Li Gangling and his oats
In the course of the interview, many of Li Gangling's words entered the depths of the author's soul, making the author involuntarily think deeply!
Life can also live like this, and these words that make people think deeply with their souls echo in my ears over and over again.
His 7 years of rugged life are evocative, and it is enough to make people torture life again!
"Following nature, returning to nature, and returning food to its original taste and health is the original nature of a healthy lifestyle."
"Food nourishes our lives and nourishes our bodies, and only healthy food can bring human health."
"Everyone has their own beliefs, and everyone has their own mission."
"If a person knows how much life is worth in a lifetime, he will not hesitate to do things of equal value."
There are no bold words, some are just Li Gangling's practice and persistence.
Rewrite destiny
On June 30, 2012, a Temujin Grassland Marathon kicked off in Inner Mongolia, which may not have been special in itself, but this day changed the trajectory of Li Gangling's life. For the oat industry in China and even in the world, this is destined to be an extraordinary day.
Li Gangling is a marathon runner, and the Temujin Grassland Marathon has led this 11-year-old long-distance runner to Mengbei, and since then he has begun a story of sticking to natural oats...
The first time Li Gangling came to Xilingol, Inner Mongolia, he was deeply attracted by the beauty of the grassland there. It is a place where the sky is blue and white, the water and grass are abundant, the windblown grass is low to see cattle and sheep, and people and nature coexist in harmony. Enjoying the fragrance of the natural grassland and indulging in the green sea of the grassland, he was dragged by the lush oat fields...
After more than 4 hours of racing, he did not have time to rest, so he could not wait to run back to the oat field he had just passed to check the growth of oats. Subsequently, he went to the local villagers to inquire further. Even he himself did not expect that the place where he had been looking for natural oats to grow a year ago would be magically encountered by a marathon.
Fate's arrangement is always so unexpected. Before Li Gangling embarked on the road to find natural oats, he was in charge of the market in a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company, and in his early 30s, he became the head of the Greater China region, with an annual salary of tens of millions of dollars, and achieved wealth freedom early. Medicine is to treat diseases, belongs to the indirect life-saving and injury, at that time Li Gangling felt that he was still a very valuable person to society.
One night in the spring of 2011, he received a phone call that changed his fate ever since.
That night, a friend called him and said his family had cancer and asked him to buy special drugs to treat cancer. His brain went blank, and even he didn't know how to hang up the phone. Probably because he has been running in the hospital for many years, he has witnessed too many lives and deaths. The scene of those who were seriously ill being transferred from the bed in the ward to the bed in the intensive care unit, from the bed in the intensive care unit to the bed in the morgue, lingered in his mind. That year was the year he ran the most, running more than 3,000 kilometers, sometimes he didn't dare to stop, he wanted to run forever, I don't know what to fear! It's like a person who has lost his life-saving straw, is uncertain, and loses his soul.
Why do people get sick? How can people not get sick? He kept asking himself. How can people have a healthy body?
With this question in mind, he asked countless doctors and medical institutions, but he never understood it.
In the spring of 2012, Li Gangling finally found the answer!
He met an old Chinese medicine doctor, who told him that people are sick because of many factors, simply put, the disease comes from the mouth, and healthy food and good living habits are the good medicine for the body. Eating healthy food on time for three meals a day is important for human health. Many major diseases are gradually "fed" by years of poor diet, and they are not easy to detect. Li Gangling felt some truth when he heard it, but he was half-convinced.
Later, he consulted a lot of scientific literature for verification, and confirmed that food does play a very important role in good health.
He realized that medicine is not fundamental to health, and that food is indeed more important than medicine in the long run. So where to start? Just when he was overwhelmed, Li Gangling was eating at his brother's house in Los Angeles, and a bowl of oatmeal on the table opened his mind. During meals, my brother, who was a doctor, talked about the direct relationship between human diseases and food, modern eating habits based on fine rice noodles, and the need for high-quality protein and oatmeal foods with high dietary fiber as a supplement.
Li Gangling found that he had also been in the habit of eating oatmeal for breakfast for 5 years, which was affected by his frequent business trips abroad. Seeing that others eat, he also eats, never produce too much thinking, just like the Chinese people love to eat bun fritters for breakfast, if it is not mentioned by his brother, he will definitely not pay attention to this eating habit.
Get acquainted with oats
It was this habit of daily companionship but inconspicuous that was suddenly valued by him and began to become different in his eyes.
