In autumn, the Central Plains land, endless wheat fields, a piece of green.

There is a very popular saying in the national grain industry that "the whole country looks at Henan Province with wheat", which is enough to show that the wheat production in Henan Province plays a pivotal role in the country. It can be said that any enterprise interested in the wheat industry cannot ignore Henan Province.

In this busy winter wheat sowing season, another group of people are working non-stop to connect with land trustees and farmers, planning to build a larger area of high-quality wheat base.

Qi Zheng stood in front of his wheat base and listened to Xie Kaiji of Jiagu Agriculture explain: "...... To the east is the wheat base of the National Grain Group, to the west is the contract agriculture base of Wudeli, and to the south is the standard production field of strong gluten wheat of the leading local flour enterprises......"

In the distance, a group of people came by pointing.

Led by a cadre from the Henan Provincial Department of Agriculture, he recognized Qi Zheng at a glance, looked very happy, squinted and smiled: "Qi Dong is also here, is Jiagu really going to increase investment in the wheat industry?"

"There's this plan. Qi Zheng said casually.

A young man behind the cadre laughed and said, "Jiagu is a little late." ”

"Huh?"

The cadres of the Department of Agriculture hurriedly introduced: "This is Guo Kui, the executive president of the Investment Department and the Construction Department of Yihai Kerry. ”

Qi Zheng looked at his tall suit and nodded without speaking.

"How big is Jiagu's goal to build a wheat production base?" Guo Kui said in reverse.

"There's no specific goal, let's see. Qi Zheng glanced at him and told the truth.

Guo Kui laughed twice and said, "Why is Dong Qi stubborn? Jiagu is embarrassed now, right? You don't have much advantage in the wheat industry......

Guo Kui was clearly unfriendly.

In fact, he did have a lot of trouble with Kaya.

Of course, as a competitor, it's normal to see the other party unhappy. But Guo Kui doesn't like Jiagu, and the reason is even more complicated - he feels that Jiagu is a "-stirring stick" in the industry.

In the case of the current wheat industry, he believes that Yihai Kerry's vertically integrated business model is already complete – from raw material sourcing and processing, to marketing, branding, sales and distribution...... Note that at the very top, it only goes deep into the procurement process, and does not involve planting.

However, under the "turmoil" of Jiagu, Yihai Kerry had to make up for the planting and strengthen the integration of the industrial chain before, during and after production.

Although under the chairman's decision, Yihai Kerry decided to go deep into the main wheat producing areas and march to the source, so as to establish a more complete chain to undertake, Guo Kui felt uncomfortable.

This is different from the oil palm plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia in Malaysia – in Malaya and Indonesia, the land is privately owned, and if you invest in a plantation, not only the land is yours, but all the plants on the land and the minerals underneath it are also private.

What about China? All land is owned by the state or collective. When it comes to planting, there is no land ownership that is really constrained, and God knows when the government will take back the lease rights of this piece of land and use it for other purposes.

Yihai Kerry didn't need to take this risk, but now it has been forced by the situation to deal with hundreds or even more farmers, consolidate their land of less than 10 acres each, and provide relevant cultivation technical guidance...... It's all "needless" costs.

It's all to blame for Jiagu's beginning!

The cadres of the Department of Agriculture also noticed Guo Kui's unfriendly attitude and were stunned for a long time. He is a technical cadre, and there is no problem when he talks about cooperation or something normally, but he is dumbfounded when he encounters an emergency, and he interrupts Ai Ai: "Dong Qi, Mr. Guo may not be very clear......

"Still not clear?" Guo Kui stopped in front of him, interrupted him, and said: "Then I'll make it clear, don't look at Jiagu temporarily sitting in the top spot in the field of grain and oil, but in the wheat industry, it is not so easy for you to catch up with us." We have already completed the layout of Kerry, and other companies in the same industry also have their own territory, Jiagu wants to replicate the victory of the rice industry.......

Guo Kui was a little aggressive, which attracted everyone on the other side to look at him.

This also surprised Qi Zheng.

With Guo Kui's age and executive position, combined with his surname, Qi Zheng easily knew his status as a member of the chairman's family. But if it's the chairman of Kerry himself, why does a small figure like him have so much confidence to provoke someone in front of him?

Although judging from the current situation, in the wheat industry, Yihai Kerry is indeed one step ahead of Jiagu.

