Abandoned the Immortal Cultivator, returned to his hometown to farm and sing

Chapter 1306, Page 1294: The Story of Martin

"A person? Who is it?" Luo Yihang asked curiously.

Wenying nodded, but instead of speaking directly, she told a story.

"When I was a visiting scholar at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, I met a homeless man named Martin Land who often slept on the lawn downstairs at the research center, usually when he was drunk or high on drugs."

"Nobody paid any attention to him. Occasionally, someone would give him a blanket or some clothes. A few days later, the blanket and clothes would appear at the flea market outside the school."

"But people continued to send them. Including a professor I was on good terms with at the time."

"Out of curiosity, I asked him and found out that he was a graduate of the University of Gningen and was from Eastern Europe. His grandfather was a data clerk on a collective farm, and he had a great talent for mathematics from a young age. He was one of the first generation of programmers after the collapse of the Soviet Union."

"He was also among the first to research Breeding 4.0."

"I've read his papers; they mainly focus on environmental data and climate prediction. They're very forward-thinking and inspiring..."

I understand now. A reclusive master, an unconventional tech genius, the kind of person who works like a hidden monk.

As for wandering, that's just the maverick nature of a genius. Maybe he just likes sleeping outside. Ordinary people shouldn't try to understand the world of geniuses.

"You mean we should invite him over? Is he willing to come? The professor you mentioned, he's on good terms with him, so we'll invite him through him, right?" Luo Yihang was quite hopeful.

Thugs, homeless people in the trash, drunkards in bars, day laborers on farms... these places are fertile ground for saviors.

Capturing just one of them could save the world.

That's how it's portrayed in movies.

result.

Wen Ying looked at Luo Yihang with a face full of surprise, "Why invite him? We don't even know if he's alive now. Even if he is, he's a poisonous insect. His mind is already confused, and he's a useless person."

Huh? That's not how things work.

"Then why did you bring him up?" Luo Yihang asked, puzzled.

"Let me finish," Wen Ying interrupted Luo Yihang's nonsense.

"Oh, it was just halftime," Luo Yihang gestured for them to proceed.

Wenying continued, "In 2007, he founded a company called VitalFields, which is a cloud-based management tool for farms and fields, providing basic functions such as field information, weather data, farm operating costs, and income forecasting."

"This can be considered a preview of Breeding 4.0, given his expertise in environmental and climatic aspects."

"However, his company did not start well. It was somewhat ahead of its time and rather rudimentary, and no one used his products. He could only attend industry gatherings everywhere, attract customers one-on-one, communicate, and improve his tools little by little."

This phase is quite inspiring. It turns out that Martin Rand was already working on this back in 2007. He was really early on and had great foresight.

"And so it came to 2011. By then, Martin's products were already very sophisticated, capable of collecting environmental data, analyzing climate change, and using that data to guide agricultural practices."

"That same year, his company received a $50 investment from Monsanto. At that time, Monsanto was at its peak, and in the agricultural industry, being favored by Monsanto meant instant success."

"The same is true for Martin Rand's company, VitalFields. They changed their strategy to offer free trials and expanded rapidly, reaching seven European countries and more than 600,000 users in just a few years."

"Although Martin is not a good person in the strict sense, his VitalFields tool, although free, requires authorization for real-time farmland data such as soil, weather, and crop growth, and deliberately obscures data ownership. That is, although farmers nominally own the data, VitalFields has the permanent right to analyze and use it."

"But his goal is nothing more than to make every user his free information collector, and then he will use this data to launch paid value-added services."

"It was also during this period that he and his team completed the database architecture for environment, soil, meteorology, crop growth and pathology, as well as data models such as nitrogen fertilizer optimization models; and developed a series of user-end functions such as tracking farmland activities, automatically generating environmental protection reports, comparing pesticide and fertilizer use standards in EU countries, and automatically triggering alarms when exceeding standards."

"Based on these functions, meteorological, soil, and crop growth data can be integrated to provide decision-making suggestions such as optimizing sowing density and applying nitrogen fertilizer in variable ways."

"Similar to the smart agriculture systems we use now, they are very useful for guiding agricultural production."

"But that was in 2014."

Wenying's story came to an end.

Luo Yihang also understood Martin's strength.

Because he knows how useful the smart agriculture system he's currently using is.

The smart agriculture system functions similarly to Martin's system, the only difference being that smart agriculture can be customized and adjusted, and it comes with a vast amount of hardware.