Of course, rational thinking does not allow a perceptual thought to become the decisive factor in whether a big thing is done or not. Li Gangling began to conduct a large number of surveys on the oat and health food markets, and also went to a number of medical institutions to seek verification. He did not think that the oats he ate every day were actually functional foods, and oats were called "nutrient banks" in the West, which can be called natural health foods. In addition to its high nutritional value, oats also help to reduce cholesterol, stabilize blood sugar, clean up vascular fat, clean up vascular toxins, clean up intestinal toxins, prevent cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, and reduce fat. Judging from some current evidence, oats have high quality protein and high dietary fiber and comprehensive nutritional value to alleviate some chronic diseases.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recognized oats as functional foods in 1997 through 25 years of research; on February 10, 2002, time magazine published the world's top ten healthy foods, oats ranked fifth, the only cereal on the list.
The survey also yielded an unimaginable figure, with China accounting for only about 2% of total global oat consumption. If this is done, it will be a revolution to change the healthy eating habits of the Chinese people.
Embark on a journey of natural oatmeal search
Since you plan to do it, you must do it to the best!
Li Gangling believes that oats themselves are healthy food, that first of all to ensure its safety, and then the nutritional value can not be destroyed during processing, let alone add additives that are harmful to health. Therefore, we must control two important links, the first is the source of planting, and the second is the source of processing.
Soon, he quit his well-paid job and officially embarked on a journey to find the world's best natural oats. From Canada to the United States to Russia, he looked around for natural oats, but he was disappointed by the growing environment, planting methods, transportation, international trade and other issues.
Although oats are healthy food, if they are not natural oats with zero fertilizer and zero pesticides, they are not really healthy oats. He sought an oat production base in Australia, a globally renowned crop producer, and asked local agricultural experts to try growing natural oats without chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Instead, he was given a series of conditions: he had to invest $50 million to put it there and bear all the costs thereafter; the grower did not guarantee any results; and the trial planting cycle was at least one or two years.
"It is completely in the hands of others, there is no initiative at all, and in the long cooperation in the future, I am completely unable to control any risks." The indignation in his heart made Li Gangling have a bold idea: don't find others to plant, plant yourself!
Where to plant it? Western Australia or South Australia? Later he discovered that oats prefer cool cold and high altitude climates. Oats grown in cold and high-altitude climates have the highest nutritional value and the best taste. Australia is a temperate tropics on both sides of the equator and is not the best place to grow oats. Although the oats grown here produce high yields, the quality is very average. He searched his mind for areas suitable for oat growth, but did not include China in them.
10 years later, when Li Gangling faced a media reporter as the founder of Mengbei Oats and talked about his original choice, he smiled helplessly and said that he actually felt some guilt.
"On June 30, 2012, I had the privilege of participating in the Temujin Grassland Marathon, and thanked God for leading me to this endless, pure and pollution-free Xilin Gol Grassland in Inner Mongolia. In summer, it is a grassland with green grass and abundant water and grass, and in winter, it is an endless snow field with ice and snow, with a snow cover period of up to 5 months, and an annual temperature difference of more than 70 degrees Celsius in winter. It is also the birthplace of naked oats with a history of more than 2,100 years. Li Gangling said.
Later, this "tianbian grassland" became Li Gangling's new running territory. Every morning, bathing in the morning glow, Li Gangling's footsteps sounded rhythmically.
Lone runner
In 2012, Li Gangling founded the Mengbei brand in northern Inner Mongolia after a place name, and has since planted a natural oat seed.
Since then, he has vowed to be the most natural oatmeal of mankind, the healthiest food of mankind, and may the world be disease-free as soon as possible! Focus on the cause of health, to serve the health of all people as the mission of life, is willing to devote a lifetime to the cause of human health food. Follow nature, return to nature, let food return to nature, and promote a healthy and environmentally friendly lifestyle as the concept of following.
He is determined to create Mengbei into a health food enterprise dominated by natural oats, and to serve the health of all people as the eternal mission of the enterprise.
The ambition has been made, the ambition has been established, and then he has begun to work...
At the beginning, Li Gangling thought very simply: this place is natural and pollution-free, contracted more than 20,000 acres of grassland arable land left by Zhiqing, directly sprinkled oat seeds into the ground, no chemical fertilizer, no pesticides, no herbicides, let the oats grow naturally in the field, sprinkle seeds only to harvest after maturity.