First of all, the gap between the two sides in scientific research capabilities is not so obvious in the wheat industry - due to the improvement of economic strength and scientific research capabilities, the wheat industry has received a variety of support in terms of human, material and financial resources, and the strength of wheat planting and production has been enhanced due to the situation, since about 2000, China's wheat quality research has accelerated, and a number of high-quality varieties with strong gluten have been bred.

In other words, the wheat industry does not lack improved varieties, but lacks standardized promotion in advantageous producing areas suitable for the growth of high-quality wheat.

And when it comes to advantageous production areas, this is worth mentioning.

The quality formation of wheat is very complex, in addition to being controlled by its own genetic factors, it is also very sensitive to the external geographical environment (latitude, altitude), meteorology (light, temperature difference, rainfall), cultivation management (fertilization, crop rotation), etc., and there are not many areas that are extremely suitable for high-quality wheat production.

There is an internationally recognized "Golden Youmai Zone", which is distributed at 30-60°N and 27-40°S. In China, it is around 40 degrees north latitude, probably in northern Henan, southern Hebei, western Luxi and other places.

Take the north of Henan Province in front of us, located in the Central Plains, belongs to the temperate monsoon climate, the annual rainfall is about 650mm, the spring is not late, the winter is not early, the rain is not waterlogged, the dry is not dry, the sunshine is sufficient, the unique climate is the external cause of high quality and high yield of wheat. In terms of soil source, this is another piece of paste-rich land, and the nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other chemical elements brought by the Yellow River from the high slope of loess every year are attached and enriched in the soil in the planting area, ensuring the fertility of wheat and the replenishment of trace elements.

Special geographical location, suitable temperate climate, good production guarantee conditions - if you want, the professional farmer cooperatives distributed throughout the province can take care of all the troubles of grain planting, and grain planting has become a leisure work that can be harvested with a few phone calls on your mobile phone.

As a result, in this land of high-quality wheat, there are new wheat bases of all the top 10 flour enterprises in China, among which Yihai Kerry has the largest share of contract agriculture.

The advantageous production area is no less than other factors, accounting for a piece less, and the latecomer Jiagu seems to be at a disadvantage.

But it's not the turn of the other party to be ashamed.

In the face of a foreigner, whose status is not equal, Qi Zheng has nothing to take into account, pouting and "teaching" him in a tone of lesson: "Young man, making a lot of nonsense will not allow you to grow good wheat, nor will Jiagu give up lightly." ”

Guo Kui didn't expect Qi Zheng to be so calm, so he snorted and said, "Then let's see." ”

Then he turned and walked away.

The cadres of the Department of Agriculture apologized to Qi Zheng with an embarrassed face before turning around and catching up.

Qi Zheng and Xie Kaiji glanced at each other and laughed in unison.

"Young people are young and vigorous. ”

is obviously not much older than Guo Kui, maybe younger than him, but Qi Zheng ridiculed him in an "old-fashioned" manner, which made Xie Kaiji laugh.

"I guess he also meant to provoke you on purpose. Xie Kaiji said with a smile.

"What's in it for him to provoke me?"

"When you're angry, you make impulsive decisions. For example, blindly expanding the planting scale of strong gluten wheat......"

"This guy can't be so naïve, right?"

"Anyway, it's just a matter of a few words, he said in passing, it's good if it has an effect, and if it doesn't have an effect, it can also deal with us, and he has nothing to lose, right?"

"That's ...... too"

Although it is said that as consumers pay more attention to the quality and nutrition of staple food crops, whether in rural or urban areas, not only do they have to eat high-quality noodles and dumplings, but also many consumers also eat Western-style high-quality bread and pastries, resulting in a relative shortage of strong gluten varieties suitable for processing high-quality bread, and they have to import high-end processing special wheat or "foreign flour" from abroad to supplement the shortage of domestic production.

However, the consumption proportion of all kinds of bread, biscuits, cakes and other Western-style desserts is still too low compared with domestic staple foods such as noodles and steamed buns - the demand for millions of tons of high-quality strong-gluten wheat is clear at a glance compared with the demand for hundreds of millions of tons of ordinary (medium-gluten) wheat.

Under the situation that various flour companies have entered the source to produce their own high-quality raw materials, the seemingly beautiful high-end flour market has a surplus if you are not careful.

After all, any "good" thing is transformed into a "bad" one, and most of these transformations are not transferred by anyone's will.

