Chapter 349: Cooperation and Advancement

Chapter 349: Cooperation and Advancement

Chapter 349: Cooperation and Advancement
The Sky City is testing the electromagnetic catapult device step by step.

After entering 2030, Seris's internal development has been accelerating.

One of the most obvious industries is the cultivation of herbaceous crops such as vegetables and flowers.

Southern Yunnan.

Relying on the rich local tropical, subtropical and alpine temperate herbaceous plant resources, the flower planting industry here has flourished in recent years.

At the same time, various small towns and villages began to decline at an accelerated pace during this round of industrial upgrading, and can even be described as extinct.

The fundamental reason for this phenomenon is the change in production mode, which in turn forced the outflow of population from rural areas and small towns, thus accelerating the decline of towns and villages.

After all, people have moved out, and towns will naturally decline.

For example, the Nujiang River Valley area in southern Yunnan at this time.

There are only six cities left in the valley, and the other towns in the area have almost no population.

The newly built Nujiang Lushui New City is a typical new immigrant city under the current background. It has a population of 60 and an urban layout of six districts. These new urban areas are arranged on both sides of the river valley and expanded by leveling the mountains on both sides.

Lushui New City is located in the middle and lower reaches of the Nujiang River Valley.

In fact, the entire Nujiang River Valley will undergo a second integration in the future, because Seris does not intend to continue to maintain cities with a population of less than five million. Those cities with too small populations will be fully merged.

The core industry of Lushui New City is flowers and plants.

The six districts in the area all have very clear functions, such as Shantai District which serves as an airport, Baihua District which serves as agricultural production, and Lushui District which serves as a medical and educational center.

At this time in the Baihua District, dozens of local flower producers came to the branch building of the Hailufeng Group established here.

A middle-aged man with a bald head and a tan, handed over a cigarette and asked quietly, "Old Li, how are you doing recently?"

The middle-aged man who took his cigarette was a square-faced man in his forties. His skin was also relatively dark, and it was obvious that he often worked outdoors.

Old Li lit up the Yuxi in his hand and said, "Huh...what else can I do? The weather is still not good this year. The harvest from my flower garden in town is less than half of last year's."

The bald man looked surprised: "Aren't you running a greenhouse? Why are you still like this?"

“Haha, can a greenhouse ignore the weather? Do you think I’m running a fully controlled indoor farm like the one in Jianhai and Lufeng? Huh…” Old Li shook his head while smoking.

"I don't know what the people from Hailufeng Group invited us to do this time?" The bald man guessed in confusion.

While smoking, Old Li couldn't help but complain: "Who knows, but Lushui New City is so big, there are empty houses everywhere, who will live in so many houses! We can't let everyone in the village move into the city, right?"

"Yes!" Another colleague also complained bitterly.

In fact, Lushui's flower industry is not strong. Although Lao Li and others have a good name, they are actually just large farmers who contract the land in the village to grow flowers and horticultural plants. The scale of their planting is generally not large, mostly between tens of acres and hundreds of acres.

At the same time, they also couldn't understand why such a large new urban area should be built, after all, the local population was only more than 200,000.

Just when Lao Li and others were daydreaming, Zheng Tingyu, manager of the Lushui branch of Hailufeng Group, appeared in front of everyone with several agricultural technicians.

Upon seeing this, Lao Li, Baldy and others quickly threw the cigarette into the mineral water bottle.

Although Zheng Tingyu smokes, his assistant still asks the employees below to use forced indoor ventilation to remove the odor from the conference room. After all, not everyone smokes.

He glanced at the flower production company owners present, then smiled and clapped his hands:
clap clap clap...

All of a sudden, everyone's eyes were focused on him.

"Happy New Year, everyone. On behalf of Hailufeng Group, I would like to wish you all a happy New Year in advance. I wish you all good health and all the best in the new year. I won't say much else. Let's open our hearts and talk about the purpose of inviting all the bosses this time."

Old Li, Baldy and others immediately listened attentively to Zheng Tingyu's words.

Although we don't know what Hailufeng Group is up to, as the leader of the domestic agricultural industry, it is definitely no small matter that Hailufeng Group specially invited them to participate in the meeting.

Therefore, everyone attaches great importance to it, fearing that they will miss any important content.

Zheng Tingyu smiled and continued, "Our company has recently developed a new technology called universal rootstock..."

His assistant synchronized the information on the computer and played the detailed content on the big screen in the conference room.