For Li Gangling's approach, local farmers are puzzled. "No one on Earth has ever done this!" But Li Gangling has his own considerations: "Using chemical fertilizers and herbicides, what is the difference between that and ordinary oats on the market, and what is called pure natural?" The health nature of oats is greatly reduced, and the oats grown will not be different. ”
Li Gangling said that according to the World Health Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme, more than 1 million people around the world are poisoned by herbicides every year, of which 100,000 people die. The residue of fertilizers and pesticides has great harm to the human body, and it is trapped in the body to a certain extent, which may lead to cell mutation and the occurrence of a variety of chronic major diseases. Most of modern agriculture pursues high yield and high efficiency, and uses a large number of fertilizers and pesticides. Oats are meant to be a very healthy food, and if we only care about yield and benefits and discount our health, it's the opposite.
On September 5, 2013, Li Gangling clearly remembers that day, he ran to the oat field full of expectations, but did not see the scene he expected. What Li Gangling did not expect was that his full enthusiasm was exchanged for a basin of cold water.
All natural oats overgrown with weeds
"In the oat field, no, it should be a weed field to be precise, dotted with a few handfuls of oats. Maybe it's been a long time with weeds, and the oats have been assimilated by the weeds, and a pinch of oat ears has no particles in it. Li Gangling said that in fact, as early as the growth of oats, he found a lot of weeds, but he thought about it, he could not draw conclusions early before the harvest was achieved, and he was willing to wait and reveal his persistence. The result is clearly not right. More than 20,000 acres of oat fields have no harvest. Li Gangling felt a little dazed in his heart, but he was not discouraged. "After reflection, I am still confident, because there are still many methods that have not been used."
After that, he became humble in front of local agricultural experts, often asking them for advice, and his constant bottom line was that he must be purely natural, no fertilizer, no pesticides, no herbicides.
His approach at that time was ridiculed by some people in the industry, saying that he was a fool's dream, where did the production of fertilizers and pesticides come from? Experts also found him ridiculous and criticized him mercilessly: "If the output is too low, it will inevitably violate economic benefits, without economic benefits, there is no meaning, why waste time doing things without meaning?" ”
"Economic benefits!" The word made Li Gangling fall into contemplation. For businessmen, economic benefits are indeed a core issue, but is it really all for the sake of profit by growing pure natural oats? During that time, Li Gangling has been asking himself, what is the original intention of planting pure natural oats?
"What I want to do is not to make a profit first, but to bring people really healthy food."
When the purpose became pure, Li Gangling's heart became more determined. He ignored the discouragement of others and made an even more astonishing decision: In 2014, he expanded his previous oatmeal field to more than 40,000 acres! He decided to domesticate these "weeds" in his own way. His method is to cross horizontally and vertically – to seed indiscriminately. He broke the previous format method, horizontal, vertical, oblique... Scatter the seeds together. In his view, this is a process of domestication, and if there is no room for weeds, the growth of wild grasses will be stifled, and the oats will not be strangled to grow.
In the following year, Li Gangling had a different harvest - compared with the previous year, his weeds became more than 40,000 acres. If the first blow inspired Li Gangling's determination to win, then this time, it was undoubtedly negative, and he began to doubt himself and fell into anxiety. Especially after hearing that people constantly called him "Li Fool" behind his back, mocking him as "two haves with money and sickness", "bumping into the south wall and not turning back", "going against the trend and going against the trend will die", his persistence was somewhat shaken, and he was ambitious, and he did not expect that one day he would become the "laughing stock" of other people. The original partners also quietly left due to disagreements. He once thought deeply of the phrase "life is like a marathon.". For years, just like he ran a marathon, when his body reached its limit, he gritted his teeth and continued to move forward, because he knew that the end was ahead, and as long as he kept running, he could succeed. But this time, it may be a marathon with no end.
But it is impossible to get a runner to stop. Li Gangling hinted to himself: It's like running, the body reaches an extreme, and you can see the end point after surviving. During that time, he often talked to the other self when he ran, like a corn husk, layer by layer to the core, and his heart gradually became firmer.
The key to solving the "pole" is how to find a balance in the mutual containment of oats and weeds.
He saw the answer in the Tao Te Ching: man's law, earth's law, heaven's law, heaven's law, and nature's law. All species in nature have their own reasons for existence and a cosmological view of symbiosis.
Li Gangling understood this, and he no longer regarded grass as an enemy. All that needs to be done is to return the oats to nature and leave room for weeds to grow.
