(There is a lot of information in this chapter, so you can skip it if you don't like it)

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Since returning to China in 2006 and joining Yuanfeng Group, Ye Shikun has begun to think about the transformation of the group's traditional business.

The history of agriculture has been around for tens of thousands of years, and no industry has a longer history than agriculture.

Therefore, agriculture is a very traditional industry in the eyes of the world, far from words such as "modernization" and "high technology". In fact, the agriculture of the future is a truly high-tech industry.

Because of family reasons, Ye Shikun majored in agriculture when he was studying at Cornell University, so he also had a deeper understanding of the development status of modern agriculture around the world.

If you were to describe the current state of agriculture in some countries in one word, it would look like this:

Israel and the Netherlands are high-tech agriculture;

The United States is modern large-scale agriculture;

New Zealand is agroecology;

China is traditional agriculture......

In the case of the Netherlands, for example, scientific and technological innovation in agriculture is reflected in several aspects:

Breeding: Collect germplasm resources all over the world, carry out a large number of cross-breeding work, select a variety of individual plants with excellent traits, and breed them in small quantities to form a strain;

Cultivation: The same strain is numbered, cultivated in the variety resource garden, and then selected according to the performance and market potential of the strain, and the selected new varieties are named, applied for variety right protection and promotion;

Planting: Relying on advanced agronomic technology, greenhouse technology and water and fertilizer technology, continuously improve production efficiency and achieve a doubling of the output value per square meter of land;

In the United States, agricultural production on modern farms no longer requires driving tractors to plough the land, but is completed through data analysis and intelligent farming.

24-hour farming, self-driving tractors, unmanned multi-purpose harvesters......

Through the advancement of GPS and map technology, the irrigation vehicles and fertilizer application amount of agricultural land in the area are managed, and the amount of fertilizer is refined to the individual crops;

Detection of chemical/mineral components in soil particles using soil fertility sensors;

Flying drones, deploying crop sensors in fertiliser and spraying equipment, collecting data from the air and land, and pushing humidity sensors into the soil;

With broadband connection technology, even in remote areas, farmers can process more and more large amounts of data through satellite connections.

The information collected on the farm is transmitted to a remote service organization for analysis by consultants or crop experts to guide the farm......

Compared with modern agriculture abroad, domestic agricultural production is still in a very rough and simple mechanized cultivation stage.

Whether it is in breeding, agrochemical, agricultural materials, soil improvement, irrigation technology, intelligent machinery automation, Internet of Things technology (agricultural product monitoring and traceability), ...... and other agricultural products, as well as post-production purchase, processing, circulation, and sales...... and many other links, and there is a big gap with foreign countries.

This is reflected in the fact that after so many years of development, the domestic agricultural land productivity, labor productivity, agricultural product quality, and scientific and technological content are all low, and the peasants' incomes are not high.

As a leading private agricultural enterprise in China, Yuanfeng Group is a listed company with a market value of more than 50 billion yuan, with an annual revenue of no more than 10 billion yuan and a profit of only 1 billion yuan, which is very revealing.

It's a pity that Ye Shikun was too eager to succeed at that time, and he lacked experience and skills, ignoring the acceptance of most of the elders of the board of directors, including the old man Ye Lanting.

Without adequate preparation and complete persuasion of them, the drastic reform has touched the interests of many people, and there are no proper measures to appease them. In addition, it coincided with the outbreak of the global financial crisis and the collapse of the stock market......

Not only did the reform measures he had just promoted fall through, but he himself was "kicked out" of the company's power core.

Despite this, during Ye Shikun's tenure as the general manager of Yuanfeng, he also did some things:

On the one hand, he actively laid out in the financial aspect, promoted Yuanfeng to participate in several commercial banks, ensured that the company's capital chain would not have problems during the annual grain harvest season, and also launched a small loan service for farmers on the farm to help these farmers buy seeds, fertilizers, farm tools, etc.

On the other hand, several emerging agricultural innovation companies have also been acquired.

For example, there is an agrochemical technology company named "Dr. Nong" in Shandong Province, which produces insecticides, herbicides, protein preparations and other products, which has increased the corn yield per mu of Yuanfeng Group by nearly 10%.

After leaving Yuanfeng, Ye Shikun first cooperated with Yifeng to invest in the Internet, and then founded Xinsheng Investment, although mainly engaged in Internet and investment, he still set his sights on the global scale of new high-tech agricultural companies.

Collecting information, conducting research and investigations, investing in shares...... In the past two years, I have gained a lot.

In the email sent by Su Jingyan, she sorted out in detail the layout of Xinsheng Investment in agricultural innovation companies so far.

For example, in the area of irrigation technology, Xinsheng has invested in AutoAgronom, an Israeli smart agriculture technology company.

Drip irrigation is Israel's first water-saving technology, allowing farmers to control the irrigated area as needed and avoid wasting water. AutoAgronom takes this technology a step further by applying smart sensor technology to the drip irrigation system, which not only saves a lot of water, but also reduces the use of pesticides.

In terms of farm management, Xinsheng has invested in FarmLogs, a crop management start-up in the United States, which can help farmers control changes in their fields through big data and machine learning technology, maximize crop yields, reduce waste and increase profitability. FarmLogs can monitor crop monitoring, rainfall, nitrogen levels, and more, while also allowing users to record and share specific photos of the field.

The biggest feature of Precision Planting, another "precision planting technology company" invested by Xinsheng, is to achieve "non-uniform sowing density" through the analysis of soil-related data. In other words, with the help of Precision Planting's monitoring tools (SeedSense and FieldView tablets), farmers can drive the planter to sow different crop varieties at different intervals and depths in different regional locations and under different soil conditions, which greatly optimizes crop planting and helps to achieve differentiated irrigation and ultimately increase crop income.

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In the past two years, Xinsheng has invested in nearly ten innovative companies, and the technology owned by these high-tech agricultural innovation companies invested by Xinsheng can undoubtedly produce great value if it can be applied to the business of agricultural giants such as Yuanfeng Group.

This night, the lights in Ye Shikun's study were not extinguished until late at night.

Ye Shikun has personally visited each of these companies and is very clear about the development of each company.

But now, he is still looking at the information very seriously, and he is constantly thinking about how to use these previous investments to combine with Yuanfeng's current business and transform if he returns to Yuanfeng.

Which companies are suitable for acquisition?

Which companies can form a partnership?

Which companies can buy patents?

Even recalling that some of the high-tech agricultural companies that have been in contact with the development scale of relatively large scale could not be invested in Xinsheng with the strength of Xinsheng (after all, Xinsheng is only a PE company, no industrial advantages, and cannot make strategic investment), after returning to Yuanfeng, it should be possible to use Yuanfeng Group to invest or merge and acquisition......

In addition, if you really return, this time you need to think slowly, and you can't be in a hurry, when talking to the old man, what needs to be insisted on? What can be put aside first, and then implemented after the power in your hands is stable?

The balance and priorities in this need to be carefully considered......