Chapter 809: Greenpeace
Translator: _Min_ Editor: Caron_
Graphene separators and films were all produced at the New Malaysian Special District. The more advanced technological parts were printed directly through industrial 3D printers.
The project was in full throttle until early July, when half of the 400,000 acres of farm area had been developed and tens of thousands of submarine planting units were installed on the seabed at a depth of one hundred meters. Through the layer of thin and durable graphene film, rows of emerald green plants in the culture tanks were thriving under the weak LED light.
A total of ten offshore platforms were located in the area, with twelve staff members on each platform accompanied by two Celestial Trade soldiers responsible for security. Each of the offshore platform had to manage more than one thousand planting units, which might seem overwhelming, but it turned out to be reasonable.
Watering, fertilizing, sowing, and soil replacement in the culture tank could be completed automatically by planting units. Only a small number of emergencies required the crew to drive the submersibles under water.
The surrounding waters became rich in oxygen and perfect for the growth of seafood because of the oxygen released from the planting units. In order to prevent wastage from such excellent fishing grounds, Jiang Chen zoned the top of the planting area into an offshore fishery, built a floating breeding base, and raised common sea fish species like sardines, salmon, squid, and lobster, and produced fish oil as a byproduct.
Because of the oxygen-enriched environment, the growth of these fishes was much faster than in the wild, and their meat was also more delicious and more likely to accumulate fat.
In addition, the excrement of these fish schools could also be collected through special equipment as natural organic fertilizer!
Farms and fisheries complemented each other. This was known as recycling agriculture.
As soon as mid-August arrived, Xin farmers markets would be able to sell vegetables grown domestically. At the end of this year at the latest, the grain market of Xin would reverse the zero-export situation. In one fell swoop, it would become a granary on the Pacific Ocean!
[Cargill doesn’t want to sell farms?]
[I don’t even want to buy them anyways.]
However, Australia’s SunRice wasn’t happy to see this situation.
With a monopoly in Australia’s rice market as well as holding a majority of the agricultural produce market in Asia, only Thailand, Vietnam remained as competitors in the market. However, now that Xin Ocean Agriculture started to grow vegetables on the seabed, it wasn’t a good sign for them.
Originally, they were quite optimistic about Xin’s farm product market. After all, Xin’s arable land to population ratio was completely out of proportion, and the resistance to price fluctuations in the global food market was almost zero. However, now that Xin was using this jaw-dropping method to diverge from their dependence on Australia’s agricultural product, it was difficult for SunRice’s senior executives to accept.
Just as Xin Ocean Agriculture announced the establishment of a fishery above the submarine farms and the implementation of “dynamic agriculture,” Cargill held a board meeting to discuss countermeasures against the changes in the Asian agriculture market.
From the beginning of the meeting, arguing hadn’t ceased. Cargill’s shareholders were extremely complex. Although there were only one or two true decision makers, such meetings couldn’t exclude eligible shareholders.
“Not just submarine farms – I heard they also plan to build submarine ranches!”
“The monkeys on this island… are they going to convert the entire shallow waters of the western Pacific into arable land?”
“We must find ways to stop them!”
“But Xin is a country. We can’t persuade the Capitol to interfere with them.”
“What are the resources we can use?”
“The Department of Agriculture is completely inadequate!”
“Use dumpings! We can squeeze out their sub-sea farms with low-priced food!” A shareholder banged the table with his knuckles.
“It’s difficult! If Future Group is bent on entering the agricultural market, they won’t care about this money! With their financial resources and influence, it’s at least on par with the B City Consortium…”
The meeting room unexpectedly quieted down.
Yes, regardless of the circumstances, Future Group was on par with B City Consortium. Although consortiums were all behind ABCD, Cargill was a private company with the majority of assets in Asia. Cargill didn’t share strong ties with the consortiums with market values only between 40-50 billion US Dollar.
Fighting a price war with Future Group with a valuation above one hundred billion would be asking for trouble.
Even if Future Group’s focus in high tech meant that the market value might be artificially inflated, the company could easily use assets as collateral and no bank would be willing to reject such a ludicrous customer. Unless the UA government considered it necessary to intervene, it would be pointless to engage in any tactics.
One of Cargill CEO’s arm was pressed against the table and his other hand rubbed his sore brows.
If he was aware of this earlier, he would’ve agreed to sell 400,000 acres of farms! In any case, the northern part Australia wasn’t fertile. The fertile land was concentrated in the east and the south. Now considering this situation, if Xin entered the grain market, their market share in Asia would shrink again.
Submarine farms?
The territorial area of Xin was massive. This area of arable land on the seabed left people with too much room for imagination.
…
“Yesterday morning, we received an announcement from the United Nations Marine Protection Organization. Greenpeace is suing us and believes that our project on the seabed has severely damaged the ecological environment in the Pacific. Professors at Columbia University’s School of Biological Research supported this view, claiming that the mathematic model established analyzed that the 400,000 acres of submarine farmland might completely change local fish habits, thus triggering a large-scale marine ecological disaster.”
“In addition, Greenpeace held a parade at the entrance of Xin’s Embassy in the UA. Protesters held an iPad to broadcast a marine protection documentary to protest the nature-despising behavior of the Xin government.”
At the presidential palace, Zhang Yaping read his assistant’s report with a headache.
“Greenpeace… Where did Greenpeace come from?”
Greenpeace was only a civil rights organization with the aim of opposing nuclear testing during the Cold War. However, it evolved from non-violence to a model of anti-civilization organization. Why? In their eyes, from chemical to genetics, all industries were “elements of the devil” and must be eliminated; everything from Apple laptops to canned tuna and mineral water bottles was poisonous and harmful.
Any country or organization would develop a headache from being targeted by this group of people.
Compared to the little-known Blue Dolphin Organization that previously bothered Future Group, Green Peace would undoubtedly be more organized and more difficult to deal with. Greenpeace now learned from the lessons of their “predecessors” and bypassed Future Group with a hard stance. They directly exerted pressure on the Xin government.
While it wasn’t a big deal, it would be troublesome!
“These Social Justice Warriors with nothing to do.. do they not know that people in the world are still starving?” The enraged Zhang Yaping smacked the document on the table.
In fact, he really wanted to toss the paper at Jiang Chen’s face, as he always had to wipe Jiang Chen’s butt.
After calming down, Zhang Yaping said to his assistant, “Get my advisor. We have to discuss this in a meeting.”
“Yes!”