market.

Because in good years, there is a lot of grain, and the landlords will lower the price of grain, and at this time, the imperial court can easily collect a lot of grain at a slightly higher price.

But now everyone knows that there will be a famine in the next disaster year, and the landlords will not only not sell grain, but they will also bid to buy grain, and they can be more expensive than the imperial court, and it is difficult for the imperial court to buy grain at a low price. Changping can't store grain, and there will naturally be no grain to put in the disaster year.

And the landlords buy grain and hoard grain, and they will not be so kind to put grain in disaster years.

The people's hearts are like this, and the imperial court cannot forcibly interfere with the market by administrative means. Even among the prime ministers present, none of them have already begun to buy and hoard food.

"Three years of ploughing, there is a year's accumulation. Nine years of ploughing, there are three years of storage. This dynasty was not founded for a long time, and the treasury was not abundant. Seeing that the catastrophe is approaching, I have no food to prepare, and I am worried day and night. ”

"Wen Yuan, since you can predict from the history books that there will be a catastrophe next year, do you have a good way to prevent it?"

"There is no perfect solution, but planning in advance and preparing early will also be very effective, and a lot of disasters can be alleviated by then." Li Chao replied.

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