Chapter 278 Industrial Innovation

Chapter 278 Industrial Innovation

Chapter 278 Industrial Innovation (Large Cup)
Hucheng, Guangxi Province.

It is also a city known as the Sugar Capital.

The Spring Festival is approaching, but the subsidiary established by Hailufeng Company in the city is not idle.

Around August last year, the agricultural planting division of Hailufeng Company established a wholly-owned subsidiary in the local area: Hucheng Sugar Company.

The company's headquarters is located in Daxin County.

As a county in Hucheng area with a sugarcane planting area of ​​more than 500,000 mu, the sugarcane planting area here is mainly based on planting sugarcane on slopes.

Friends who have farmed know that there is a significant difference in the intensity of labor required to achieve the same labor results between farmland in the mountains and plains.

Cultivating land in mountainous areas often requires more labor intensity, and there are varying degrees of restrictions on the investment in mechanical equipment.

However, at this time, near Longmen Township, Daxin County, the sloping sugarcane fields of many villagers have undergone very obvious changes.

A dozen villagers were working in their own sugarcane fields, chatting and looking forward to the harvest.

"Brother Dong, when will the candy collection team come?"

A middle-aged man who was chewing sugar cane spat out a mouthful of sugar cane residue and said, "Why are you in such a hurry? Will the Hailufeng Company cheat you?"

A young man in a baseball cap laughed dryly and replied, "It's almost Chinese New Year. My family is waiting for money."

The middle-aged man gestured with the sugar cane in his hand: "Haha, what are you thinking about? Your father said that the money should be given to him. If you gamble again during the New Year, he will break your legs."

"Uh..." The young man looked embarrassed.

"That's right, Bo Zai, your dad has said that if anyone in the village dares to gamble with you, he will throw shit at their doorstep."

"Don't come!"

"Damn! Did the old guy really say that?" The young man in the baseball cap looked embarrassed.

Suddenly, a convoy of vehicles came slowly from a distance.

"coming!"

"Who's coming?"

"The sugar collection team is here."

After a while, the convoy arrived at the roadside not far from the crowd, and several employees of the acquisition team got out of one of the pickup trucks.

The middle-aged man who was chewing sugar cane just now ran over in small steps: "Hello, is this Captain Li?"

"My name is Li Xiao. I will be responsible for the sugar solution purchasing work in this area for the next six months or so. Please add me on WeChat." Li Xiao, the team leader of the purchasing team, took out his business card and handed it to everyone.

After a while, everyone added each other on WeChat.

Of course, this WeChat account is a work account and its ownership belongs to the company's network division. However, Hailufeng Company has strict regulations that employees are not allowed to use private numbers to add customers or partners to avoid a monopoly on communication channels. This also makes it easier for the company to adjust work areas and investigate employees' work content.

After adding WeChat, the middle-aged man wiped his hands and said, "Captain Li, my name is Fang Jianqiang. You can just call me Aqiang. When do we start collecting?"

"Start right away." Li Xiao didn't bother to exchange pleasantries and directly asked everyone to start working.

The thin plastic hose was pulled into the sugarcane forest, and the interface was directly buckled under the main pole of the sugarcane nailed in advance, about 20 cm from the ground. This is also the lower limit of extracting sugar liquid. If the sugar liquid in the sugarcane is drained out, the disease resistance and drought resistance of the sugarcane will decrease.

The planting density of wood cane is sparser than that of ordinary sugar cane, but its stems are much larger than ordinary sugar cane and look like a field of low giant dragon bamboo.

After a while, the worker who had connected the pipeline took the intercom and said, "Captain, the first piece has been connected."

"receive."

Li Xiao turned around and shouted, "Start pumping the sugar solution."

"Okay." Another employee pressed the switch of the pumping equipment, and suddenly a large amount of translucent sugar liquid was pumped out from the pipe continuously. Due to the terrain, pumping was effortless.

The sugar liquid was pumped into a truck bed, which had been converted to food grade in advance. After a while, 100 kilograms of sugar liquid was pumped out and filled the first truck bed. The outlet was then transferred to the next truck bed.

