Great Power Reclamation

Chapter 2965 Two Old Foxes

The "dugout economics" of the Texas farm is in full swing, bringing Ye Yuze and Yang Geyong amazing cash flow and widespread social attention.

However, beneath this clamor, a deeper vision lingered in their hearts.

Their roots are ultimately planted in that land that needs stronger crops and more food.

"Yuze, things are pretty much settled in Texas. But shouldn't we make some changes to our 'old business'?"

One evening, Yang Geyong was looking at the financial statements when he suddenly blurted out something. The "old profession" he was referring to was the foundation of agriculture—seeds.

Ye Yuze nodded, his eyes sharp: "Brother, I've been thinking about this too. The United States is not only a consumer market, but also the pinnacle of agricultural technology."

Their biotechnology and genetic research are at the forefront of the world. We're sitting on a treasure trove; we can't just take home some tourist souvenirs.

“But this thing… I heard it’s quite sensitive, and the US is keeping a close eye on it.” Yang Geyong lowered his voice.

"Openly buying technology and poaching key personnel is definitely not an option."

Ye Yuze's lips curled into a sly smile. "But we can 'borrow a chicken to lay eggs' and 'cross the Chencang pass in secret.' Don't forget, we now have a 'perfect disguise.'"

The two looked out the window at the brightly lit dugout experience area.

Those bustling tourist attractions, filled with all sorts of bizarre performances, are their best cover.

Who would have thought that this farm, which seems to only engage in "cultural gimmicks," is secretly extending its reach into the core of American agricultural technology?
With the strategic direction set, action was immediately launched. Ye Yuze and Yang Geyong clearly divided their tasks:

Ye Yuze: Specializes in "talent networks" and "cutting-edge intelligence".

With his fluent English, shrewd business acumen, and the advantages of being a farmer, he frequently visited world-leading agricultural and biological research institutions such as the University of California, Davis and the University of California, Berkeley, to meet with frontline researchers under the guise of "academic exchange," "collaborative research," and "investment visits."

Yang Geyong: Primarily responsible for "base construction" and "secret experiments." Deep within his California farm, he designated a heavily guarded area, publicly known as an "optimized breeding experimental field." This was the true core of their business.

California is not only a Silicon Valley for technology, but also a "Silicon Valley" for agricultural technology.

Ye Yuze thrived in his new environment. He used the substantial profits from his tourism business to establish several inconspicuous "research funds" to legally obtain the latest research trends and some publicly available data by sponsoring scientific research projects.

He is more like a patient headhunter, looking for Chinese scientists with potential and ambition who may be limited within the mainstream system or seeking a larger platform, or even some foreign experts who are dissatisfied with the status quo and eager to apply their technology to a wider world.

Lisa Wang, a "data miner": A talented Chinese postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis, who works on genomic data analysis but is anxious about her immigration status (H1-B visa) and career ceiling.

Ye Yuze met her through several "accidental" academic forums, admired her talent, and offered her a well-paid "advisor" position with freedom in her research direction under the name of his "Innovative Agriculture Fund". Her main job was to "analyze public databases and conduct crop trait correlation studies".

Lisa was overwhelmed with gratitude, unaware that the "non-core" data she had compiled and analyzed, after clever integration, was being continuously sent to the domestic military reclamation seed industry through encrypted channels.

Raj Patel, an "idealist": an Indian plant gene-editing expert who is deeply dissatisfied with the practice of large agricultural companies monopolizing gene patents and driving up seed prices.

Ye Yuze spoke at length with Raj about the concepts of "technology for all" and "developing low-cost, high-efficiency crops for developing countries," which deeply moved Raj.

Ye Yuze, in the name of the "China-US Agricultural Technology Exchange Center" (which was actually located in a secret area of ​​the farm), invited Raj to serve as a technical consultant and allowed him to conduct some "exploratory" research without violating his confidentiality agreement with his original unit.

Raj felt he had found kindred spirits and a platform to realize his ideals, and he was extremely enthusiastic about his work.

Hans Müller, a retired craftsman: a Hans-born traditional breeding expert who retired from Monsanto and has spent his whole life working with corn.

Yang Geyong was responsible for winning him over—his method was very direct: he would often bring beer to Old Hans to chat about farming, showing great respect for his seemingly "outdated" experience, and allowing him to freely experiment with his "old-fashioned" varieties in a test field on the farm.

