Homo Sapiens

The fertilizer production base, a collaboration with Donghua Group under the Lopez Family’s name, had already completed a large portion of its infrastructure construction.

As for Donghua Group, even Wu Heguang had personally gone to the plant, closely monitoring the various production workshops, striving to ensure all equipment could be completed on time.

Although there was still some time before the equipment delivery deadline, the contract between the two parties had been signed in September of ’19, and all equipment had to be shipped to Luzon by mid-June of the current year.

With only a little over four months remaining, Wu Heguang didn’t dare to get careless.

After all, this order was extremely urgent. Completing the manufacturing of all the equipment in ten months had pushed the production lines to their absolute limits. He had to pull in a large number of personnel just to maintain the current production speed.

Some time ago, several parts suppliers in Jiangcheng and the Lianghu Region had been unable to deliver on time. This had left Wu Heguang utterly stressed, forcing him to temporarily pay a premium to find other factories as replacements.

This batch of equipment was worth several hundred million US Dollars, after all. And for some of the key components, like those for the synthetic ammonia production line, specialized factories were required for manufacturing. In fact, some parts were sole-sourced from a single company.

This had Wu Heguang on edge, and he constantly hounded those suppliers to guarantee timely delivery of the parts.

Meanwhile, the Lopez Clan was also urging them on, and their reasoning was perfectly legitimate.

Luzon’s food supply was currently under attack from ABCD, and the price hikes for pesticides and fertilizers were highly abnormal. This made Luzon all the more desperate to achieve domestic production of pesticides and fertilizers.

...

「Meanwhile.」

The supply problem for fertilizer and pesticides in Luzon had indeed become quite severe.

After all, chemical giants like Dow, BASF, Bayer, and DuPont were in cahoots with ABCD.

If not for the fertilizers and pesticides supplied by a few Huaguo chemical companies, Luzon would be completely at these behemoths’ mercy.

But this situation was not set in stone.

Inside the Lima South Biogas Fermentation Plant on Luzon Island.

After fermentation by genetically modified methanogens, the remaining waste liquid and residue were rapidly drawn into another workshop on the plant’s west side.

Employees in full-body protective suits operated the equipment. Most of the moisture was spun out of the waste by rollers. The remaining dregs moved down a production line where a small amount of wood chips and grass powder was added before the mixture was poured into long trays.

The trays were then sent by conveyor belt to the next workshop, a mushroom cultivation facility. There, employees in protective suits injected each tray with mushroom spawn.

Mushrooms were already growing in the facility. They looked like ordinary mushrooms, but after the employees harvested them, the trays that served as the substrate were sent to yet another workshop.

In this workshop, the substrate that had already grown one crop of mushrooms was taken out and fed into a separator-sifter.

Through oscillation and washing, the substrate was separated into secondary culture material and the mushroom’s mycelial nodules. These nodules were sent into a pheromone sterilization furnace and a high-temperature disinfection furnace. Finally, after being pulverized by a grinder and mixed with supplementary materials, they became bags of organic nitrogen fertilizer with a 12% nitrogen content.

Zhang Wei, the head of Haitian Agriculture, grabbed a handful of the powder and said with a smile to Buri, the General Manager of Jade Energy:

"Excellent. The cooperatives have been giving us great feedback on our organic fertilizer. The application rate for urea has dropped by about 62%, and there’s less soil compaction. Plus, the soil’s organic matter can be sustained over two planting seasons without any significant decline."

"It’s great that it’s so effective. This way, our other biogas fermentation plants can also be converted," Buri replied happily.

They had previously introduced a fermented residue product. While its fertility and organic matter content were quite good, it had plenty of problems.

The most troublesome issue was that the nutrients in the residue were uneven, making it difficult to determine the application amount, which could easily lead to fertilizer burn.

But after being refined by the genetically modified mushrooms and rhizobia, it not only became a true organic fertilizer but also acquired a large amount of organic nitrogen from the rhizobia.

"Buri, what’s this plant’s current output?"

"It can produce about 5,000 to 6,000 tons per month. If the other biogas fermentation plants are converted, the output could probably reach about 300,000 tons per month."

Zhang Wei did a quick assessment and figured that this output could replace 100,000 tons of agricultural urea (which has a nitrogen content of 42%–46%).

The reason it could replace so much was that at least 50% of urea is lost during application.

The long-lasting, slow-release nature of organic fertilizer, on the other hand, actually increases nitrogen utilization efficiency.

Of course, chemical fertilizers were still indispensable. When rapid top-dressing was required, they were superior to organic options. Organic fertilizer was best used as a base fertilizer and soil conditioner, and to reduce the overall amount of chemical fertilizer needed.

Zhang Wei was no longer the novice he once was. After intensive study and learning by osmosis from the many agricultural researchers at the company, he naturally understood that both chemical and organic fertilizers were indispensable parts of modern agriculture.

"As for the technicians, I’ll arrange for them as soon as possible. After all, that trash from ABCD is circling like vultures out there."

Buri nodded. "No problem on my end. The site and equipment will be sorted out quickly. It’s a bit of a shame to use those mushrooms for pig feed, though."

"Selling them on the market is out of the question. Although there’s no major risk in eating them, our own mushroom production is already high enough. Fengrao wouldn’t agree to us further increasing the market supply. They’re perfectly fine as pig feed."

Buri shrugged. "OK. I’m not against genetically modified mushrooms, anyway. I eat insect protein all the time. We have to learn to adapt. After all, this is the future!"

Zhang Wei knew what he meant. Homo Sapiens Company often held discussions about the future of the world. Many people were not optimistic about humanity’s prospects, and Buri was the type who worried about the apocalypse.

After finishing the inspection at the Lima South Biogas Fermentation Plant, Zhang Wei immediately headed to the Lima South Sea Algae Refining Base.

This algae refining base was currently the largest one under Haitian Agriculture.

The base could annually produce 1.5 million tons of seaweed starch, 300,000 tons of trehalose, 6 million tons of seaweed fiber (which could be reprocessed into various syrups), and 800,000 tons of carrageenan.

Recently, an organic compound fertilizer production plant had been added. It primarily used three types of genetically modified seaweed to bioaccumulate potassium salts and phosphates from seawater and nitrogen from the air. This seaweed was then sent to the base’s biogas fermentation plant.

Besides producing methane, the fermented seaweed residue was then dried, ground into powder, and mixed with calcium oxide in specific proportions to create an organic fertilizer containing nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and various trace elements.

Luzon has no potassium salt mines or large phosphate mines, so it must rely on this bioaccumulation method to produce this type of organic compound fertilizer.

This factory could produce approximately 1.5 million tons of organic compound fertilizer annually, or it could produce separate organic nitrogen, organic potassium, and organic phosphate fertilizers.

If ABCD thought they could put a stranglehold on Luzon by controlling fertilizer and pesticides, they were delusional.

As for the pesticide problem, Haitian Agriculture planned to use a combination of pheromone-based pest control, genetic modification for crop immunity, and traditional pesticides to reduce overall pesticide usage.

Of course, Haitian Agriculture would also develop its own chemical pesticides.

This just went to show how difficult it was for a small nation to achieve agricultural independence.

The moment Luzon showed signs of breaking away, ABCD and a host of chemical giants and seed companies joined forces to move against it.

This confrontation was nearly omnipresent.

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