The staff placed a special dehydrator into the sugar liquid in the first truck bed. After turning on the switch, the level of the sugar liquid dropped rapidly.

Soon the saturated sugar crystals condensed at the bottom of the truck bed. As the last drop of water was drained out, sugar blocks with a dryness of about 99% appeared at the bottom.

The staff lifted the dehydrator.

Li Xiao pressed the control switch of the truck bed, and the opening of the truck bed immediately tilted downward. A stainless steel bucket had been placed on the side. He picked up a sand shovel and inserted it into the bottom of the truck bed. Pieces of cracked, translucent, light yellow sugar cubes fell down and fell into the stainless steel bucket.

The owner of the sugarcane field was an old man, holding a pipe and saying, "Huh... is this rock candy?"

Fang Jianqiang picked up a piece from the stainless steel bucket and put it in his mouth for a while: "It's rock sugar, old rock sugar."

Li Xiao also took a piece and put it in his mouth to chew. "Now it is old rock sugar, which contains a lot of impurities left by sugarcane. After we bring it back to the factory, we have to carry out secondary impurity removal and granulation."

"Huh... Captain Li, how many pounds are in this bucket?" The old man stared at his own sugar.

An employee moved the stainless steel bucket onto the electronic scale and looked at the display: "After peeling, it is 25.3 kilograms, which is 50.6 pounds."

The old man murmured to himself with concern: "I wonder how many pounds of sugar this old man can get from these two acres of sugarcane."

"Don't worry, Uncle Kuan. I estimate that we can produce two to three hundred kilograms." Fang Jianqiang said with a smile.

Soon, the old man had harvested all the sugarcane from his two acres of land, and the final block of raw sugar weighed 335.7 kilograms.

"Grandpa, your family has harvested 671.4 kilograms of sugarcane. According to the contract, one kilogram is one yuan." Li Xiaona input the data: "Is this correct?"

"No!" The financial auditor nodded.

Then an automatic printing device in the back of the pickup truck printed out the commercial bill, and then the financial auditor and Li Xiao confirmed and stamped it.

Li Xiao handed the commercial bill to Fang Dakuan: "Grandpa, keep it well. It will be troublesome if you lose it."

"Captain Li, how do I get this money?" Fang Dakuan was a little confused.

Li Xiao explained: "It's very simple. You can go directly to Hucheng Sugar Industry in the county tomorrow. When you get there, just ask the guard and someone will do it for you."

"Okay." Fang Dakuan carefully put the bill into the inner pocket of his clothes, and then zipped up the pocket.

Although one pound of raw sugar only costs one dollar, no one had the idea of ​​raising the price, because Hucheng Sugar Industry not only signed a purchase contract with them, but also held many seminars in several nearby villages to tell local villagers not to fantasize that the price of raw sugar will increase in the future.

Because the current domestic sugar prices are artificially high.

Currently, the domestic white sugar price is 6200 yuan per ton, while the international white sugar price is 3900 yuan per ton, with a price difference of about 2300 yuan.

Even with freight and tariffs added in, the price of imported raw sugar is still much lower than that of domestic sugar mills.

If Hucheng Sugar Industry wants to align its prices with the international market, it must control the purchase price of raw sugar and keep it at around 2000 yuan per ton, which is a relatively reasonable purchase price.

Taking into account costs such as transportation, manpower, equipment, sales and energy consumption, the new process can save a little, but these costs still add up to about 1000 yuan per ton of white sugar.

In this way, the total cost of each ton of white sugar is about 3000 yuan. If the white sugar price is fully connected with the international market, 900 yuan can be earned per ton.

The production cost of white sugar in China was obviously too high before, because the cost of purchasing raw materials made it difficult for the entire sugar industry to enter a virtuous cycle.

Previously, the cost of sugarcane raw materials for producing one ton of white sugar in China was about 4000 yuan, plus other costs of 1000 yuan, which directly brought the cost to 5000 yuan.

