Seeds, known as the "chips" of agriculture, play a vital role in the stability and development of agriculture.
However, even now, the mainland will still be stuck in the neck of foreign countries in the field of agriculture!
Seed card neck
It should be known that the mainland has a population of 1.4 billion, and food security is the top priority of the national strategy, and there is no room for mistakes.
However, due to many reasons such as market and technology, the mainland still has not achieved 100% self-sufficiency in agricultural "chips".
At the end of 2021, the National Bureau of Statistics released data showing that the urbanization rate on the mainland has reached 65%, and the vast majority of people are already living in cities.
In the future, with the acceleration of the urbanization process, more and more people will enter the city to work, live and settle, and how many people will care about the small seeds that have been used in the countryside?
I still remember that in rural life, the rice planting process is generally to go to the township to buy hybrid rice seeds, sow seeds, plant seedlings, and fertilize.
The same is true for planting corn, going to the township to buy corn seeds, sowing seeds, fertilizing, and waiting for growth.
It is not difficult to find that almost all the seeds in mainland agricultural production are purchased by farmers from the market; then, where do the seeds purchased by these farmers come from?
In fact, the seeds of the mainland were also heavily dependent on foreign imports, not only rice, corn, but also soybeans, potatoes and many other crops, which were purchased from abroad.
Since the liberalization of genetically modified cultivation in 1998, the mainland has begun to buy a large number of foreign genetically modified seeds and carry out secondary sales and planting in China.
Monsanto in the United States, the american seed industry giant, is one of the world's largest chemical companies, supplying 90% of the world's genetically modified crop seed technology.
During this period, the mainland's seed card neck technology was very obvious, and once foreign companies stopped selling seeds to China, China's agriculture would suffer a major blow.
As the seed of "agricultural chip", it is very similar to industrial chips, with large investment and long time.
Foreign seed research and development companies have long been industry giants, starting early, large investment in scientific research, and accumulating seed resources for more than 100 years, and have entered the mature research and development stage of molecular breeding and factory breeding.
In the same period, the only thing that the mainland can get its hands on in the seed industry is academician Yuan Longping's hybrid rice.
It was not until 2015 that the mainland had a key breakthrough in the seed industry, gradually resolving the problem of seed stuck necks!
In the era of genetically modified seeds, the world was monopolized by six major seed groups, namely Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Bayer, Dow, and BASF.
From 2015 to 2018, China Chemical acquired Syngenta, the United States Dow and DuPont merged, and the German Bayer acquired Monsanto, and the seed market formed a three-legged situation of China, the United States and Germany, and China finally exchanged its financial advantages for the competitiveness of the seed industry.
However, until 2021, the mainland has not achieved complete self-sufficiency in the seed field, and only two crop varieties, rice and wheat, are completely self-sufficient.
The data shows that from January 1 to March 10, 2021, there were a total of 1493 seed import records and only 9 export records!
According to incomplete statistics, there are at least dozens of imported seed crops including bracken, carrot, pumpkin, melon, watermelon, corn, tomato, green onion, pepper, cucumber, lettuce, bitter melon, pepper, broccoli, zucchini, spinach, hollow cabbage, beet, eggplant and so on. The main uses are foreign seeds, testing, transfer and sales.
Seed crops are exported as rice and maize, mainly for field production.
China's seeds still have a long way to go to completely break the monopoly!
Longping Hi-Tech became a Huawei in agriculture
The development of the foreign seed industry has reached a very mature stage, and the seed industry giants occupy a large market share, so is there a giant that can compete with it in China?
China National Chemical Group is a central enterprise, a giant in the seed industry, and it also depends on the market-oriented private enterprises that have been listed.
At present, among the domestic seed companies with certain competitiveness, Longping Hi-Tech may be the first in the industry.
According to the latest ranking of international seed companies, only two companies in China have entered the world's top ten, namely Syngenta and Longping Hi-Tech.
Syngenta was acquired by China Chemical and is managed by a central enterprise.
Longping Hi-Tech is an enterprise held by CITIC Holdings and Yuan Lao, which was established in 1999 and has developed for more than 20 years, and can squeeze into the ninth place in the world.
Each of the world's top ten seed giants has different advantages, such as Syngenta's competitive advantage in digital agriculture and regenerative agriculture, and Bayer's advantages are mainly concentrated in digital agriculture and biotechnology products.
The real competitive advantage of Longping Hi-Tech is mainly concentrated in high-quality large single products and genetically modified products.
Longping Hi-Tech's products mainly include rice, corn, vegetables, melons and fruits, sunflowers, miscellaneous grains, cotton and rapeseed, etc., with a wide range of varieties.
In 2021, longping hi-tech's new scientific research achievements are gradually put on the market.
Among them, the rice reserve varieties Crown Two Youhua Zhan, Chang Liang You No. 8, Yue Liang Beautiful Xiang Xin Zhan and other varieties of sales are optimistic, the new varieties of corn Lianchuang 839, Nongda 372, Zhongyu 303 and other varieties are expected to become the fist varieties in the Huanghuaihai region, Bojie 636 and other high-quality special cucumbers have broad prospects, the overall sales of Boyang series of melons have increased, and pepper varieties such as Xingyue continue to exert force in the high-end market.
If you look closely, you will find that Longping Hi-Tech's products are highly similar to imported agricultural seed products, which is a direct competition relationship, so Longping Hi-Tech is also known as "Huawei in agriculture".
At a time when the domestic market is still importing a large number of foreign seeds, perhaps only Longping Hi-Tech's genetically modified seed products can compete with foreign seeds.
It is worth noting that the current agricultural "chip" card neck is completely different from before, once China's seed technology is almost a blank, now China has been able to achieve 97% of the seed technology self-sufficiency, the seed technology that is stuck in the neck, only about 3%.
So why does the mainland still import a lot of seeds from abroad?
This is because the domestic market has changed, with the continuous development of the mainland economy, the people's living standards have improved, and the people's demand for agricultural products has increased from simple "have" to "good", both to have and better.
Compared with foreign seeds, there is a big gap in the quality of this "good".
For example, the yield level of corn and soybeans on the mainland is still relatively low, less than 60% of the world's advanced level, and the same land area can be produced by 40% more abroad!
The risk of card neck has been gradually eliminated, but in terms of quality, domestic seeds cannot reach the world's advanced level, which leads to domestic enterprises preferring to import seeds from abroad at a price ten times higher.
Because the imported seeds produce good quality crops, they can naturally sell higher prices in terms of price, even if the cost is ten times higher than domestic seeds, they can still have huge profits.
Therefore, the current card neck and the previous card neck has been completely different, today's globalization, marketization has been more mature, although the domestic seeds do not exist completely card neck, but the quality of domestic seeds competitiveness is not as good as foreign, will be seized by foreign market.
Domestic seed giants, such as Longping Hi-Tech, have achieved a breakthrough in "agricultural chips" from 0 to 1, and the next step is to catch up with the technical level of developed countries from 1 to 2, 3, 4 and 5!