Yi Bang-won and the Budget (2)

Rice and similar grains that have not been milled do not spoil easily.

That is why, in the twenty-first century, with technologies such as refrigeration and freezing, people even say that unmilled rice effectively has no expiration date.

The rice issued as military rations, known as Naram rice, is rice that has been stored for three years, and rice older than that is supposedly discarded...

'In reality, they say it can be stored for more than several decades.'

However, because storage technology has not yet developed in Joseon, unmilled rice becomes inedible waste after three years.

For that reason, the grain reserves Yi Bang-won had stockpiled for the grain-loan system, nearly four million seok, also gradually dwindled over time.

"Father-in-law."

My father-in-law did not answer even when I called him.

Instead, he gazed at the documents with exhausted eyes, working figures with counting rods—or rather, an abacus.

"Twenty-five geun of copper imported from Wa gets you one seok of white rice, and if we haggle, we should be able to settle on one seok of white rice for twenty-seven geun. To import 10,000 geun of copper, that comes to three hundred and seventy..."

He has the regular duties he must handle in Hojo, plus the work from Jiphyeonjeon that I assign him. And since overtime is not permitted, he has to leave work on time without fail...

He often says that once he becomes absorbed in his work, he has to work without even enough time to blink, with only a slight exaggeration.

It seems that is really true.

After all, he is so focused on his work that he does not even notice his own son-in-law, who is also in charge of Jiphyeonjeon, calling him.

"Father-in-law."

When I called him in a somewhat louder voice, Kim Mandeok finally noticed my presence.

"Son-in-law, what brings you here all of a sudden?"

"I came to discuss a business venture with you, Father-in-law."

"No, I refuse. I am already overwhelmed by what I am doing! You know that I am working without a moment's rest, doing twice the work handled by other officials between Hojo and Jiphyeonjeon..."

I do not force him to do things he cannot handle.

Even famous athletes and great scholars did not excel in their fields from the very beginning.

They started with the basics and eventually reached the highest level by doing their best at every moment within the limits of what they could do; they did not suddenly skip the entire process and appear at the top with a poof.

From the day he first came to Jiphyeonjeon until now, my father-in-law has consistently complained that the work is difficult, but he still manages to finish everything assigned to him within working hours.

Without help from anyone else.

"You only need to decide on the broad strokes of the business, and your younger brother-in-law, Kim Man-seok, will handle all the practical work afterward. What are you worried about?"

"That may be true, but will my own workload not increase a little?"

"So you are saying that you would give up the chance to greatly increase your fortune? If you refuse, I have no choice but to take this proposal to Yi Jeongja of Hojo, Yi Bongsang."

Kim Mandeok is a merchant.

And unless merchants judge a deal to be utterly beyond their ability to handle, they have an instinct to jump in and pursue a profit.

My father-in-law would never be able to refuse the proposal I was making.

'Unless all the extra work ends up being my father-in-law's responsibility.'

"Fine. What sort of business are you telling me to try this time?"

"I am thinking of raising chickens on a large scale."

"My son-in-law has come up with another novel idea."

In Joseon, many households raised chickens.

However, the scale was extremely small.

Each farming household raised about two to five chickens to obtain eggs, and slaughtered them when there was a major occasion in the family.

This trend continued, and even up to the early twentieth century, large-scale poultry farms remained rare.

That was why he called it a novel idea when I suggested raising chickens on a large scale.

"It is certainly a novel idea, and I can practically smell the money. Yes, with the livelihoods of the people throughout the eight provinces of Joseon generally much improved these days... People will gradually start saying that they want to eat meat not just at yangban household banquets or on holidays, but once a month, or even as often as once a week..."

One thing people in their twenties do a lot when they finally finish their long years as job seekers and become salaried workers is buy delicious food more often.

During their job-seeking days, they could barely afford even one chicken a month, but afterward they start eating one every week or every other week, and occasionally buy other kinds of meat as well.

That is because their income has improved compared to before, so they acknowledge their desire to eat delicious food and satisfy it honestly.

Once they start receiving a salary and keep giving in to their desire to eat tasty food, they sometimes end up shocked by the credit card bill that arrives.

Joseon is no exception to that instinct.