Old Hans felt he had met a kindred spirit and shared everything he knew. His lifelong accumulation of "feelings" about seed selection and breeding, which could not be fully expressed by data, became a valuable asset for the military reclamation seed industry.

And so, an intelligence and technology network woven by top talent quietly unfolded in the shadow of sunny California.

Yang Geyong was in charge of the "Secret Garden" and put in a lot of effort.

The area is surrounded by an open "family-friendly fruit picking garden" and a "traditional farm tool exhibition hall," attracting a constant stream of visitors every day.

But once you pass through a security gate disguised as a warehouse door that requires a specific password or fingerprint to open, you'll find a completely different world inside.

Tissue culture room: disguised as a "mushroom cultivation workshop".

On the shelves are not mushrooms, but corn and wheat seedlings being cultured in vitro in a sterile environment, undergoing early screening for salt and alkali tolerance and disease resistance.

The gene analysis lab claims to be a "soil composition testing center".

Inside are PCR instruments, electrophoresis tanks, and other equipment, which are operated remotely by Lisa Wang and by several carefully selected Huaxia employees who have signed strict confidentiality agreements, to conduct rapid molecular marker-assisted selection of germplasm resources "exchanged" from various places.

Artificial climate chamber: It looks like a large "flower greenhouse".

It simulates various environments, from arid to humid and from high to low temperatures, testing crop varieties that have had their genes edited or have undergone special selection.

The most ingenious thing was Yang Geyong's "homemade method of secrecy".

He had workers install metal mesh in the walls of all the secret laboratories, effectively shielding them from external detection signals.

All experimental waste was disposed of by mixing it with ordinary household garbage or farm fertilizer.

The researchers traveled in and out in unmarked vehicles, taking different routes.

He even kept several trained German Shepherds, not to bite people, but because their sense of smell was exceptionally sensitive, allowing them to detect the scent of specific chemical reagents or electronic devices for counter-surveillance purposes.

“This place looks like a dirt farm, who the hell would have thought that gene editing is going on underneath?” Yang Geyong said to Ye Yuze with no small amount of pride.

Acquiring technology and data is only the first step. The key is how to safely and efficiently transmit it back to China and work together with the R&D team of Junken Seed Industry.

Ye Yuze established an extremely complex communication system.

1. Overt: Normal business emails and video conferences, discussing farm management and tourism, occasionally "casually" mentioning some "common phenomena" or "public reports" in US agriculture.

2. Covert transmission: Using highly encrypted satellite channels to transmit processed data packets.

The data wasn't transmitted directly as complete gene sequences or core technical documents. Instead, it was broken down, encoded, and mixed in with large amounts of tourism customer data and financial statement data, sent in a seemingly chaotic format. Junken Seed Industry had corresponding decoding programs and a dedicated team to perform recombination analysis.

3. Physical transfer: This is the most dangerous but also the most indispensable part.

Certain superior germplasm resources, especially those intermediate breeding materials that cannot be fully described by data, require physical samples.

They use tourism as a cover to smuggle very small quantities of carefully disguised seeds (such as those mixed with ornamental plant seeds or made into "handicrafts") through trusted, unsuspecting tourists (usually Chinese tourists who are completely unaware and are just helping to bring back some "local specialties" to China).

This method is high-risk, used in very small quantities, and only for the most critical materials.

After receiving "nourishment" from across the ocean, the research and development capabilities of Junken Seed Industry have made rapid progress.

They utilize this cutting-edge information and technological ideas, combined with domestic practical needs and existing scientific research foundation, to rapidly iterate their varieties.

The trait screening cycle, which originally took seven or eight years to complete, has now been shortened to three or four years.

The success rate of resistance research for some key diseases has been greatly improved thanks to the availability of clear molecular markers and gene targets.

They even planned ahead for the research and development of new varieties suitable for the future market based on information from Ye Yuze regarding American consumers' preferences for the taste and appearance of agricultural products.

Junken Seed Industry, this emerging seed company, has begun to make its mark at domestic and international industry conferences at a speed that outsiders cannot comprehend, releasing a series of high-performance and innovative new crop varieties, which has aroused the vigilance and curiosity of industry giants.

Ye Yuze and Yang Geyong's activities were not without flaws. Some astute competitors, especially several American agricultural giants, began to notice that this seemingly tourism-oriented Chinese farm appeared to have some kind of subtle connection with a suddenly rising seed company in China.