At the same time, the same content is displayed synchronously on the tablet computers specially used by participants on everyone's desk.

Zheng Tingyu on the stage continued to explain.

The bosses of the flower production companies in the audience also quickly browsed this so-called "universal rootstock" technology.

After a quick glance, Lao Li's eyes were filled with shock. He couldn't help but mutter in a low voice: "There is actually such a technology..."

Ten minutes later, Zheng Tingyu finished explaining part of the technology, and estimated that everyone had almost finished reading it, so he said:
"Everyone has seen most of it. If you have any questions, you can ask them."

The bald guy next to Lao Li was the first to lose patience and tapped the microphone on the table: "Hello, Manager Zheng, I would like to ask, can this technology only be used for planting in high-standard fully controlled indoor farms?"

Zheng Tingyu nodded and said, "Yes, because in order to exert the yield-increasing effect of the universal rootstock, it must be done in a room with high concentrations of carbon dioxide and oxygen, which can only be done in a fully controlled indoor farm."

"This...we don't have the money to invest in this kind of indoor farm!" the bald man reminded helplessly.

However, Zheng Tingyu smiled and continued, "I know that it is difficult for everyone to come up with tens of millions to invest in indoor farms at once. This is another reason why we invited everyone to attend this meeting. Our company plans to rent out part of the indoor farms in Lushui New City."

"rent?"

"That's something to consider..."

"I just don't know how much the rent is?"

Zheng Tingyu knows that many people are concerned about the rent issue: "Don't worry about the rent issue. The unified rental price for all indoor farms is 6000 yuan per mu per year. Water and electricity fees are charged at market prices. Here is a cost estimate table for our company's internal trial production. You can refer to it..."

Once again, a new file appeared on everyone's desktop tablet.

Old Li quickly opened the folder, scanned it quickly, and then started to calculate in his mind.

Based on the current water and electricity charges, and the production costs assessed internally by the Hailufeng Group, he roughly estimated the cost.

Taking the universal rose rootstock that Hailufeng Group can provide as an example, its per-acre yield of fresh cut roses is almost 8 times that of ordinary greenhouses.

If the annual rent is only 6000 yuan, he thinks it is worth investing. Moreover, Lao Li also found another benefit, that is, the planting buildings invested and built by Hailufeng Group are concentrated in Baihua District, Linhe District, and Yunshan District. After the fresh cut flowers are harvested, they can be directly packaged and then directly sold to various parts of the Asian Federation through the airport.

As the median annual income of residents across the Asian Commonwealth has exceeded 5.8 yuan, residents' consumption to improve their quality of life is in a stage of rapid expansion.

For example, fresh cut flowers, which were previously consumed only during holidays, are now becoming an increasingly common consumer product in daily life.

This is also the internal motivation for Hailufeng Group to increase investment in indoor cultivation in southern Yunnan.

Of course, there is another important reason, which is the global climate anomaly, which has led to increasing uncertainty in open-air cultivation, and even greenhouse cultivation faces the negative impact of climate fluctuations.

In addition, it is to expand the area of ​​wildlife reserves and return some of the poor mountains and bad waters to wildlife.

Lao Li and others naturally didn't know the plan from above, nor did they know that the Hailufeng Group had accepted the mission, but they were indeed attracted.

After all, the yield per mu is 8 times higher than that in a greenhouse, which contains huge benefits.

As long as it is profitable, there will naturally be people willing to rent these indoor farms.

With Zheng Tingyu's detailed answers, everyone had a comprehensive understanding of the universal rootstock technology and indoor farm leasing.

Some people have made up their minds and are ready to enter this new industry right away.

Some people are still hesitant and think they should wait and see for a while.

Others scoffed, thinking that if the Hailufeng Group launched this kind of business, everyone would be competing on a few varieties of flowers. Even if they could make money, it would probably be small profits but quick turnover, which would be worse than the high-quality horticultural plants they were doing now.

Although not everyone was interested, at least 70% of the dozens of flower production business owners present expressed their desire to discuss cooperation in detail.

Zheng Tingyu did not say anything cold to those who had no intention of cooperating. Instead, he asked his assistant to see them off and gave them a New Year gift. After all, business is not about kindness and righteousness, and there is no need to fight and kill in business.

Among those who stayed behind, Lao Li and Baldy were in a small reception room, discussing some things while waiting for the cooperation negotiation representative from Hailufeng Group.

"Old Li, what are you going to plant?"

