Chapter 269: Windfall Profits in the Gene Industry

In the conference room on the top floor of the Empire State Building in Xinjing, the Travelers were discussing a very important topic, that is, to further deepen their monopoly on genetic resources.

"What you don't know is that we've built permanent fortification-grade genetic warehouses and research institutes in six highly secret locations around the world. From viruses to bacteria, from plants to animals, each species has enough samples and seeds, in addition to our biological products need the support of this project, including many downstream suppliers are living on this project! Liu Xin said to the traversal at the latest internal exchange meeting.

"A group that breeds good breeds and researches genes is the killer weapon of our monopoly of the world? It's so easy! Zhao Shouzhong said he didn't understand.

"Monsanto is just a small scumbag, if that seed company can monopolize more than 50% of the seed supply before the world enters modern agriculture, a pig can lead this company to become the master of the earth." Li Ji said disdainfully.

"One can live a lifetime without meat, one can live for decades without medicine, and one can live a simple and primitive life without touching the modern goods we produce, but without eating grains. Our seed industry group monopolizes more than 90% of the seed supply of the entire empire, and at least half of the seed supply of allies and trading partners, which is enough to form a hegemony that will never be easy to come. If you think about it, Sun Chang, a foodie, is not given for nothing, in order to collect the best ingredients, he will not let go of anything, as long as it is a creature that can enter his mouth. Whether it's yeast or whales, which one isn't painstakingly collected and bred by yourself? How many downstream enterprises does we, a seedling provider a hundred times larger than Monsanto, feed? Not to mention the commercial company of the Imperial Cooperative Group, which covers the whole world, which of those giant industrial giants such as the nǎi industry, sugar industry, wine industry, tobacco industry, flour industry, textile industry, and agricultural materials such as fertilizer, agricultural machinery, and pesticides does not rely on our seedlings to eat? As long as we cut off the supply of seedlings from their cooperative farming companies. All of them will be knocked to the ground by their new opponents, and they will fall completely.

In a word, the seed industry is the source of all the industries that rely on the planting industry to eat. As long as we control the source, then we don't have to worry about controlling the downstream and the market, and those seemingly powerful plantation owners dare to disagree with the empire, and we can bankrupt them. The thing that chokes them by the throat is not something that ordinary people can do, and only those of us who are open can do it. In these years, if you don't monopolize, you are embarrassed to go out and meet people and say that you are engaged in agriculture. Gao Jing looked at Sun Chang and teased.

"Is a genetic monopoly king? That's not what the biodiversity convention you mentioned a few years ago said? Weren't you a staunch free sharing party back then? Bai Jia said.

"You don't know the essence of economics, economics is the study of how a society uses scarce resources to produce valuable goods and distributes them among different individuals. Private property rights and supply and demand determine the price is the premise. At that time, I didn't stand in the perspective of the country, in order to build a world system and order, in order to make more benefits, advocating open up was not to make the most of our technological leadership, plundering the genetic resources of other countries to fill my own warehouse? Don't ask knowingly. Sun Chang had to refute.

"What's the practical point of monopolizing these resources? Let's use this kind of free zi you to open up and plunder resources, and then establish gene squatting patent protection, isn't it too tasteless? Even if you make huge profits from these genetic resources in the future, it's not interesting. Crossing the river and demolishing bridges and cheating first and then robbing are really damaging to our image. There are so many genes in all species in the world that it is almost impossible to collect them all in a hundred years, and the Amazon rainforest alone is enough to explore for a hundred years. Liu Jiao, who was most afraid of trouble, had a headache when he thought of dealing with massive patent data, and immediately opposed this kind of work that required processing a large amount of data.

"If it doesn't make sense, you won't do it, as long as you can create a dollar of GDP for the empire. If it can provide a job, the project will make sense. As for the moral question, we never think about it, it is not a problem of the capitalists, but a concern of those who adhere to the backward idea of equal wealth and poverty. We can only be fair, not just. We create a world of equal opportunity. and not an evenly developed society. The opportunities are equal, the threshold is the same, and whoever can pay the price will get a huge profit. None of our industries have set administrative thresholds, all of them are technical and capital thresholds, and whoever can tighten their belts to raise funds for human capital investment and build credibility will be able to enter this industry and get a piece of the pie. Not satisfied? "Li Ji doesn't want to see opportunities and give up the right to speak in new fields, and always wants to seize the dominance in all fields.

"I always say that it is important to make profits, this is just selling seeds, how can it be profitable, not even 3 times the profit, how can it be considered a profiteering?" Mr. Yang, a construction expert, does not look down on this profit and doubts that the budget of this industry is too large.