Moreover, domestic sugar mills have a fatal problem, which is seasonal production. They cannot operate all year round, which will cause the sugar mills to add the losses in other seasons to the sugar-making season, further raising the price to around RMB 5900 to 6100 per ton.

In addition, the country has also set up a special subsidy policy that requires secondary settlement linkage. When the sales price of sugar exceeds 6300 yuan per ton, sugarcane farmers can receive a linkage subsidy, which further increases the operating costs of sugar factories.

It would be strange if the domestic sugar industry could make a profit under such pressure from both sides.

If Hailufeng Company wants to change this situation, it must lower the purchase price of raw sugar in order to revitalize the entire sugar-making industry.

Many people may think that earning only more than 600 yuan from two acres of sugarcane is too little, but don’t forget that this is the monthly income.

Moreover, the sugar liquid production capacity of sugarcane will increase year by year. Starting from the fourth year, the yield per mu of sugarcane can reach 450 kilograms of raw sugar per month, which means an income of about 900 yuan per mu per month, and almost 10800 yuan per year.

Taking the village that is currently harvesting sugar liquid as an example, the sugarcane farmers in this village generally have a planting area of ​​about five to fifteen acres, some can reach dozens of acres, and a small number can reach hundreds of acres.

It is relatively rare to see people like Fang Dakuan planting two acres of land. The main reason is that the old man is alone and he also planted two acres of land in previous years. He cannot manage more than that.

Fang Jianqiang's family has 12 acres of sugarcane forest, and he earned nearly yuan from the harvest this time.

Seeing that everyone else had taken several thousand, Fang Dakuan quickly asked, "Captain Li, I want to plant a few more acres, is that possible?"

Li Xiao did not give a clear answer: "When you go to get the money tomorrow, you can consult about this matter. There is a special office over there that is responsible for planting quotas."

"Uncle Kuan, do you want to plant more? Can you handle it?" a young man joked.

Fang Dakuan waved his hand and said, "Go away... I'm in good health. If I were younger, I could work ten acres of forest by myself."

In fact, he was also helpless. He had no children and was now over 60 years old. However, the money he had saved over the years was only more than 300,000 yuan. He felt that this money might not be enough for his retirement, so he planned to open up a few more acres of mountain land to grow sugarcane.

After all, managing these sugarcane forests over the past five months has been much easier for him than growing sugarcane before. Now there is no need to cut and transport sugarcane, as the purchasing team comes directly to harvest it, so he can still carry out the daily management work.

And if they really can't do it anymore, they can just rent the sugarcane forest to other people in the village, and collect 537 to yuan per mu per month, which is also a way out. There are more than mu of sugarcane in this village, and a total of five purchasing teams have completed the harvesting work. During this period, the trucks responsible for transporting raw sugar have made several consecutive trips and delivered tons of raw sugar to the Daxin County Sugar Factory of Hucheng Sugar Industry.

Currently, out of the 53 mu of sugarcane fields in Daxin County, about 21 mu have been converted to sugarcane, and the rest are still planting traditional sugarcane.

However, as January began and Hucheng Sugar Industry continued to harvest liquid sugar, many sugarcane farmers who grew traditional sugarcane were also shocked.

Fang Jianqiang just returned home.

A middle-aged man with one finger missing suddenly jumped up from his sofa and asked, "Da Qiang, how much did you sell the sugar solution for today?"

Fang Jianqiang, who had just opened the door, was startled: "Damn! You scared me to death!"

"When did you become so timid?"

"If you have something to say, say it quickly. If you have to fart, fart quickly." Fang Jianqiang picked up the teapot filled with mango leaves and gulped down a few sips.

The middle-aged man rubbed his hands together and smiled obscenely: "Hey, Daqiang, how much did you sell it for today? Tell me."

Fang Jianqiang looked impatient: "Your brother also grows sugarcane, why don't you ask him?"

"Da Qiang, don't mention him. You are making fun of me, right? You know the relationship between him and me." When mentioning his elder brother, the middle-aged man immediately looked unhappy.

