Chapter 208 Changes

Chapter 208 Changes

Chapter 208 Changes
New Year's Day, 2027 is coming.

There are still 37 days until the Spring Festival.

Inside Hailufeng Company, many employees are working with peace of mind or preparing for the Spring Festival because of Jiang Miao’s motivational video.

Overall, the domestic economic situation in 2026 will be basically stable and improving.

Stimulated by Egyptian catfish fish meal at the beginning of the year and Senzu soybeans in September, the development of the domestic breeding industry has reversed the downward trend of the past few years.

Although the overall retail price of meat products fell by 10-20%, production companies and breeders did not suffer any losses, but instead made a lot of money.

The core factor is that the cost of feed has fallen, and the initiative in raw material supply has been taken by the domestic market. From now on, we are no longer subject to the control of others. This has greatly stimulated the confidence of practitioners in the breeding industry.

The drop in meat prices has a negative impact on people's livelihood. Although the wages of most people have not increased, and even wages in some industries have decreased, residents' food consumption has increased.

At the same level of Engel coefficient, for the same amount of money paid, the amount of meat products purchased has increased.

Especially as the New Year approaches, with consumer sentiment strong, meat sales across the country have soared a lot.

In order to develop desert areas, this year, enterprises such as Hailufeng Company, COFCO Group, Beidahuang Group, United Mining, and Mo Nan State-owned Assets Operation Company, as well as more than a dozen engineering and construction companies, have established branches and industrial bases on the edges of deserts in various places.

This has greatly alleviated the situation of construction workers losing their jobs due to the slowdown in infrastructure construction.

For example, China Railway Sixth Bureau has established an industrial base in the Ulan Buh Desert and has recruited 2400 people before the end of this year. All of these people are in the Ulan Buh Desert Transformation Base.

According to the plans of these state-owned enterprises, after these construction workers complete the desert transformation work, they will be further resettled locally and transformed into large farm workers and agricultural industry supporting workers.

Jiang Miao can obtain a lot of information through United Mining. He knows that in the last three months of this year alone, 27 transformation bases were established in the desert fringe areas of the entire northwest region.

The number of people in these transformation bases ranges from two to three thousand to seven to eight thousand.

Together with the Hailufeng company, it directly created 14.7 jobs.

This agricultural revolution has also brought huge opportunities to domestic agricultural machinery. A series of companies including Zoomlion, Sany Heavy Industry, XCMG Group, Shantuo Group, Liugong Group, YTO Group, Weichai Power, World Electromechanical, and Changfa Industrial have received a large number of agricultural machinery orders.

In order to ensure that they can win orders, agricultural machinery manufacturers have invested heavily in the research and development of larger and more advanced agricultural machinery.

If we don’t invest heavily in research and development now, we will definitely be replaced by other competitors.

In the past, the area of ​​the country's large plains was not large, and the core Huanghuai Plain had a dense population and a low degree of mechanization, especially large-scale mechanization. Only the Northeast Plain, the eastern part of the south of the desert, and the Western Regions had large-scale mechanized production.

In this situation, coupled with the fact that large-scale agricultural equipment abroad is better, naturally not many machinery manufacturers are willing to develop larger equipment.

However, times have changed.

Times have changed.

The country suddenly has hundreds of millions of acres of "potential farmland" suitable for large-scale mechanized production, and agricultural enterprises that are officially supported have all received relevant notices, requiring that the proportion of domestic agricultural machinery in these newly built large farms be no less than 80%.

For example, the main suppliers of engineering equipment and agricultural machinery equipment for Hailufeng Company and United Mining are Sany Heavy Industry and Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science & Technology Co., Ltd. In order to ensure orders, these two companies have dispatched professional maintenance teams and R&D teams to be stationed in the southern part of the desert for a long time.

Domestic feed companies, dairy farming companies, and pig farming companies have also recently shown their talents and subcontracted large areas of desert land from major state-owned enterprises three times.

As for why those breeding and feed companies do not explore other deserts.

The reason, of course, is the cunning United Mining, which has enclosed all the easily developed desert land in the country from the very beginning. The remaining small pieces of desert land will not be given away so easily to local enterprises, and the deserts in the Western Regions are too far away from the inland areas.

Moreover, the Western Region Corps is also enclosing land in the Taklimakan Desert, Junggar Basin and other areas, and will not give private enterprises too many opportunities.

As for the Hailufeng Company that obtained 3000 million mu of land, other companies could only watch with envy in their hearts. However, they also knew very well that the land belonged to the Hailufeng Company, or to be more precise, to Jiang Miao, and no other people or companies could get their hands on it.

Hailufeng Company also subcontracted a large piece of land in the Tengger Desert to COFCO Group and temporarily reached a cooperation intention. The area is 200 million mu, and the specific location is in the surrounding area at the end of the Shiyang River.

Currently, Hailufeng Company has entrusted COFCO Group to manage and plant the Senzu soybeans. After the silk soybeans are successfully developed, this land will be directly used as a production base.

In fact, the research and development of silk soybeans is going very smoothly. Through gene editing technology, Jiang Miao has cultivated 20 varieties of silk soybeans based on the Senzu soybeans, and they are currently in the internal experimental planting stage.

Moreover, among these 20 types of silk soybeans, to be precise, only 10 types use gene sequences extracted from silkworms; the remaining 10 types were edited using gene sequences from various spiders.