However, smart agriculture only completed its basic functions in 2020, a full six years later than Martin's system.

This guy is a genius, and he has a really good eye for talent.

"And then what happened? How did he become a homeless man again?" Uncle Li was also intrigued by the story, but he felt that something was amiss.

“Then, in 2014,” Wen Ying continued, “Monsanto’s Climate Company acquired VitalFields for an undisclosed price. The exact price is unknown, but it must have been substantial, because before the acquisition, Martin was still ambitiously declaring that he would build dedicated hardware, establish data links, and develop global pest and disease prediction models, etc.”

At this point, Wenying sighed, "Alas, a global pest and disease prediction model still hasn't been built. The digital twin application we did when cultivating 'Jiaoqiqi' only scratched the surface. However, Martin's vision is still based on traditional statistical models, while ours is a comprehensive prediction model—we're on a completely different level..."

Even so.

However, it was clear that Wenying was very disappointed about the failure of the pest and disease prediction model.

After all, that was ten years ago.

"Then why didn't you do it?" Luo Yihang asked curiously.

Upon hearing this question, Wenying gave a rare cold snort and said disdainfully, "It will affect the sale of pesticides. If we can predict the outbreak of pests and diseases in advance and take preventative measures to replace crops in advance, who will buy the pesticides?"

"Just for this?" Luo Yihang found it unbelievable. How could someone be so wicked?

"Martin was bribed? By a pesticide company?" Luo Yihang asked dismissively.

Wen Ying shook her head. "Martin was long gone by then. After the acquisition, Martin disappeared. It's said that he gave up his shares and took a large sum of money to enjoy life."

"He reappeared several years later, having become a homeless person at the school, addicted to alcohol and drugs, and was ruined."

"It is also said that he became like this because of his extravagant spending."

"However, a woman who claimed to be his wife later caused a stir, claiming that Martin was a self-disciplined person and that he had discussed investment rather than acquisition with Monsanto, and that he would not give up his career."

"Not long after, that woman also disappeared."

"The truth is unknown, and nobody cares..."

Wenying's voice grew softer and colder, until finally it was just a soft sigh.

This is a sad story.

“It’s also possible that he suddenly received a large sum of money and doesn’t know how to spend it…” Luo Yihang was still thinking of giving him some advice.

As a result, Uncle Li bluntly stated, "A kid with no background, especially from Eastern Europe, even if he's a genius, will be ruined if he doesn't listen to you."

Wen Ying smiled bitterly and nodded. "There are far too many cases like this. They don't even need to kill Martin. Letting him rot there doesn't matter. Is it really necessary to know the truth?"

"After learning about Martin's affairs, many of the foreign students and visiting scholars in our group gave up because they didn't want to be associated with him. They either changed careers or switched to less sensitive disciplines."

"I only dared to do some specific research work when I was about to return to China, and even then it was done remotely."

She was referring to Xiaoman No. 1. Wenying was providing guidance there, and Shijuan was implementing it in Ping'an Gou. At that time, the greenhouse in this laboratory was still growing snow peas and cherry tomatoes.

"It's good that you came back!" Uncle Li said loudly. "Nobody in our family would dare to touch you. At most, those guys would dare to use some petty tricks, like investing in a few shares and slowly infiltrating."

"We'll fight back even with the smallest tricks. If they dare to lay a hand on us, we'll chop off their arms. We're not afraid!" Luo Yihang shouted. No wonder there aren't many startups left in Europe.

Look at what they've been doing!
Wenying smiled and agreed, "It should be chopped off!"

Wow, she actually said something harsh?
Because there's more to the story.

"After VitalFields was acquired, the founding technical team was split and reorganized to develop the FieldView platform with VitalFields' database and data tools as the core."

"After Monsanto was acquired by Bayer in 2018, it was integrated into the Climate FieldView platform based on the FieldView platform."

"This platform now covers 8900 million hectares of farmland worldwide and integrates data from more than 60 agricultural technology companies. It can be described as a 'sky net' for agricultural data."

"Initially, it was for selling pesticides, since Bayer sells pesticides. So they weren't allowed to continue developing pest and disease prediction models. Later, I heard they wanted to develop them again, but they couldn't make them."

Why can't I make it?

Because Martin was ruined.

Should!
"But it's a huge loss. They used the farmland data they accumulated to apply for 127 agricultural algorithm patents worldwide."