"Monopoly and high prices don't seem to have anything to do with it! That's because we can't make money lying down, the administrative approval xing entry threshold monopoly, the natural monopoly does not need low prices and high quality, how can it be difficult for latecomers to retreat? The key to seeds depends on quality, it doesn't matter if the price is expensive or cheap, the key depends on the yield. Our hybrid technology and breeding technology have been standing on the shoulders of giants to develop modern technology, the yield is so high that it is impossible for any competitor to replicate, the price is ten times more expensive than those small companies that breed by local methods, and still monopolize the market, think about it, how many times more expensive can you accept a pound of seeds that produce 50 pounds of grain than the kind of 15 pounds of grain that produces 15 pounds of grain? Corn can be said to be the highest yield of grains, the price of a pound of seeds can be almost equal to ten pounds of commercial corn kernels, those ordinary seeds that are just a little better than self-kept seeds can be sold at such a high price? We don't sell seeds for money, or to increase production, to suppress food prices and control the core sector of the national economy, which is a spin-off industry? Profiteering is also a relative concept, our seed industry group is naturally not profiteering compared to cosmetics and those high-tech industries, but compared to ordinary farmers and other low-tech industry sectors with fierce competition, it is very profitable.

When we abolished the monopoly of more than 70 kinds of consumer goods in the Great Song Empire, how quickly did the profits of salt, iron, wine, tea and other commodities decline? Taking salt as an example, our mineral salt production has increased by 70 times, and the cost has been reduced to one-third of that of sea salt in the well salt pond. Almost all competitors have been defeated, the price of salt has not fallen, and we still maintain a profit of more than 30%. Isn't this kind of industry a huge profit? The seed industry with an annualized rate of return of 150% is already very profitable. The growth rate of the world market is very slow, and the empire can hardly find new markets. If the profits generated by these profiteering industries are not spent, there will be deflation within a year. You don't want to make money with more cāo hearts, how to spend money with more cāo hearts is the right thing. Liu Xin saw the nouveau riche looking at him with contempt every time.

"Our genetic factories have produced microbes that are at the level of future generations?" Bai Jia asked a key question.

"It's a little bit closer, you know, that yeast optimization is not that easy, and to this extent, if you want to dramatically increase the yield, you have to use GMO technology. Our liquor and microbial industries have almost reached the level of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and if we want to improve, we will have to prepare for more than ten years to climb the genetic technology tree to achieve it. The high-yielding strains we brought to the old planes weren't comprehensive. Many antibiotics and biological products need seedlings that need to be domesticated and cultivated in this time and space, and they can't be piled up by throwing money at them, after all, genetic mutations take time. Wu Qi explained. Also, counting the biological products industry. The profits of the gene industry suddenly rose to more than 800%. Those antibiotics and fast-acting drugs that are more expensive than gold still cannot be proliferated by technology, otherwise it will be troublesome to abuse. Our Chinese patent medicine industry is also good, and the medicinal ingredients extracted from high-yield medicinal materials are also more expensive than gold? Ginsenosides and ephedrine are about to become sky-high. Wu Qi has a headache every day, the types of drugs are increasing too slowly, and drugs such as morphine, diazepam, and epinephrine, which are the most used narcotics for surgery, are always tight, and these things can only rely on limited raw materials to extract. How can cheap drugs be obtained in large quantities without developing the gene industry? If the exogenous genes produced by yeast are stable and diverse enough, we will not worry about anything. A shot of insulin costs hundreds of dollars, and only the rich can afford it, although we can make money, but this is not the purpose of our business that has always pursued scale and benefiting everyone. ”

"It's still the early stages of climbing the genetic technology tree. These high-quality strains can only be used to produce things like alcohol and soy sauce and vinegar, but it won't be too long before tens of thousands of drugs and new biomaterials from the old time and space can be mass-produced. Ten years is about the same, and I think there is nothing wrong with seeing anti-aging drugs in my lifetime. Our stem cell research center has produced results, and the project of 3D printing kidneys is also in the pipeline. The application of the achievements of the gene industry is not only the seed industry and the pharmaceutical industry in agriculture, but also the biological aeration tank for digesting sludge and wastewater, biomass waste decomposition, organic fertilizer, special rare metal mining bacteria, petrochemical microorganisms, silk textile raw materials, viral insecticides and bacterial soil amendments, feed additives, veterinary drugs, beverages, wine, tea and products (fermented tea), coffee, cocoa and products, aquatic products and products (pickled), poultry meat and products (flavored bacon), canned food, and quick-frozen food, snack food, soy products (fermented ru), ru products (ru cheese), sugar, condiments (sauce and vinegar), pastry bread (direct use of yeast), noodles, vermicelli, cigarettes (fermented), food additives, food and beverage processing equipment, food and beverage raw materials are vigorously developed by the downstream microbial industry of the gene industry.

Although the current market size is not as good as the old time and space, but our monopoly degree is much higher than the old time and space, on average, the scale and market share of each of our companies are greater than the fierce competition in the old time and space of China's various industry leaders. If we talk about the development potential and future growth rate, it is not full of high-rise buildings, and the construction investment has entered the saturation countdown in the post-industrialization era. Wang Neng, who is in charge of commerce, is very clear about the importance of this industry and explains the necessity of this monopoly.

