Chapter 366 - 176: Planning

Chapter 366: Chapter 176: Planning

He discovered that once the variable of Immortal Soybeans was introduced into the domestic agricultural system, the country no longer faced any significant scarcity of staple resources like grain, oilseeds, fodder, and sugar crops.

This situation, in turn, made it surprisingly difficult for the Hailufeng Company to find an agricultural product suitable for large-scale cultivation in the Kerchin Desert.

As for produce like fruits and vegetables, they clearly couldn’t sustain a scale of 5 million mu. Forcing their cultivation would not only crash the entire market but would also be a thankless endeavor, potentially leading to a complete loss on the investment.

He now needed to find suitable crops, which required careful consideration of all aspects.

As his thoughts churned, Jiang Miao’s eyes fell upon a box of cherries Shuya had just brought in. He opened it, picked out a cherry grown in Qilu Province, rinsed it under cool water, and took a bite. A deliciously sweet and tart flavor filled his mouth.

He immediately began researching all sorts of information on cherries.

After reviewing the information, Jiang Miao concluded that it was possible to grow cherries in the Kerchin Desert. However, it would require selecting cold-hardy varieties with Lucia and Maple Country lineage. It would also need supplemental irrigation, as cherries thrive on water and require an environment with 500–600 millimeters of annual precipitation.

He had already devised solutions for the potential problems of growing cherries in the Kerchin Desert.

Directly breeding a new variety was the most straightforward approach, but also one that would yield results slowly.

Therefore, he opted for transgenic grafting, using a close relative of the cherry—the European plum, or prune—as the transgenic rootstock.

Despite having "European" in its name, the European plum actually originated from the river valleys west of the Tianshan Mountain Range in the Western Regions.

Using the European plum as a transgenic rootstock offered another advantage: since its fruit ripens around September each year, they could avoid competing with the harvest times of domestic and South American cherries.

Jiang Miao was confident that by adjusting the nutrient supply and the timing of special pheromone production in the transgenic rootstock, he could make the grafted cherries ripen between August and November in the Northern Hemisphere.

After adding cherries to the list of development products, Jiang Miao referenced cultivation scales both domestically and abroad and allocated 2 million mu for cherry orchards.

And for the remaining 3 million mu...

He decided to follow the same model he used for the cherries: develop a transgenic sumac to graft pistachios onto, and plant 2 million mu of pistachios.

Both Chinese sumac and pistachios are small trees in the sumac family. Moreover, Chinese sumac can adapt to the climate of the Northeast and has decent salt and alkali tolerance. With transgenic modification, it would be the perfect host for pistachios.

The final 1 million mu would be designated for breeding, experiments, livestock farming, processing plants, and other supporting facilities.

The thought of supporting facilities made Jiang Miao realize he also needed to carefully plan the value-added processing layout for the entire Kerchin agricultural base.

The tens of millions of mu of soybeans and five million mu of peanuts would produce a substantial amount of soybean oil and peanut oil each year.

The peanut oil was fine and could be sold as cheap cooking oil. The quality of the soybean oil, however, was too poor. Jiang Miao had no intention of selling it for consumption; instead, he planned to use it to produce biodiesel.

The biodiesel industry was sure to be a promising emerging sector in the country’s future.

On this point, Jiang Miao’s vision extended far beyond anyone else’s.

The Hailufeng Company’s Immortal Soybean and new oil-seed camellia varieties were set to change the domestic landscape for animal feed and cooking oil. In such a scenario, the future of soybean oil was squeezed from both sides.

On one hand, domestic soybean production would skyrocket, causing soybean oil production to surge. On the other hand, camellia oil would capture a large portion of soybean oil’s market share for cooking oil.

Production would soar while market demand would fall.

The consequences were easy to imagine.

Pushed out of the cooking oil market, soybean oil could only be redirected for industrial purposes. However, the demand for many of its industrial applications was limited.

Currently, the industrial uses for soybean oil were mainly concentrated in biodiesel, paint, coatings, lubricants, grease, soap, detergents, and ink.

Among these applications, only biodiesel had the potential to consume twenty to thirty million tons of soybean oil in the future.

Establishing a biodiesel industry would also allow the Hailufeng Company’s logistics systems and various agricultural machines to run on their own fuel, further reducing operational costs.

Of course, the cooking oil business wasn’t completely off the table. They could, for example, export soybean cooking oil. The vast number of third-world countries were in need of cheap cooking oil.

The country could even use imported genetically modified soybean oil to produce biodiesel, while oil pressed from domestically grown soybeans could be manufactured into cooking oil for export.

The soybean meal from those genetically modified soybeans could also be used to produce feed for export, or be exported directly to Southeast Asian and South Asian countries.

After mapping out the supporting industries for soybeans, Jiang Miao turned his thoughts to the ancillary industries for his other crops.

Cherries and pistachios were relatively simple.

Pistachios generally only required simple processing before being sold wholesale or retail, so a single pistachio processing plant would suffice.

Cherries would require cold storage facilities and a packaging plant.

Peanuts required a peanut oil processing plant. The peanut press cake left after oil extraction could be used for animal feed, fertilizer, peanut butter, or for extracting peanut protein.

The Hevea Plant would need a rubber processing plant. The remaining pomace and leaves could be used to extract inulin. Finally, the leftover cellulose and hemicellulose could be used as consumables for microbial fuel cells.