Okay, it's patents again. It's path-dependent, so the next step will definitely be to sue similar companies for infringement and force them to shut down.

That's more than that; you're seriously underestimating international seed industry giants.

They had a blast.

"Afterwards, Bayer's Climate FieldView platform was interconnected with Cargill's soil database and ADM harvest forecasting system, nominally to share data and information from major grain-producing regions around the world and promote international cooperation."

"But its real function is to allow the four major grain traders to short the futures market in advance when the platform predicts a reduction in production in a certain region."

"And signing purchase contracts in advance when production cuts are anticipated, purchasing at low prices after the production cuts occur, and then selling to the local area at higher prices."

“Even when the agricultural sector of a country or region refuses to share data, agricultural input services are cut off, causing large-scale crop yield reductions or even crop failures due to pests.”

What the hell!

Not only Luo Yihang, but even the well-informed Uncle Li was stunned.

How can you still play like this?
How dare they do this?!

Luo Yihang started from scratch, raising money by selling chili sauce and perfume, and in just a few years he has developed Super Malan Grass to combat desertification and boost the photovoltaic industry.

Those people, with better tools and massive resources, are going to play the futures market!

Using a dragon-slaying sword to chop up ribs? Are you even human?!

"Take it, we must take it, and use it in the right place," Luo Yihang said angrily.

Uncle Li nodded.

Wenying nodded as well.

“That’s what I think too. Bayer’s Climate FieldView platform is an excellent tool and the closest Bayer and its team have come to true Breeding 4.0. The development team is very strong.”

"This is what I mean by 'being held hostage' can also be a human being."

Wen Ying spoke eloquently, finally getting to the point.

However, what she wanted to snatch it away seemed to be different from what Luo Yihang had said.

Wenying, unaware of what was happening, began her analysis with great enthusiasm.

"The current head of the Climate FieldView development team is a guy named Remy Williams, who is also the head of Bayer's Digital Agriculture and Climate division. But he's just an administrator and manager, only good at office politics, not important."

I get it, the kind of layman who leads the experts.

"The key people are these individuals. The project manager is Heather Glenn, who leads the technology development team and is responsible for architecture and feature iteration. He was also a member of Martin's team back then."

“Natalia Lucas, she is the head of digital products and leads the product feature design.”

"Brendan Lincolnberg was in charge of data tool development. He was also a member of Martin's initial team. He was involved in the very beginning with the database and algorithms."

“These three people are the core. If we can recruit them, we can develop our own platform based on Climate FieldView, or rather, based on the original VitalFields, so that environmental big data can return to its original purpose: predicting pests and diseases, predicting extreme weather changes, reducing losses, and guiding agricultural production.”

It's clear that Martin's VitalFields tool is more geared towards climate, environmental analysis, and forecasting.

It is only partially related to the breeding work that Wenying is engaged in.

It's about environmental big data.

Putting aside nationality and purpose, what we have left behind is the legacy of an industry pioneer and a visionary scientist.

A tool that could have benefited the world has been used for evil.

She was extremely angry!

Two days later.

In a conference room inside an ordinary-looking small building in the capital city.

A group of people sat around the conference table.

Luo Yihang, Wen Ying, Uncle Li, and Professor Du Jing sat together.

Other experts include a group of think tank specialists in agriculture, information technology, international relations, international law, and business negotiations.

The meeting has been going on for a long time.

We previously discussed the global registration and protection of patents for Breeding 4.0.

We finished discussing Professor Du's soil microbial association model and his research on microbial community ecological activation technology.

We have now moved on to the third topic.

The large screen displayed the former CEO, current CEO, Chief Commercial Officer, Global Strategy Officer, Head of Digital Products, Regional Business Incubation General Manager, Customer Experience General Manager, and regional heads for Asia Pacific, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, all from Bayer's subsidiary Climate.

Anyway, a whole bunch of management and senior executives.

And the three most important people on the platform, as Wenying mentioned, the three middle-level managers who do the work.

Their photos, resumes, interpersonal relationships, and even personality analyses.

I don't know how they managed to collect so much information in just two days.

And in the end, there was one more person.

A man named Lu Shixue.

He is the head of Climate Inc.'s operations in China.

The main task is to work with a subsidiary called Aike Agriculture to build a smart planting model (×) and collect satellite remote sensing and meteorological data (√).

The task of recruiting talent will fall to him...

(End of this chapter)