Agricultural giant since 1983

Chapter 341 Non-GMO Breeding
"Boss, I've heard of Monsanto. Aren't they engaged in chemical industry? Why are they starting to breed soybeans again? And the leader in the field of soybean breeding should be the American Pioneer Company, right? How did it become Monsanto? They breed How far ahead of our soybean seeds are you?" Lin Weimin raised his hand and asked, the international news transmission is far less developed than later generations, so even if he is a practitioner in the soybean breeding industry, he does not know the latest international developments, even Monsanto The name is also occasionally seen in periodicals and magazines, but I just have a preliminary impression, and it is not clear how powerful Monsanto is.

"Monsanto is an American company founded in 1901. It was indeed a chemical company at the beginning. The boss of Monsanto has a good vision. He made a fortune by manufacturing and selling saccharin in the early days, especially after reaching a cooperation agreement with Coca-Cola!" Li Lei According to the introduction, saccharin does have a sweet taste, but its nutritional value is far from that of sucrose. However, because the cost of chemical synthesis is much lower than that of planting sugarcane and then squeezing sugar, it will soon replace sucrose in large quantities in the industrial food production process, bringing Coca-Cola a Here comes more profit.

"After that, they made other food additives, such as caffeine, aspartame, and vanillin. Through these projects, Monsanto accumulated enough capital to start entering the chemical industry, first producing PCBs, and then starting Manufacture of DDT, the abuse of this pesticide has triggered the rise of environmentalism in the United States, and the book "Silent Spring" was born because of DDT!" In other words, Monsanto is the culprit of human destruction, if they do not After DDT came out, there would be no book "Silent Spring". Without this book, Ye Wenjie would not have entered the Red Bank base, and would have had no chance to contact Trisolarans. Humans might still be able to hide well on the earth, no be discovered by aliens.

“During the Vietnam War, Monsanto supplied a large amount of Agent Orange to the U.S. military. The U.S. military sprinkled the agent orange in the jungles of Vietnam. Within a few days, the leaves of the jungle almost fell off. After that, the Vietnamese people were deeply affected by Agent Orange for many years. A large number of deformed children appeared." Monsanto has too much dark history.

"After the Vietnam War, Monsanto began to enter the field of biology. They invented glyphosate herbicide, which is very effective. However, the problem is that glyphosate will attack weeds indiscriminately. Weeds can be sprayed incorrectly and even crops are killed, but in the eyes of Monsanto, any problem can be turned into a business opportunity, if we can breed glyphosate-resistant seeds, wouldn’t we be rich?”

"Soon, Monsanto discovered that glyphosate is too powerful and it will kill everyone, but there is a nemesis, that is, petunia, so Monsanto introduced the glyphosate-resistant gene in petunia into soybeans, and once A genetically modified soybean that is not afraid of glyphosate was born, so the cost of planting soybeans was reduced by 1/3, the yield was 1/3 higher, and the oil yield was 15% higher. After loading the soybeans on a ship, transporting them across the ocean to China, and paying tariffs and other fees, the cost of these soybeans is still only half of that of our local soybeans, and the oil yield is higher! If we cannot cultivate our own improved varieties in the future Soybeans, the soybeans in our country can only rely on imports!"

"Import? Does our country need so many soybeans? Isn't it still exporting a large amount of soybeans to foreign countries every year?" Yang Huineng couldn't help interjecting. He still knew the data.

"It was true in the 80s. Our country can export millions of tons of soybeans every year, but since entering the 90s, this data has been declining, while the quantity of imported soybeans has continued to increase! Although this year's data has not yet come out, according to As far as I know, the import and export of soybeans has reversed, and the total amount of imported soybeans has begun to exceed exports! And this trend will intensify in the future!” Since 1996, China has become a pure soybean importer.

Moreover, the total import volume has been increasing year after year. In 1999, it was only about 400 million tons. In 2000, it jumped to tens of millions of tons. In 03, it exceeded 2000 million tons. In 07, it exceeded 3000 million tons. When Li Lei crossed over, Soybean imports are close to [-] million tons.

