Planting japonica rice in the Great Lakes Region was not only a matter of accounting for the temperature differences from the East African coastal plains, but also of improving competitiveness in the international market.
In places like the Far East, Japan, Korea, and parts of Southeast Asia, the requirements of these grain markets for rice were vastly different from those of the Middle East and India.
The current state of the international grain market was that competition was becoming ever more cutthroat. With East African grain production entering the fray, alongside expanded production in grain-producing regions such as the United States, Australia, Canada, and Tsarist Russia—
It was now certain that global grain production capacity had become excessive, even ahead of the corresponding period in Ernst's previous life. What sustained this excess capacity was the breakneck industrialization of every nation. The entire world was currently in the extreme prosperity before an economic crisis; everyone was blindly investing in production, since anything they did made money. Once the economic bubble was pricked, an economic crisis would inevitably erupt within the next year or two.
To avoid the risks, Ernst's next objectives were to optimize East Africa's industries, develop its internal market, dispose of Europe's bad assets, further strengthen East Africa's economic barriers, and separate it from the world market.
In fact, East Africa had always been economically disconnected from the world market. As a country owned by a conglomerate, all of East Africa's foreign trade had to pass through the Hohenzollern Conglomerate, this "connector." Thus, East Africa's foreign trade was not truly integrated with the world market.
Therefore, a global economic crisis would have only limited effects on a purely agricultural country like East Africa. It might even bring beneficial effects. The Far East provided a reference: during the global economic