A company called "Agassi Biotechnology" sent business investigators to infiltrate farms in Texas and California as "tourists".

The mystery of the dugout area: The investigators saw bizarre sights at the dugout experience camp. At first, they thought the farmer was a genius (or a fool) who was doing nothing, but their professional instincts made them try to go deeper.

He was stopped by “interrogation” when he tried to approach the “optimized breeding experimental field”. He was immediately stopped by “enthusiastic” farm staff (actually security personnel).

The employee, speaking in heavily accented English, enthusiastically introduced him to the "largest organic pumpkin growing area in North America" ​​next door, and insisted on giving him a pumpkin pie to try, leaving him with no choice but to accept it and leave.

Yang Geyong's "performance": Yang Geyong personally appeared, wearing work pants and covered in mud, and complained to the investigators that farming was not profitable and that tourism was a faster way to make money. He also complained about how unfriendly California's policies were to farmers, successfully creating the image of a "down-on-his-luck farmer" whose energy was diverted by the tourism industry.

Ye Yuze's "smokescreen": At the same time, at an industry cocktail party, Ye Yuze "inadvertently" revealed to an executive of Agsys that he was considering investing in American leisure agriculture technology, such as smart irrigation systems for landscape maintenance.

They complained about the high cost of labor in the United States, implying a desire to import some "cost-effective" agricultural equipment from China. This successfully diverted the other party's attention in the wrong direction.

The investigation ultimately came to nothing, and the investigation report concluded that:

"The target farm's main business is specialty tourism, while its agricultural planting is relatively small-scale and technologically advanced. It has little connection with the military reclamation seed industry and may only be a coincidence or a very preliminary technology introduction."

The crisis was temporarily averted, but Ye Yuze and Yang Geyong knew they had to be even more careful.

California farm dugout experience camps remain popular, even spawning more elaborate projects that continue to contribute cash flow and cover.

The seed industry plan, which had been hidden deep within, has now yielded its first real harvest.

By integrating cutting-edge US gene technology, traditional breeding wisdom, and solid domestic field trials, Junken Seed Industry has successfully launched a series of varieties that have shaken the market:
• "Hanhai No. 1" corn: It has extremely strong drought resistance and salt and alkali resistance, making it very suitable for planting in the arid and semi-arid regions of Northwest China. Its yield is more than 20% higher than that of the local main varieties.

"Jiangnanxiang" rice: Excellent rice quality, outstanding resistance to lodging and major diseases, and has been rapidly promoted in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

• "Northern Xinjiang Spring" wheat: early-maturing and cold-resistant, effectively avoiding the drought period and high incidence of pests and diseases in late spring in northern China.

These varieties have not only shone brightly in the domestic market, but have even begun to be tentatively exported to some developing countries, challenging the market monopoly of international seed giants with their excellent adaptability and reasonable prices.

Junken Seed Industry's valuation has soared, making it a shining star in China's agricultural technology field.

Only a very few core members knew that the company's rapid rise was most directly related to those two farm owners in the United States who were "not doing their proper business" and were running a rural tourism business.

At night, Ye Yuze and Yang Geyong once again stood on the high ground of the California Farm. Below them was the still bustling tourist area, and behind them was the silent yet powerful secret experimental field.

"Yuze, would you say we... became corporate spies?" Yang Geyong asked half-jokingly, taking a sip of beer.

Ye Yuze shook his head, his gaze deep: "Brother, we didn't steal or rob. We paid high tuition fees (to sponsor scientific research), we provided a platform to attract talent, and we integrated information to innovate."

"This is a dance on the edge of the rules, but it is also for a bigger goal—to fill our own bowls with more and better food that we grow ourselves."

He paused, then continued, "Moreover, the game has only just begun. Now that Junken Seed Industry has a foundation, the next step is to establish our own completely independent research and development system. At that time, we will no longer need to 'borrow' resources like this."

Yang Geyong patted Ye Yuze heavily on the shoulder: "Just do whatever you say! Anyway, digging dug pits is digging, and growing seeds is growing seeds. We're both just making a living from the ground, and we're good at it!"

The two looked at each other and smiled, and the stars in the night sky seemed to twinkle with anticipation.

The legend of California Farms continues in a somewhat absurd form, while the undercurrents surging beneath the California farms are quietly converging into a force that will soon change the landscape of the world's seed industry.

Their story is far from over; a new journey has already begun.