"What's the reason?" Lin Weimin and others have always been obsessed with soybean breeding, but they don't know much about the domestic soybean market consumption. This is also a common problem among researchers nowadays, and they are too seriously derailed from the market.

"There are many reasons. The first is the competition between soybeans and corn. The planting seasons of soybeans and corn are exactly the same. If corn is planted on the same land, soybeans cannot be planted. However, the yield and economic value of corn are higher than those of soybeans. Over the past few years, the acreage of corn planted in China has been increasing, but soybeans have been decreasing!" The country also supports this change, because from a strategic point of view, corn is much more important than soybeans.

"It seems to be the case. Not to mention other places, in our farm alone, the land for soybeans has become less and less in the past few years, and they have been replaced with corn! Because corn makes so much money! The same acre of land, planting Corn is much more cost-effective than growing soybeans!" Lin Weimin remembered.

"The second reason is the common people's pursuit of a better life. Our Huinong has the largest private farm in the country, raising millions of pigs, hundreds of millions of chickens, and hundreds of thousands of cattle and sheep, which need to be consumed every year. A large amount of feed, and soybean meal is the main raw material of feed; now the number of pigs, chickens, cattle, and sheep in China is increasing rapidly, which also drives the demand for soybean meal. "

"In addition to making soybean meal, soybeans also have another use, which is to extract oil. We Chinese not only increase the consumption of meat and eggs, but also the consumption of edible oil. These two fields require a large amount of soybeans. On top of tofu, soy milk, bean curd and other derivatives, the soybeans produced every year in China can no longer meet the needs of the people, so they can only be imported from abroad.”

"The third reason involves international competition. Now our country is applying to join the World Trade Organization. You may not know what the specific meaning is. I will simply say that after joining the World Trade Organization, our country's imports and exports Products will become easier, which is definitely a good thing in general terms, but when it comes to soybeans, we will face strong challenges!"

"The country will definitely maintain the safety of the three major staple foods of wheat, rice, and corn. Soybeans can't be controlled, and the current arable land area of ​​our country cannot grow enough soybeans under the premise of ensuring the safety of staple foods. In the future, the shortage of soybeans will only get bigger and bigger!"

"If this is the case, it may not be a bad thing, right? Since foreign soybeans are cheaper, we can import them. As for the ordinary people who used to grow soybeans, let them grow corn instead! Anyway, corn itself is more profitable than soybeans. !” Yang Huineng was completely unaware of the seriousness of this matter. The common people today have not experienced the baptism of the trade war, and China and the United States are in the honeymoon period. They don’t think this is a bad thing.

Hey, I'm still too young, looking at the problem too simply, sometimes too simple, Li Lei shook his head, "The reason why the price of soybeans is cheap now is that our demand for soybeans is small, and domestic soybean production is barely maintained above the safety line , so Monsanto still dare not raise prices! In the future, when our annual soybean imports increase to tens of millions of tons, and domestic production cannot make up for this loophole, then we can only let others slaughter us!"

"Let me tell you two stories. The first story happened in the Spring and Autumn Period of our country. At that time, there was Hengshan State between Qi State and Lu State. Although Hengshan State was small, its geographical location was very important. Both Qi State and Lu State wanted to take it. However, Hengshan Kingdom is very good at making war equipment, direct attack will definitely cause heavy losses, and then other countries will take advantage of it! So Qi Guoguo Guan Zhong thought of a way, that is, to buy Hengshan Kingdom's equipment at a high price, this move triggered In a chain reaction, the surrounding Yan Kingdom panicked first, they thought that Qi State was buying equipment to beat them, so he quickly stepped up his preparations and also went to Hengshan State to buy equipment, even if the price increased ten times.”

"Hengshan thought that there was an opportunity to make a fortune, so it hurriedly expanded production. Even when there was no one to plant the fields, the farmers ran to make equipment; at this time, Guan Zhong resorted to the second trick, buying grain at a high price, and buying grain from the market. All the food was received by Qi State! When there was no more food in the market, Guan Zhong tore up the contract, not only did not want Hengshan’s equipment, but also did not supply them with food. Hengshan had no choice but to surrender!”