In 2015, Li Gangling and the remaining partners began the planting experiment of natural oats again, but when planting specifically, some partners did not fully agree with li Gangling's requirement of no chemical fertilizer, no pesticide, no herbicide seed method. Later, he was once again impressed by Li Gangling's sincere attitude, as well as the dream of making the most natural oatmeal of mankind, the healthiest food of mankind, and creating a world-class Chinese natural oat brand, and made a detailed vision and planning for this.
The harvest is finally here. On September 2, 2015, Li Gangling came to the oat field as usual, and accidentally found that several oat ears next to him had produced real "fruits", and his heart was suddenly hit, and he hurriedly staggered to the nearby field to reconfirm, afraid that it was just accidental.
When the ears of oats he rubbed in succession stripped off the hard grains of oats without exception, he was finally sure that this time it was indeed a success.
He ran frantically through the oat fields, screaming uncontrollably. At that moment, all the grievances and unwillingness he had accumulated in recent years were released in one fell swoop, and the "fool" of other people was also dissipated in the endless oat field with the wind at that moment. This year, Li Gangling harvested more than 1,000 tons of oats.
The "pure natural oats" planted by Li Gangling have now exceeded 50 kilograms from 15 kilograms and 25 kilograms per mu. Although it is still seven or eight times lower than the yield of ordinary oats, he believes that the mature yield will slowly rise as the use of oat straw returns to the field to take advantage of natural ecological planting!
At the same time, we explored, summarized and used the principle of biological phase gram, using a series of methods such as off-season sowing, wide ridge dense planting, fallow rotation, straw return, etc., to gradually establish a set of pure natural oat planting methods and control systems, and achieved remarkable results and created the planting method of Mengbei Agricultural Method. Since 2016, Li Gangling has expanded the scale of oat planting to 110,000 mu, which is currently the world's largest pure natural oat planting base.
In 2017, Mengbei Oats became the "Ecological Origin Protection Product of the People's Republic of China", and in 2018, it has obtained organic food certification in the United States, the European Union and China.
Later, at an agricultural forum, Li Gangling talked about the harm of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to the environment, food, and human body, and called for the non-application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, although some people still did not very much approve of his approach. However, human beings are bound to embark on the development path of natural ecology and healthy eating, we should respect nature, follow nature, return to nature, and follow the concept of a natural and healthy lifestyle of the unity of nature and man. Otherwise, the root cause of the disease will become more and more widespread, and the fruits of our hard work and the desire to pursue good happiness will be reversed.
Everyone has their own beliefs, and everyone has their own mission. If a person knows how much life is worth in a lifetime, he will not hesitate to do things of equal value.
Although the ecological agriculture of natural oats has basically been effective, but in the whole agriculture is still a spark, Li Gangling hopes that more people engaged in agriculture and food production will change their thinking as soon as possible, so that all the food we eat will be safer and healthier!
"I believe that in the near future, natural ecological agriculture that does not use chemical fertilizers and pesticides and uses straw to return to the field for sustainable development will certainly be promoted." Li Gangling said.
Endless: Break through the thickness of a cicada's wing
Many people like to compare the later Li Gangling to Forrest Gump. Forrest Gump because of the phrase "Gump, Run!" Since then, he has run all the way and run out of his life.
Forrest Gump's story is an artistic presentation of the film, while Li Gangling is a realistic version of his life experience, and he does not have aimless drift on the road of adhering to his faith, but has only gone through many tribulations on a successful road. You may understand better that for people of sound minds, their all-out effort is a run based on some kind of inner pursuit and belief, a dialogue with themselves on the road alone, and then a persistence.
Later, whenever he encountered difficulties, he remembered the tribulations experienced by the Tang monks in the 17 years of the road of learning the scriptures, and he said: "The road I am going forward is no longer afraid of anything."
Li Gangling spent several years to successfully grow pure natural oats and solve the most basic raw material problems, but there was no respite, and then he ushered in another "marathon pole" - processing and production.
Like the "obsessive-compulsive disorder" of growing pure natural oats, Li Gangling also adheres to his idealistic standards in the processing process, and every process must be done according to his requirements. The first requirement: when selecting oat grains, the small and incomplete oat grains are sieved, and finally 6 of the fullest oats that can germinate are selected from 10 grains; the second requirement: on the basis of not adding any additives and excipients, to ensure the fragrance and soft glutinous of natural oats. Undoubtedly, this has reached the limits of processing costs, technical processes and equipment requirements, and almost no oat products on the market today can meet this standard.
