Chapter 58 - 58 Wang Mei, The Unremarkable Head of Household_1
Chapter 58: Chapter 58 Wang Mei, The Unremarkable Head of Household_1
Translator: 549690339
The worst affected by this locust disaster were naturally those low-ranking Profound Martial clans who had no means to combat the disaster.
Like the Zhao and Liu Clans.
A rough calculation would illustrate just how much they lost. Using the previous examples, a 70% crop failure on twenty acres of land would only yield 90 Copper Coins profit. The tenant farmer would take away 30 Copper Coins as a baseline, then 40 Copper Coins would go to taxes, 10 Copper Coins for oxen, farming tools, and seed amortization, and 20 Copper Coins for insecticide powder. Just these expenses alone left the Zhao and Liu Clans not just without any grain harvest for the season, but they had to spend 10 Copper Coins for every twenty acres of land.
For the Liu Clan, their various farming estates totaled over ten thousand acres of fertile land. Therefore, not only did they not make a single shilling, they had to pay out 50 Qian Gold.
This sum of Qian Gold did not even include other expenses like the costs of supervising the farming process, which made the total deficit exceed one hundred Qian Gold.
It might sound like losing one hundred Qian Gold was not a big deal, but in reality, they were bleeding money from this. In a normal year, those ten thousand acres would bring them a net profit of eight or nine hundred Qian Gold for the season. The loss and the lack of profit meant they were now a thousand Qian Gold short.
Under normal circumstances, for a Prominent Family like the Liu Clan, their annual expenditure was massive. If they could save up five or six hundred Qian Gold a year, it was a feat. This loss of a thousand Qian Gold eroded two years of their savings.
“There’s another piece of detrimental news that you’re probably not aware of, Wang Shouzhe.” Gongsun Hui continued, “The Government Office of Changning Guard City has issued an order to all the Prominent Families. This summer’s taxes cannot be paid in Qian Gold but must be paid in actual grain.” Hearing this news, Wang Shouzhe drew in a sharp breath of surprise. This pushed the weaker Profound Martial families into a dead-end. In the past, they could choose to pay taxes either in grain or in Gold, as long as the equivalent value was met.