"Haha." Putting down the teapot, Fang Jianqiang said, "It's about 300 yuan per mu. If you want to plant it, go to Hucheng Sugar Industry in the county to register. If you don't want to plant it, forget it."

"Only over 300 yuan? Isn't that too little?"

"I say, Erdou, you're already complaining about it before you even start planting?" Fang Jianqiang was speechless.

Fang Shuangde expressed his doubts: "Didn't they say that one mu can earn eight or nine hundred yuan?"

Hearing this question, Fang Jianqiang was speechless: "Haha, when you were in school, it was okay for you to sleep in class, and you only listened to half of the seminar. They said clearly that it would reach 800 to 900 yuan per month from the fourth year, and it also requires reasonable maintenance. If you still have this attitude, I advise you not to grow it anymore."

"No! Daqiang, I really want to plant it. It's too tiring to cut sugarcane every year. If the purchase price they gave was not too low, I would have planted it long ago." Fang Shuangde excused himself.

"Still low? Are you kidding me? They're already doing pretty good at one yuan per pound. Think about it, if we plant this kind of sugarcane throughout Hucheng in the future, do you know how much sugar we can harvest in a year?"

"How many?"

"If it reaches its peak, it can produce about 2000 million tons of sugarcane a year."

“How much is 2000 million tons?”

"Do you know how much sugar cane our country produced last year?"

"I don't know." Fang Shuangde looked confused.

“About 900 million tons.”

"Gurgle..." Fang Shuangde swallowed his saliva subconsciously.

"Now you know why one yuan per pound is a fair price, right? You will have to plant sugarcane even if you don't want to. Do you think the sugar factory is willing to buy it?"

In this situation, the entire industry is forcing sugarcane farmers to eliminate traditional sugarcane. Unless they grow sugarcane as fruit sugarcane, there is no market for it at all.

After all, other sugar factories are not stupid, and even the official authorities cannot suppress this trend.

Currently, the raw material cost of pressing sugar from traditional sugar cane is 4000 yuan per ton of sugar. However, the raw material cost of making sugar from xylitol liquid is only 2000 yuan per ton of sugar.

Any sugar company in its right mind would know which one to choose.

Since this technological innovation occurred domestically, it is impossible for the government to say that the cane sugar liquid is too cheap and forcibly set a purchase guidance price.

Because even if we adopt a relatively high acquisition guidance price now, it will not last for a few years.

As the sugarcane planting area in Guangxi and Lingnan continues to expand, it will soon exceed the domestic demand ceiling, forcing the market to lower prices.

It should be noted that the three sugar subsidiaries of Hailufeng Company have promoted the planting of 84 mu of sugarcane in Guangxi Province and Leizhou Peninsula in Lingnan.

Even though this is the first year of harvest, the average yield per mu is only about 168 kilograms per month, which is also a very scary number.

This means that Hailufeng Company's sugarcane production capacity this year will reach 170 million tons, equivalent to about 18.9% of the national production capacity last year.

And if you look at the reactions of sugarcane farmers in Daxin County who have already planted sugarcane, you will know that they all hope to expand the planting area.

Even if Hailufeng Company controls the planting quota and limits the planting area to about 300 million mu, during the peak production period, the annual production capacity will be nearly 1500 million tons of sugar cane.

This production capacity is basically the same as the current annual domestic sugar consumption.

Once the domestic market is saturated and production costs decrease, the price of sugar cane will inevitably be aligned with the international market.

Moreover, as domestic sugarcane production capacity soars, the already sluggish sugar prices in the international market will fall further. After all, the country will import about 600 million tons less sugarcane, which is a very scary surplus and is not a production capacity that other regions can easily absorb.

In fact, the futures trading price of international white sugar began to fall continuously more than half a year ago, but because sugarcane was not actually produced on a large scale, there was no direct reflection in the physical market.

Now the international white sugar futures trading price for January has plummeted in an instant, reaching the lowest level in recent decades. The price of sugar per ton in the futures market is currently 423 US dollars, equivalent to 3045 Chinese yuan.