There is also one of the most fatal problems that makes Li Gangling distressed: the conventional processing method is to use high temperature curing production equipment of 120 degrees Celsius to process oatmeal, but in this way, the nutrients rich in oats will be seriously damaged, the loss of nutrients is very much, and the taste will be reduced, which cannot be solved at that time.
"I have insisted on it for so many years, if I give up my achievements in the final processing and lose everything, it will still be equivalent to failure." In order to solve this problem, Li Gangling invited well-known experts at home and abroad, almost exhausted all savings, but still could not completely solve the problem of nutrient loss and taste. At the same time, the factory built in the Inner Mongolia Uragai Oat Base also has defects, due to the inconvenience of transportation caused by remoteness, making the production cost extremely high; in the winter, the extremely cold weather of minus 40 degrees Celsius cannot be produced normally.
At that time, for the problem of completely solving the problem of oat nutrition loss, some colleagues said that there was no need to be so real, and at the critical moment, there was a disagreement within the team, and the core personnel left, including those who were very supportive of him at the beginning. At that time, Li Gangling had been forced to the edge of the cliff, unable to turn back, he sold several houses and cars, and could only break the boat and fight with all his might. "At some point, people need to shield themselves from all the sounds of the outside world, face themselves well, go through layers of shielding to listen to the voices in their hearts, and whether to give up or continue, no one knows better than themselves." In the final analysis, the last thing between people is the heart, the thickness of the heart like a cicada's wing. The wings were thin, but it was a tough crossing. He said that this breakthrough in the thickness of cicada wings stemmed from the enlightenment and encouragement brought to him by the old man Tu Youyou. Tu Youyou old man experimented 191 times, with the body poison damaged the liver, and finally used the traditional principles to successfully extract artemisinin, artemisinin in the world to treat more than 200 million people, save millions of lives around the world, more than 80 years old to usher in the Nobel Prize. People at such a young age have not given up, why should we give up when we are so young? This gave Li Gangling a bold idea and began experimenting with the traditional principle of steaming steamed buns at home when he was a child.
Using the principle of low-heat slow stewing, it took more than two years and cost more than 5 tons of oats, and Li Gangling finally succeeded. He and his technical team established a new factory in Shandong, on the basis of the industry's traditional processing methods to carry out bold innovation, independently developed C4 ultra-low temperature preservation nutrition new technology, retained 36 kinds of valuable nutrients in natural oats, retained the pure natural wheat flavor, brewed to achieve the taste of soft glutinous, delicate lubrication and easy to dissolve, drink a sip as if really back to nature. You can also eat dry, the wheat aroma is strong, the lips and teeth are fragrant. The worldwide problem of nutrient loss from oats during processing has finally been solved.
It took 7 years from the beginning of the search for natural oats to the creation of all-natural oatmeal products. The packaging material and packaging design were also repeatedly overturned 14 times before they were finally determined.
On May 14, 2018, Mengbei pure natural oatmeal was officially born. During the internal test tasting, many people praised this all-natural oatmeal product, but Li Gangling only gave it a score of 9. Li Gangling said that 10 points is the end of his eternal pursuit, but it is precisely because of the existence of such a finish that he has the motivation to run unremittingly.
After 7 years, for Li Gangling, running has changed from persistence to enjoyment. This man, who was once proud and white and elegant, has also become more like a Mongolian man, not afraid of the cold and heat, not afraid of the wind and rain.
Today, he has opened flagship stores in Mengbei on Tmall and JD.com. In 2019, Li Gangling was selected as one of the top ten entrepreneurial heroes of China's three rural areas; in 2020, Li Gangling was awarded the honorary title of "China's First Natural Oats" by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
Won the honorary title of "China's First Natural Oats"
What kind of challenges will we face in the future? Li Gangling said he already had the calmness to face any challenges. He firmly believes that a healthy body must come from a healthy lifestyle and healthy food, healthy food must come from a healthy land and a natural and organic way of growing, and pure natural oats will be a gift to the world.
He said that on the road of natural oats healthy food, he will persevere, firmly believing that only healthy food will bring human health! In the future fickle market, he will never lose the original intention, mission and source power of "focusing on health and serving the health of all" when he founded Mengbei! Willing to dedicate their youth and blood to the realization of the "Healthy Chinese Dream"!
"There's a classic line in a movie that says when we run, we're 'gods.' On the road of life, if you believe in the future, you will meet the future, and your dreams are exactly the same.