Moreover, blindly planting regardless of the suitable range of high-quality wheat can easily lead to half the effort and the decline of the quality of excellent wheat.

Xie Kaiji touched his chin and smiled, "However, he also underestimated our target too much. ”

Qi Zheng bowed his head and said, "He thinks too low of our pursuit." ”

To be honest, if Jiagu really wants to grab land with them in the "Golden Youmai District" in China, with Jiagu's experience, I dare not say that they can't grab a piece of land, but there should be no problem with half of the points.

But why bother?

The road to high-quality wheat mainly depends on eugenics and fertility. The so-called eugenics, that is, breeding, makes wheat varieties more suitable for the needs of food processing and modern consumption, including form, taste, etc., while eugenics, that is, selecting more suitable planting areas, making full use of advantageous soil, climate and other conditions, and planting the same high-quality varieties on a large scale in the same planting area.

It would be quite difficult to let ordinary farmers promote this "upgrade". Because the yield of high-quality wheat is generally low and unstable, high-quality wheat does not necessarily get a good price, and farmers do not dare to plant it lightly. And if there is no effective organization, each family chooses its own variety, mixed cropping, and no matter how high the variety is, it cannot be reflected.

Only when processing enterprises actively participate in cooperation and establish high-quality wheat planting bases can they effectively promote the upgrading of the wheat industry.

-- Jiagu has never expected to support the upgrading of the entire wheat industry by itself.

In fact, Qi Zheng would love to see more wheat industry complexes emerge and stick to them.

The success of Jiagu stimulated peers to follow suit, and after several years, the production and processing of wheat gradually got rid of the extensive management state, and the market was also conducive to entering the segmentation stage.

Among them, there will definitely be people who can't hold on.

However, this kind of industrialization and upgrading of "eugenics" will be irreversibly pushed forward.

Qi Zheng waited too long for such a situation: "You say, if they knew that Jiagu was not in the high-end market, what would they think?"

Xie Kaiji thought for a while and said slowly: "I probably think it's a smoke bomb." ”

Qi Zheng was speechless for a long time, and half-jokingly: "Alas, who can understand our lofty aspirations?"

Xie Kaiji couldn't help but wonder.

Jiagu really wants to enter the wheat industry, and it really deserves to be "ambitious".

While the industry speculated about how much market share Jiagu would occupy in the high-end market, Jiagu set its sights on upgrading "ordinary" wheat.

The lack of competitiveness of domestic wheat is reflected in the fact that the price of wheat has been higher than that of international wheat for a long time.

There are complex reasons for this, such as subsidies from foreign governments, speculation by speculators, etc., but in the final analysis, there are only two points: production efficiency cannot be improved, and the value of products is not high.

If the former wants to be the same as the developed countries in Europe and the United States, it will take a short time to manage thousands of acres of cultivated land per person, apply large-scale machinery, refine the agricultural division of labor, and build a developed agricultural service system.

But for the latter, Jiagu still has some combat effectiveness.

Why is gluten wheat so popular?

Because in addition to making bread, it can also be used for wheat and flour. Everyone knows the demand for bread in our country, and no matter how much we toss, the total amount will not be too large. But if you add wheat and flour, the demand goes up.

The so-called wheat and flour are when the gluten quality of some basic varieties or flour is not high and cannot meet the quality standards of a certain pasta food, it is necessary to use strong gluten varieties to match.

In general, the worse the gluten base of the base variety or flour, the greater the amount of strong gluten variety or flour used.

Under Qi Zheng's planning, the Jiagu research team did not focus on strong gluten varieties, but on the improvement of basic varieties.

Guo Kui still underestimated Jiagu's "scientific research" ability.

Compared with the past, many ordinary wheat varieties have exceeded the standard of "family flour" after the improvement of Jiagu's precise quality traits - in addition to not being able to bake bread directly, there is no need to use strong gluten to match, and it is more than enough to make traditional staple foods such as dumplings, noodles and steamed buns with good quality.

This kind of improvement that takes into account the yield, quality and planting difficulty is too friendly to the majority of wheat farmers.

It was also with this progress that Jiagu Agriculture started to officially enter the wheat industry.

The sun is shining brightly in the Central Plains. Qi Zheng stood on the ridge, looked back at the vague figures of Yihai Kerry, and said to Xie Kaiji with a smile: "Old Xie, the wheat industry investment plan of Jiagu Agriculture has been approved by the headquarters, let these little families be angry, see what the real 'big enclosure' is!"

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