Spider silk has excellent strength and toughness. Its strength is very high, 5-6 times that of steel wire of the same thickness; its toughness is also extremely good, and it can recover to its original shape without breaking after being stretched to 20-30% of its original length, which makes textiles made of spider silk very strong and durable.

At the same time, spider silk is soft and comfortable. This is mainly because spider silk is very thin. The diameter of a single spider silk is about 5 to 10 microns. Therefore, the fabric made from it is soft and comfortable to wear close to the body. Its good flexibility can also give the textiles a good drape.

Other advantages are similar to those of silk.

However, the production of natural spider silk is very difficult, mainly because spiders are not as easy to breed as silkworms, and management is a big problem. Moreover, most spiders are carnivorous animals, which is more difficult to take care of than silkworms that eat leaves. In addition, spiders produce much less silk than silkworms. Although scientists have long known the excellent properties of spider silk, which can be called natural carbon nanotubes, not many companies are willing to invest in research and development.

The fundamental reason is that this thing cannot be mass-produced.

Those studios that obtain spider silk by breeding spiders can only produce various spider silk products through various gimmicks to attract the curiosity of the wealthy. Ordinary people simply cannot afford such products.

Jiang Miao thought of spider silk when he was doing gene editing to modify soybeans.

Since soy protein can be turned into silk protein, why can't soy protein be turned into spider silk protein?
Anyway, the technical difficulty of the two is the same.

Therefore, Jiang Miao created 10 spider silk soybean varieties.

The current experimental planting is mainly to see whether there are any secondary mutations and trait failures, and to see whether the protein nanostructure of these silk soybeans and spider silk soybeans can achieve similar effects to natural silk and natural spider silk after they are actually planted.

We will know the result when these soybeans mature in April this year.

The possibilities of biotechnology are endless.

Moreover, the more complex the structure of macromolecular organic matter, the more the production cost of biotechnology will crush human traditional chemical synthesis technology.

For example, why artificial silk, synthetic rubber and the like are not as good as natural ones is because macromolecular organic matter is too complex and humans cannot imitate it at low cost.

...

New Year’s Day has only been one day.

The Southern Power Group, which had previously visited the biofuel base in Gongping Town, paid another visit.

Jiang Miao, who had a rare chance of free time, met with the team leaders of Nandian Group together with Jiang Haibo and Zhang Haitao.

In addition to Wang Shanhe, the general manager of the Lingnan branch who came last time, there is also Zhou Yadong, the deputy general manager of the Nandian Group headquarters who has a higher level.

In the conference room.

After a few pleasantries, Zhou Yadong got straight to the point: "Mr. Jiang, our group has a few questions about your company's technology. I hope Mr. Jiang can help us solve them."

"Mr. Zhou, please feel free to speak." Jiang Miao understood the other party's thoughts. Many times when state-owned enterprises want to do things, they must have a more formal name, otherwise it will be difficult to pass.

"First question, our group has studied Professor Lin's paper and your company's patent. The raw materials for the battery fluid of this technology are animal excrement and plant straw. If it is a complex organic solution, can it still generate electricity efficiently?"

Jiang Miao answered very confidently: "No problem. Our laboratory has done relevant experiments. Even organic matter in domestic waste and even plastic particles can be efficiently utilized by electric bacteria."

Zhou Yadong took notes while listening.

Then he asked: "The second question is, if we want to peak-load power generation, what impact will it have on the service life of the battery and the overall power generation?"

"The overall impact is not significant, and the service life will not be much different. If it is adjusted frequently, the power generation may be reduced by 5-10%. After all, in a semi-dormant state, the electricity-generating bacteria also need to consume a certain amount of organic matter to maintain their life needs."

"I see. A 5-10% power loss? That's acceptable." Zhou Yadong nodded. After noting down the information, he continued to ask:
“The third question is, how should the battery fluid be handled after power generation? Are there any high-risk contaminants?”

Jiang Miao directly answered the other party's question: "If it is animal excrement, plant straw, etc., after being decomposed by electric bacteria, it will become an organic solution with high sugar, high fat, and high aromatic hydrocarbons, as well as some residual cellulose, lignin, and hemicellulose. These solutions and residues can be used as raw materials for biogas fermentation to produce a large amount of biogas. After biogas fermentation, these residues can be used as organic fertilizer."

“What if it’s municipal solid waste?”

"If it is municipal waste, my suggestion is to sort it out first. Organic waste and plastics can be crushed to become raw materials for battery fluid. Things containing heavy metals must be picked out, such as dry batteries and circuit boards. They must not be mixed in, otherwise they will contaminate the final organic fertilizer and make it lose its value."

"Is that right?"

Jiang Miao saw the other party's confusion, then smiled and shook his head: "In fact, Mr. Zhou does not need to consider the issue of urban domestic waste."

"why?"

"At present, the daily processing capacity of domestic waste incineration power plants is about 107 million tons, while the annual scale of domestic urban waste is about 4 million tons. Now many waste incineration power plants cannot operate at full capacity because there is not enough waste to burn."

"Huh?" Zhou Yadong also remembered this situation, and then he frowned: "Mr. Jiang, in this case, your microbial fuel cell technology can only use waste from farms and rural areas? This is very limited!"

Jiang Miao also answered him directly: "There is no way. This is the original characteristic of microbial fuel cell technology."

Zhou Yadong and others who had originally planned to use microbial fuel cell technology to build a peak-shaving power station were also greatly disappointed at this time.

(End of this chapter)