But with the nine-border land and 800,000 border troops stationed there, military food supply naturally became a huge problem. In order to solve the military food problem.

The Ming Dynasty implemented the "Kaizhong Method" in the third year of Hongwu.

The imperial court paid for the business of transporting grain, selling grain, and even growing grain to the private sector, and Shanxi was the closest to Jiubian.

Ever since.

Seeing huge business opportunities, Shanxi merchants established large-scale farming near military towns and gained dominance in the military grain business.

thus.

Shanxi merchants made their first pot of gold from the military grain business.

Just doing military grain business would not be enough to make Shanxi merchants become popular.

Later.

When the time came to the third year of Zhengtong in the Ming Dynasty, the imperial court issued a decree in order to solve the increasingly serious shortage of war horses in the border troops.

In the decree.

The imperial court specifically allowed merchants from several provinces in Shanxi and Shaanxi to engage in the salt and horse trade, which was to exchange salt for horses from the border areas.

As a result, merchants in Shanxi and Shanxi responded one after another at the end of the year, entering the grassland from the Tiger Killing Pass and going deep into the hinterland of the Ordos prairie to trade salt and horses.
Chapter completed!