If anything, the people of Joseon may be even more extreme.

"So I hear that business at the fish markets has been doing very well lately."

"With the people's circumstances improving, I suppose they are occasionally buying things like fish and dried seafood."

"Exactly. That is why several merchants running Hanyang's fish markets said they planned to pool their money and try farming kelp or laver. One particularly enterprising fellow even said he would try raising shellfish."

People will do anything if it makes money, but...

I had not expected someone to appear so soon who wanted to try farming kelp or laver.

This is why Bak Je-ga once said that everyone hates touching caterpillars, but silkworms, which look similar, are precious because they are the raw material for profitable silk, so people do not hate them at all and touch them without hesitation.

This kind of positive change that I had not intended makes me very happy.

"That is why I was wondering whether I should get into the seafood trade as well... But after hearing what you had to say, I think raising and selling chickens would be better than selling fish. Still, there are a few things weighing on my mind."

"Please, go on."

"It takes quite a while for chickens to grow large enough to eat. What are we to do about that, and how do you intend to procure feed?"

In the twenty-first century, a chick grows into a chicken of an edible size after being raised for about forty days.

However, the breeds of this era have not yet undergone much selective breeding, so it will take at least eighty days.

Even so, they will require far less feed than cattle or pigs.

'They say that feeding a chicken two kilograms of feed can produce as much as one kilogram of chicken meat?'

Chickens in the Joseon era grew somewhat more slowly, so they would be less efficient in terms of time.

However, if we raised them in cramped coops, we could still obtain a large amount of meat compared to the feed they consumed.

"If you want to obtain a lot of chicken meat, raise the chickens in narrow coops where they cannot move. Nowadays, it takes about a year for chickens to grow large enough to eat, but if they are fed and raised in cramped coops, they will grow to an edible size in two or three months."

From a chicken's perspective, living for a year while freely wandering around a spacious yard would be far happier.

Therefore, if animal-rights advocates saw the atrocities I intended to commit against the chickens, they would point fingers and hurl severe criticism at me.

However, it cannot be helped if we are to provide the people of Joseon with even a little more high-quality protein.

To put it bluntly, even in the twenty-first century, if chickens were raised while observing all animal-welfare standards and then fried into chicken, a single delivered chicken would end up costing fifty or sixty thousand won.

Twenty thousand won is already expensive for one chicken. Imagine if it cost fifty thousand won. How much of a burden would that be?

"The state can purchase the feed."

"How can the state do that? Ah, so that was the method."

I had thought of it as well when Yi Bang-won and Hojo Minister Jo Gye-saeng were discussing how the rice stockpiled as grain loans was rotting away...

Joseon still does not have a proper currency, so people tend to save all their wealth in the form of rice.

The grain stored that way becomes rotten rice that people can no longer eat as the years pass and its expiration becomes a problem.

During famines on the scale of the Gyeongsin Great Famine, people did eat it, thinking, 'We are going to die anyway, so let's eat the rotten rice and die.'

If circumstances were not that desperate, however, it was simply discarded every year.

But chicks and chickens do not die from eating that rice...

"We can buy up the rice piled in the warehouses for the state's grain-loan program—the rice that was never distributed and is now rotting—just as yangban households buy old rice for brewing makgeolli."

"Since it would be thrown away anyway, we should be able to buy it at a low price. You can feed that rice to the chickens, raise them, sell them, and make a profit. Ah, it would be even better if you raised the hens separately and had them lay eggs."

If we built a poultry farm and made it possible to supply large quantities of chicken and eggs, we could provide the people with more protein.

Then the people's physical strength would improve, and the number of children dying at a young age would decrease as well.

A cold is nothing to a well-fed, healthy person, but someone weakened by hunger can easily die even if a cold merely passes through.

As nutritional conditions improved, children's immunity would also grow stronger, lowering the infant mortality rate and causing Joseon's population to increase even further.

"The state profits by selling rotten rice, and you profit by raising chickens."

"That sounds very desirable. But... who will be responsible for the process of selling the rotten rice piled up in the state warehouses?"

I gave him a sly smile.

The look on my father-in-law's face soured.

"Good grief, I'll be working until I'm a hundred..."

I pretended not to hear my father-in-law and left the place.