The bald man was flipping through a document on universal rootstocks. There were universal rootstocks for various horticultural plants on it, but there were indeed not many types, only six major categories at present.

For example, the more common universal rootstock of the Rosaceae family.

Old Li thought for a while, then pointed to the page about roses and said, "Rosaceae rootstocks are better."

The bald man touched his broad forehead and said, "No? Brother, don't you think there is too much competition for roses?"

But Lao Li had a short-sighted expression: "Haha, the Rosaceae family is not only about roses, but also peach blossoms, cherry blossoms, plum blossoms, and pear blossoms. Moreover, the Rosaceae family is relatively easy to graft. Do you have any experience in grafting other families, such as Asteraceae, Orchidaceae, Lamiaceae, Liliaceae, and Magnoliaceae?"

"Uh..." The bald man finally reacted, and then he said like a chicken pecking at rice: "Brother, you are more experienced. Then I will do Rosaceae like you."

As an experienced person, Lao Li gave advice: "We should eat one bite at a time. Let's start with the familiar roses, and then other rose family cut flowers. If we want to grow other flowers, we should try a small area first, and don't go all in at once. Otherwise, if something goes wrong, we can't afford it."

"That's right, that's right." The bald man was pounding garlic.

If it weren't for the fact that the bald man had saved his life, Lao Li would not have given him such advice.

The two chatted for about half an hour, and then three staff members knocked on the door and came in.

"Hello! Two bosses, I am Huang Yucheng who is in charge of this business negotiation..."

"Hello! I'm Li..."

After a few people introduced themselves to each other, they began business negotiations.

Hearing that both Lao Li and Baldy had chosen the Rosaceae rootstock, Huang Yucheng took out another cooperation document and started to sell it to the two of them:

“…I wonder if you two are interested in planting the Blue Balcony rose variety.”

"Blue Balcony? A new variety?" Old Li frowned.

Huang Yucheng smiled and explained: "This is a genetically modified variety cultivated by a flower research laboratory under our company. It has passed the variety review and is allowed to be planted and sold. This is also one of our company's patented varieties."

Then the details of the Blue Balcony were given. It is actually a genetically modified rose, and a true blue rose.

Originally, horticultural companies around the world rarely use genetic modification technology for rose breeding because it is not cost-effective and rose varieties are easily stolen. Many gardening enthusiasts don't care whether you have patents or not. They secretly carry out cuttings, and breeding companies cannot detect them at all.

But the situation has been different in recent years.

For example, the domestic Sirius Rose Company, which used to prefer traditional hybrid breeding, chose to cooperate with the Hailufeng Group last year and began to invest in genetically modified breeding.

The fundamental reason for this change is mainly the high maturity of transgenic technology, the continuous decline in various costs, and the shortening of the breeding cycle from the previous five or six years to the current one or two years, or even a few months.

That’s right, just a few months.

The rose breeding project jointly carried out by Sirius Rose Company and Hailufeng Group, through the use of universal rootstocks of the Rosaceae family, fully controlled indoor farms, high concentrations of carbon dioxide and oxygen, and the initial selection of the Nuwa system, can shorten the rose variety breeding cycle to about 10 months at the shortest.

During this period, one generation of selection can be completed every two and a half months. Generally, after three or four generations of selection, the stability, disease resistance, heat resistance, cold resistance, etc. of a new variety can be basically determined.

Completing the cultivation of new varieties of roses in such a short time also means that the overall cost is lower than traditional hybrid breeding.

Genetically modified technology can create many new traits that natural roses do not have.

For example, the blue balcony rose that Huang Yucheng sold to Lao Li and his friend has a blue color that is not found in natural roses.

Old Li did not agree immediately, but asked cautiously: "Salesman Huang, how is the patent fee calculated?"

"1000 yuan per mu per year."

Old Li touched his chin and said, "1000? This price is not bad, but if other flower gardens are secretly cultivating..."

Huang Yucheng smiled and replied, "Haha, Boss Li, you still don't trust our Hailufeng Group? If it's just a personal gardening enthusiast, it's fine to plant it secretly, but if it's sold as a commodity, our company's service department and commercial investigation office will not tolerate it."

Hearing this, Lao Li was suddenly awakened. He almost forgot how powerful the Hailufeng Group was.

In fact, no company or individual operator in China dares to infringe on the patents of Hailufeng Group at will. Those who dare to do so have already been sued to the point of bankruptcy.

(End of this chapter)