Of course, this sudden plunge is not the real physical market transaction price.

The market will adjust itself, eliminate some of the excess sugarcane planting area, and finally restore to a relatively reasonable price.

However, it will take one or two years of market turmoil for this price to be initially adjusted.

Since last year, major domestic sugar factories including East Asia Sugar, Nanhua Sugar, Guangxi Sugar, and Hunan-Guangxi Sugar have required sugarcane farmers to switch to sugarcane or other cash crops as soon as possible.

Because the current sugarcane planting quota given by Hailufeng Company is only 350 million acres in total.

These sugar mills have long been fed up with the days of continuous losses. They want to change the entire ecology of the sugar industry through sugarcane and achieve better profits.

Sugarcane farmers in various places also began to split up, with some trying to switch to growing sugarcane, some planting fruit sugarcane, and some switching to other cash crops.

For example, sugarcane farmers in Yunnan Province, except for those who grow fruit sugarcane, have all switched to growing other cash crops.

The government has also begun to guide planting to prevent sugarcane farmers from switching to rubber trees, because rubber trees are also on the decline. The rubber grass planting area of ​​Hailufeng Company in the southern part of the desert will reach about 50 acres this year.

Planting rubber trees now is definitely a dead end. Before the rubber trees even enter the tapping period, they will encounter large-scale mass-produced rubber grass, and the rubber tree industry will be crushed in an instant.

Therefore, the cash crops that were changed to be planted this time mainly focus on coffee, cocoa, mangosteen, cashew nuts and other cash crops that were relatively seldom planted in the country before.

Especially in places where rubber trees were planted before, it is likely that they will be replaced by cocoa and cashew trees in the future.

There is no way, industrial upgrading is so cruel.

At the same time, the government has begun to gradually expand nature reserves in various places, and abandoned some orchards and farmland with relatively fragile environments or close to nature reserves.

Generally speaking, although this industrial upgrade will cause some farmers to lose their jobs, the newly added industries can absorb this part of the excess labor force.

After all, as the country begins to rapidly enter an aging and declining birthrate society, a reduction in the rural labor force is inevitable.

This time, some remote rural areas were directly listed as nature reserves, which on the one hand alleviated environmental pressure and on the other hand achieved the readjustment of the labor force.

After all, using less arable land and manpower is an acceptable result as long as the internal demand for agricultural products can be guaranteed.

The two are harmful, whichever is the lesser.

Various adjustments in agriculture are already ongoing at an almost non-stop pace.

This technological innovation initiated by Hailufeng Company has begun to have a comprehensive impact across the country and even the world.

It has even come to the point where the rhythm of production relations needs to be adjusted.

Now all parts of Southeast Asia have become silent.

Because they found that Seris has made great progress in recent years and has been developing in all aspects, many of which are earth-shaking changes.

Their tropical fruit industry, which they thought was guaranteed to produce a good harvest regardless of drought or flood, fell into trouble almost overnight. If Seris wanted to, he could destroy any of their fruit industries at any time.

Even maintaining relatively restrained production now makes them very uncomfortable.

When the world's largest industrial system and the world's largest agricultural system are integrated, the whole world will tremble.

Moreover, the world's largest agricultural system also solves part of the mining demand. For example, steel, aluminum alloys, copper, rubber, plastics, oil, natural gas, and coal all have substitutes derived from the agricultural system.

The only remaining industries of European and American forces are the electronics industry, software industry, precision instrument industry, and medical industry.

Other industries are either crushed or on par with each other.

Even now, the medical and software industries in Europe and the United States are in a precarious situation.

For example, Hailufeng Company's new antibiotics and Yulin protein; the medical nanosensors and nano-scalpels developed in cooperation between Hailufeng Company and China Guangfa University; and the serum rice that is currently entering mass production in China. These achievements are constantly emerging in the medical field.

In the software industry, although China lags behind in some professional software, it does not mean that it has no ability to fight back. At least there are alternative software products.

The only two relatively difficult industries are probably precision instruments and semiconductors.

(End of this chapter)