Era: Retired from the army at the beginning and returned home - Chapter 15 Conversion of grain (seeking votes and collection)

In the past, when there was enough food, many people in the city were willing to buy some fine grains. For example, flour and rice, flour can be used to make dumplings, noodles and so on. But generally you can only buy 30% to 40% of fine grains in a ration, and the rest will be converted into coarse grains for you.

A ticket for ten kilograms of fine grain can be exchanged for thirty kilograms of coarse grain. Under such circumstances, a person’s ration is about thirty kilograms. If most of the food he receives is coarse grain, he can have about sixty or seventy kilograms of grain.

Under such circumstances, if there are children and elderly people at home, even if they do not have urban hukou, they can barely survive.

But now there is a famine, the rations are low, and the people in the city don’t have enough to eat. So everyone wants to use fine grains instead of coarse grains. It doesn’t matter whether they eat well or not. The first thing is to eat enough.

But food stamps are different across the country, and there is no such thing as rationing. If it was in the past, if you had national food stamps, you would definitely be able to buy whatever food you wanted, and it would all be given to you in proportion. But now that everyone wants to buy coarse grains, the Luo family, who have never bought grains before, actually has no idea.

I wonder what kind of food Luo Cheng can buy with more than fifty kilograms of grain.

This means that Luo Cheng is not really a person of this era. If he were a person of this era, he would not actually think about how to buy.

What if Luo Cheng had not retired from the army, but was still in the army, especially in the logistics and procurement department of the army. In fact, you can also get access to a kind of food stamps, military food stamps, also called military food certificates.

In fact, military ration stamps do not have restrictions on coarse and fine grains. According to the market proportion, you can buy whatever you want. However, military food stamps have geographical restrictions, so after Luo Cheng was discharged from the army, he was issued nationwide food stamps.

Anyone who has used national food stamps knows that there are no restrictions on who can buy food with such stamps. Even in a famine year, if you take national food stamps, you can buy coarse grains if you want, and fine grains if you want fine grains.

You know, the department that can discover food stamps across the country is not an ordinary department. Let’s put it this way, in Longyang Town, even government officials will never receive a national food stamp without special reasons.

The location of the grain station is close to the main road to Ngee Ann, which is more convenient for traffic. There is a special warehouse that ordinary people cannot enter.

If you want to buy or sell food, there are several houses with external nutrition.

Also because of the famine, there are more people guarding the grain station now. Few people from towns and rural areas come here to buy food, mainly because they don’t have food stamps. When I buy food, I basically buy all the food in one go. Won’t come here often.

Luo Cheng was questioned as soon as he arrived here with his father and brother. They were all from the town, and as soon as Luo Wen told them the name of the brigade, they knew roughly where they were from. After learning that they were buying grain, the people at the grain station even came to find the accountant.

“Whatever food you want to buy, they are all national food stamps. Your son is a veteran and has a discharge certificate.”

Because it was mainly his father, Luo Wen, who was negotiating, the people at the grain station were surprised when they saw that the food stamps they took out were national food stamps. These food stamps are rare in towns and villages, but the people at the food station are knowledgeable and know that these food stamps are universal across the country, which means they have added value.

Logically speaking, if you have national food stamps and you can buy food, you don’t need to check Luo Cheng’s discharge certificate at all. If you use national food stamps to buy food but don’t sell it, it will be like merchants in later generations not accepting RMB. That is a mistake.

However, when the people at the grain station asked like this, it wasn’t because they didn’t sell grain, but because people these days were honest. Since the other person was from the town, they also knew about the brigade where his father was. If we use national food stamps, we have to take care of them.

“Comrade, this is my discharge certificate. Please check it.”

Luo Cheng always carries his discharge certificate with him. In these days, no one even has an ID card. Most people need a letter of introduction when going out. Those with an employer must bring a work permit, and veterans also have a discharge certificate, which is very useful when traveling.

“Comrade, let’s talk first. These are national food stamps. If you use them, they will not be refunded.”

For Luo Cheng, the people in the grain station looked directly at him and spoke politely.

I explained it to Luo Cheng in this way because I was afraid that he would feel that he was at a loss and would not exchange it for ordinary food stamps when the time came. This grain station receives national food stamps, but they will not be kept here forever. They will basically be handed over on the same day.

