I want to like this, but the author's just not knowledgable enough. I'm pretty sure the economic situation re: the food situation just isn't one that happens in a knowledgeable, open market. Cotton fetches a higher price than food crops? Just how many real-world examples are there of such a scenario happening outside a command economy? Your peasant farmers may be ignorant about a lot of stuff, but I think they'd watch agricultural market trends extremely closely. Not growing enough food to survive is just asinine. Were the prices of food crops held artificially low during the current near-famine conditions? Price fixing just doesn't work, there's lots of evidence demonstrating this.
Also, the title ostensibly translates to "How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom", but this hero (and author) comes across as a pretty strong idealist, politically. For example, the high-ranking bad people are also conveniently incompetent at their jobs...yet the author themselves has quoted Machiavelli, right? Maybe Bismarck too? He seems to use a lot of absolutes in his speech, arguably a rhetorical choice, but it doesn't really come across that way. Maybe they can turn it around, it looks like a decent first try, but it's currently a "rule of cool" story more than one of political reform.