"This incident is called the Hengshan conspiracy in the history books. Later, Guan Zhong repeated his tricks, raising the price of Lu's silk so that the Lu people would give up farming and go to weaving, and use grain to make Lu surrender; and then go to Lai and Ju The two countries bought firewood, went to Chu to buy deerskins, and went to Dai to buy fox furs, using food as a weapon to defeat several countries in a row, and achieved the hegemony of Qi."

"The second story happened in modern times. After the war in Afghanistan, the United States first imposed a food embargo on the Soviet Union. Gorbachev used gold reserves to survive this crisis; after the successor Reagan found that this strategy was not working, he adopted more A clever means, he first lifted the ban, used the liberalization of grain trade to paralyze the Soviet Union, allowing the Soviet Union to use the foreign exchange earned from exporting oil to buy grain, and at the same time raised the price of oil to make the Soviet Union think it was a profitable thing. Let your guard down!"

"When the Soviet Union became deeply dependent on the food of the United States, the United States made a sudden move, first united with the Middle East countries to increase oil production, and raised the international oil price from 30 US dollars to 12 US dollars. Using the global food production reduction to raise food prices, the Soviet Union The exported oil cannot be exchanged for enough food, and their gold reserves were almost exhausted before. The Soviet Union soon experienced food shortages, and the people were extremely disappointed. Coupled with a series of other means, the red giant eventually collapsed. down!"

The two stories made the meeting room quiet. They finally understood how important food security is. Li Lei took a sip of almond milk to moisten his throat and continued, "In the long run, our country's staple food security will not be too big. Problem! The last possible problem is soybeans. Since the reform and opening up, our life has become better and better. This year, all kinds of tickets have been canceled. If you want to buy meat, you can buy meat, if you want to buy oil, you can buy oil, eat It's getting more and more oily!"

"But in the future, if the United States repeats its tricks and cuts off our soybeans, it will definitely not be a problem to eat enough, but it will be impossible if we want to eat more meat and oil. None of us want to go back to the old way of buying meat and oil. When you have to wait in line with a ticket, right?" Li Lei looked at the crowd, all present were people who had experienced the era of material shortage, and they had unforgettable memories of the embarrassment at that time.

"Then what can we do? You also said just now that domestic arable land cannot meet the demand for growing soybeans at all!" Lin Weimin asked with a frown.

"There is only one way, and that is to hold the soybean seeds in our own hands. As long as we can grow better soybeans than Monsanto! Then they will have no way to cut off our soybean supply! On the one hand, we can use less land to grow soybeans. More soybeans, coupled with the continuous increase in the production of corn, rice, and wheat, the area of ​​arable land required to provide the same amount of staple food will continue to decrease, and the gap in the land area required to grow soybeans will also become smaller and smaller!" Li Lei said The words are just to comfort them. In fact, even if the yield of staple food continues to increase in the future, the arable land needed to grow soybeans will be more than [-] million mu.

That's why there are projects such as seawater rice. The emergence of salt-resistant crops can make use of land that could not be used to grow crops. This is equivalent to increasing the land area and reducing the gap in cultivated land.

"On the other hand, we can cooperate with friendly countries to provide them with soybean seeds and diversify soybean import channels. If the United States does not sell us soybeans, we can also import soybeans from Brazil, Argentina and other countries! In this way, they will have no choice Lock us up! If soybean seeds are still controlled by Monsanto, then they can threaten these countries to stand in the same trench with them by cutting off the seed supply!" South America is the main soybean producing area, but almost all soybeans there are controlled by American companies Controlled, "So your work is very important. It's up to you whether you can help our country maintain the food security barrier!"

Li Lei's words made these young people's blood pumping and excited. Li Lei's wages have allowed them to basically not have to worry about life. According to Maslow's theory of needs, at this time, people often need some They have more ambitious goals to drive themselves forward, and the national security issues brought up by Li Lei just added new meaning to their lives.

Lin Weimin and the others wanted to go back to the lab to work now, but after calming down, they asked a new question, "Boss, you said just now that Monsanto uses genetically modified breeding technology? Should we also use this technology?" We don’t know much about this technology, do we?”

"No, we're going to use non-GMO breeding!"

(End of this chapter)