Chapter 114 Harvest
After the Jinyuan counterfeit banknote incident.
It is already the beginning of February.
At this time, a quarter had passed since ABCD launched the food war.
Due to Luzon's tropical monsoon climate, the year can be roughly divided into three seasons, namely the rainy season from April to December, the cool season from December to February, and the dry season from February to April.
Normally, although three crops of rice can be grown in a year, in actual agricultural production, only one or two crops of rice are grown.
Late rice is harvested from January to February.
This year, many farmers in Luzon planted second-season late rice, with the planting area reaching 3.82 million hectares, of which hybrid rice accounted for 1.54 million hectares.
The total planting area of single-season rice in Luzon is about 6 million hectares, with an average yield of about 3 to 4 tons per hectare.
It is estimated that 13 million tons of rice can be harvested from the 3.82 million hectares of late rice this time .
Just during this year's harvest period, the grain groups led by ABCD quickly released large quantities of rice into the global market.
This caused the price of rice to plummet rapidly.
The purchase price of rice in Manila has fallen by 42% compared to the previous year, and the downward trend is still unstoppable.
Farmers who had previously resisted the pressure to purchase high-end fertilizers and pesticides due to high rice prices are now in a situation where they have lost all their money.
In the northern part of Manila, there are a large number of small farmers and peasants who lost all their money in this food war.
There was wailing everywhere, and no rice farmer was spared, especially those who had borrowed loans, who were in despair.
Right at this moment.
A grain-purchasing convoy entered the village.
The big horn on the car sounded here.
"It's time to harvest rice. One ton costs 15,000 yuan..."
Farmers who had rice at home were already in despair when they heard the price of 15,000 pesos. You know, before the New Year, the price of rice per ton reached about 25,000 pesos (equivalent to 3,300 Chinese yuan).
But what does it matter if they don’t sell? The price may be even lower in a few days. This is especially painful for farmers who have loans at home.
As an employee of the grain company under the House of Plenty, Juan naturally knew that the price of 15,000 pesos was already the highest in the area.
Soon a farmer who couldn't hold on any longer came over.
"Boss, how about 17,000?"
Juan didn't look at the other person's pitiful expression, but replied in a very formal way: "Fifteen thousand is already the highest in Manila. If you don't believe me, you can go out and ask."
The old farmer was a little hesitant, but when he thought about the fact that his eldest son had borrowed money from the bank and if he couldn't pay it back, the family's land would be taken away by the bank.
Seeing the hesitant expression on the old farmer's face, he knew that the other party might have a debt, which was exactly what Juan wanted. He smiled and said:
"Dude, if you want to sell it at a high price, that's not impossible."
"What? What can the boss do?" The old farmer seemed to have grasped a life-saving straw.
Juan pulled out a contract: "This is the application form for joining the agricultural cooperative. Once we join the agricultural cooperative, we will all be one family..."
"Agricultural cooperative ?" The old farmer had obviously heard of it. After all, the Fernando family and the Lopez family were engaged in large-scale land mergers in the south, and the matter had spread throughout Luzon.
Some hostile forces even maliciously exaggerated and demonized the behavior of the Fernando and Lopez families in their own territory.
Therefore, the old farmers’ first impression of the agricultural cooperative was not good.
Juan smiled and said, "Brother, do you know why you can't sell your rice? This is all caused by Marcus, Ayala, and Aquino. If they hadn't colluded with international grain traders, how could the rice price in Luzon rise first and then fall? Don't forget what happened in 2008."
"These bastards..." Several other younger farmers began to curse.
It's just a public opinion attack, and it seems like anyone can do that.
Sapiens is even more comprehensive, not only targeting television broadcasts and the Internet, but also connecting directly to local rural areas through agricultural cooperatives, logistics channels, and purchasing fleets in rural areas.
In addition, ABCD and those big families already had criminal records, and with a little guidance, the memories of the people of Luzon were awakened.
After Juan exposed the conspiracy between ABCD and the big family, he brought up the issue of the rural cooperative again.
"Why do you all work so hard? Isn't it for food, clothing, shelter, transportation and children? If you join an agricultural cooperative, you can get various subsidies and land rent, and you can also go to work in the city or work on a farm."
"If you have a loan, you can transfer it to the agricultural cooperative, which will give you a grace period, or you can sell your land directly to the cooperative and use the money to live in the city."
The old farmer quickly asked, "Is it really possible to transfer the loan?"
"Yes, but the cooperative will charge a little interest, not more than 10% per year."
After some persuasion from Juan, more than a dozen farmers with loans agreed to join the cooperative. In addition, some other farmers seemed to have visited the demonstration farm in the south and also chose to join the cooperative.
In fact, Juan is not just fooling people. After all, the cooperative under the leadership of Haitian Agriculture does have many benefits.
Acquisition convoys, like Juan's, advanced rapidly into the rural areas of northern Luzon.
The Marcus family was already unable to take care of themselves at this time, because their behavior angered Lao Du. Although Lao Du had selfish motives, he did not want Luzon to be harvested by ABCD.
The other side.
The Aquino family.
Keynes Aquino directly controlled a dozen core members with the cooperation of the soldiers, and then quickly carried out a major purge within the family.
The Ayala family, which had been very low-key before, had its head die of a sudden heart attack in North America, and his two sons were thrown into jail for various reasons within less than three days.
The new head of the Ayala family, James Ayala, quickly appeared on live television with Cairns Aquino and Xu Yingming, apologized to everyone, and announced the previous affairs of their family and the Marcus family, and the ABCD alliance.
This wave of self-explosion directly put the Marcus family into a very passive situation.
This also made ABCD feel extremely annoyed.
But it was too late for ABCD to save the Marcus family. Lao Du and a group of families acted very quickly, accurately and ruthlessly, and directly sent the core members of the Marcus family to prison.
Then it was time to divide up the Marcus family’s territory and interests.
This time, the Marcus family’s defeat was different from the previous ones. This time, there was basically no chance of making a comeback.
Because their family's core territory has been divided up, the core members have been captured, and there is solid evidence of collusion with ABCD, no one in Luzon dares to speak for the Marcus family now.
With the demise of the Marcus family and the betrayal of the other three families, all of ABCD's internal forces in Luzon were wiped out.
But this does not mean that ABCD will give up. They continue to push down international rice prices, while raising the prices of fertilizers and pesticides sold to Luzon, as well as the purchase prices of cash crops.
The purpose is to force farmers in Luzon to reduce the planting area of rice and corn in the next season and expand the planting area of cash crops. As long as this continues for one or two years, Luzon's grain reserves will definitely not be able to hold on.
The Homo Sapiens Company was not afraid of this at all, because with the integration of various internal families, Luzon was basically stable now.
With Hongsavadi as a backup granary, ABCD will only find themselves working in vain.
Of course, the farmers still have to suffer first.
The Intelligent Company joined forces with various family forces and started a large-scale harvest. Before ABCD harvested, they had already harvested all the leeks.