“Understood.”

Without hesitation, Luo Cheng nodded and said, if you don’t use these food stamps to buy food, what else can you do? It is impossible for me to go out to do anything else, although I can still use food stamps to buy food and other things. But this is not a year of famine. My family and those relatives all need this food.

However, Luo Cheng also kept a few kilograms of food stamps and took out a total of fifty kilograms of food stamps. Luo Cheng kept the rest for later use, even if he bought some plain steamed buns for his grandma every day.

Seeing that Luo Cheng didn’t hesitate, the people at the grain station became rude. After receiving the food stamps from Luo Cheng, I also told him directly that I would take better care of him than ordinary food stamps. After all, Luo Cheng is a veteran and has served the country. With proper care, it’s okay.

In fact, it was also hinting to Luo Cheng that rules are dead but people are alive. His food stamps will not be transferred to the public account. If he wants to issue a bill, he can only buy it according to the face value. But no receipt is required, at least you can buy it in quantities of sixty kilograms.

That is to say, if the food stamps are collected by the national food stamp station, they will be exchanged and handed over with normal sixty-pound provincial food stamps or regional food stamps.

Faced with such a thing, Luo Cheng and the others definitely chose not to give up the bill. Anyway, they can just get the food, and the food station allows them to pick whatever they want.

If you are buying fine grains, rice and flour, you can buy sixty kilograms. If you want coarse grains, you can buy 180 kilograms. There are even sweet potatoes in the grain stations, which are not considered grains. One pound of whole grains can be exchanged for five pounds of sweet potatoes.

However, there are restrictions on replacing sweet potatoes, otherwise those who eat commercial grains will switch to sweet potatoes in large quantities these days. This is the case with sweet potatoes, if you replace them too much, others won’t be able to replace them. So if you want to exchange sweet potatoes, you can use the grain book to exchange five kilograms of whole grains for sweet potatoes, that is, five kilograms of whole grains for twenty-five kilograms of sweet potatoes.

But Luo Cheng uses national food stamps. He doesn’t eat commercial food now and has no food book. The same goes for the grain station. This is the town’s grain station after all. It is really rare to receive national food stamps once a year.

So in the end, the decision was made privately at the grain station. If you want to switch to sweet potatoes, you can, but you can’t switch all of them to this. After all, you have to consider other people. If Luo Cheng bought all the fifty kilograms of national food stamps for sweet potatoes, he could buy nine hundred kilograms.

The Luo family really doesn’t worry about starving to death this year, but if they eat sweet potatoes every day, Luo Cheng feels that he will get tired of them. It doesn’t matter if the grain station refuses to give all the sweet potatoes.

The grain station is willing to give Luo Cheng 150 kilograms of sweet potatoes. According to the amount of one kilogram of grain stamps, three kilograms of coarse grains, and one kilogram of coarse grains and five kilograms of sweet potatoes, one hundred and fifty kilograms is just ten kilograms of fine grain coupons.

As for whole grains, there are many, such as sorghum flour, corn flour (cob flour), soybeans, millet and so on. Luo Cheng wanted to buy rice. He was not used to eating any kind of pasta, but his father Luo Wen wanted to buy all the noodles. He could buy 150 kilograms. At most, buy some soybeans. For the rest, I buy stick noodles so that I can better help my younger brothers and sisters.

After the last discussion, his father respected Luo Cheng’s opinion and ordered five pounds of rice and five pounds of white flour. The rest was mainly corn noodles, and some millet and soybeans.

The three bags I brought couldn’t hold such a large amount at all. Fortunately, there were hemp rope bags for sale at the grain station. These bags were big, and one bag could weigh hundreds of kilograms.

There should be many older generations who eat sweet potatoes every day in this era. Although I eat it every day, I don’t say I’m tired of it. If I can eat sweet potatoes, it’s considered a good thing these days. When I’m hungry, I’ll eat grass roots every day. By the way, thank you xiyi for your monthly ticket. There are also many brothers’ recommendation votes, which are still needed to get into the rankings in the early stage. I saw it today and it has entered the 100th place in the urban category. Today’s goal is to rank between 60 and 80.