"So what's the matter, we still can't change the genus of becoming robbers, is there any essential difference between plundering the genetic resources of these allies and the Borderlands and robbing the treasures in the Old Summer Palace?" Qian Jin still opposes this kind of behavior of preemptively registering gene patents without paying, although it is also a patent that pays for research funds and development costs, but these are different from ownerless things such as alloy formulas that have never appeared, these genetic resources are all owned, at least there are ethnic groups or indigenous tribes and other organizations that have the ownership of these resources. To take without telling is to steal.

"Of course there is a difference, we will soon be globally unified, and then those plundered peoples will be our own people. Naturally, there are no derogatory terms such as being robbed and being used. The robbery of the old time and space was for personal gain, and we robbed not only for personal gain. And the mission of global prosperity that comes with it! Rather than watching those fools who don't understand the market waste precious genetic resources to destroy a large number of species and high-quality woodland every year to slash and burn, it is better to get their hands on things first, and then sell them through circulation to make them valuable. How could those fools know the true value of their land? A desert is worthless without minerals, but a piece of woodland, even on a hillside, can produce great environmental value, not to mention the discounted value of the countless annual output value of various properties that are difficult to calculate.

We can find tens of thousands of riches by finding a high-yielding strain, although it's about the same as robbery. But this is also the value of labor based on the technological generation gap, we have no pressure to sell the products of these cheaply obtained genes at a high price because of the technological leadership, and the cost we have invested in order to maintain this leading position is not as good as those European and American counterparts in the old time and space, but it is not that there is none. After all, we have paid a lot of money to build an industrial system from scratch. The robber's logical Lee Ki clearly knew that this was immoral, but in a high position, he could only organize his discourse with international interests as the core to deal with internal doubts.

"Sun Chang organized hundreds of species smuggling groups long before the signing of the Biodiversity Convention, collecting various species from various regions, and he can be regarded as a final boss-level smuggler, why don't you talk about him. Just talking about my pharmaceutical industry? What is the value of empty boxes in the islands near the Arctic Circle, where geologically stable, low-consumption permafrost warehouses with ultra-low temperatures store seeds and embryos from all over the world? Without those priceless warehouses filled with seeds and embryos, they are almost worthless. We've only filled 2 warehouses, and we've just collected half of the species native to the Empire, and less than 19% of the species from overseas. There is still a long way to go! Wu Qi was also dissatisfied with Qian Jin's nonsense.

"Our secret research institute on Ezo Island has just been built, and the experiment with genetically modified organisms has just begun. Don't put too much jing energy on plunder, wouldn't it be good to put more on research? Ezo Island has first-class hardware facilities, and there is a shortage of people, and a project to increase the sugar content of sugar beets has dragged on for 10 years to complete. The report card is so beautiful that I don't even dare to read it. Sun Chang hurriedly directed his attention to the problem of inefficient projects, in an attempt to divert attention from the reasonable and legal sources of project materials.

"Isn't he responsible for the Dome Project, the cost is easy to say, but there are no people, and our medical system is still short of people? If you want to say that the salary is high, you can dig people to have a sense of accomplishment and corporate culture, it's not a matter of money, it's a problem of expanding too fast, I finally filled up the manpower of a project, and as a result, the bastard who just dug the pit and didn't bury it directly split the project team that was just fully staffed into ten new related projects, and the gap in manpower increased tenfold at once. The person in charge is the sad Sun Chang, but the person in charge of higher education is still in charge of Zhao Shouzhong, who provides the supply of talents, and every time he sees Sun Chang sending new dishes to his own tasting, he knows that he is asking for someone again, and he has to take the opportunity to complain.

"This money-making industry is also a high-growth emerging industry that uses most of the profits to self-expand, we are not like this or that the problem can never be solved, but high-speed growth can always solve a lot of problems, our layout is already very reasonable, the research institute is on Ezo Island, the cultivation test field is on Dongyi Island, the warehouse and seed bank are in the Arctic permafrost, the exchange center is in the School of Biology of Dongguk University in Xinjing, and the results are directly distributed to several of our camouflaged research institutes for packaging transition processing, It is then distributed or sold to the various bio-industry companies and partners that have contributed to it. It's a bit of a hassle, but it's also safe and smooth. Wang Xinyu emphasized the importance of this project in the bio-industry at the source, which already has natural confidentiality and advantages in the system and environment.

"The era of profiteering in the gene industry will soon come, we will double the population in the next two generations in 30 years, which is a difficult task, in the future, in order to meet the food, clothing, medicine and health, and various industries based on biological products will have to be doubled several times to keep up with the growth of demand, which is an opportunity and a test. It's easy to make money, but I'm afraid that if I make less money, I will be scolded for being inefficient and incompetent. Li Ji is very confident that this pillar industry will be done well, and this meeting will be closed.