I See through Everything

Chapter 118: Chapter 93: Gearing Up

This means that under ideal conditions, each mu of Oil King No. 1 can produce 156 kilograms of tea seed oil per year.

Some might think this yield is too low.

However, anyone who truly understands the cultivation of raw materials for edible oil would be shocked by the productivity of Oil King No. 1.

The current per-mu yield data for the world’s five major vegetable oil raw materials is as follows:

Oil palm: 200–300 kilograms of crude oil per mu. The undisputed king of yield, but its oil quality is relatively poor, making it suitable only as an industrial-grade oil for food production.

Soybean: 30–44 kilograms of crude oil per mu. It isn’t primarily grown for oil but as a high-protein animal feed, and its oil quality is also relatively poor.

Rapeseed: 80–110 kilograms of crude oil per mu. Its yield is decent, and low-erucic-acid rapeseed oil is one of the better types of vegetable oil.

Sunflower seed: 90–140 kilograms of crude oil per mu. Its yield is quite good, and the oil quality is also decent.

Peanut: 150–200 kilograms of crude oil per mu. Its yield is excellent, making it the second-largest oil crop by crude oil yield per mu, second only to oil palm. The oil quality is decent.

A side-by-side comparison reveals that the yield of the Oil King No. 1 selected by Jiang Miao is roughly on par with sunflower. However, its oil quality is vastly superior to other vegetable oils; in fact, even olive oil is no match for tea seed oil in terms of quality.

And aside from Oil King No. 1, the high-yield champion, there were other varieties.

Oil King No. 2 was a variety that prioritized oil quality. Its crude oil yield per mu was only about 70–80% that of Oil King No. 1, but its quality was excellent, making it suitable for premium edible oils.

Then there’s Oil King No. 3, a drought-resistant variety. When planted in subtropical monsoon zones, it requires no artificial irrigation and can thrive on natural rainfall alone. Its yield is also around 70–80% of Oil King No. 1’s, with a comparable oil quality.

Jiang Miao considered these three oil tea varieties to be the most valuable, as each naturally had its own advantages and characteristics.

The true advantage of Oil King No. 3, in particular, was its ability to grow without artificial irrigation.

Although rainfall in the Southeast Hills region is plentiful, the areas where oil tea is grown are typically on hillsides that cannot retain water well.

In such a growing environment, irrigation is a major hassle without water pumps or deep wells. Many high-yield oil tea varieties require ample watering, and a lack of sufficient irrigation will lead to reduced yields.

Thus, the advent of Oil King No. 3 allows oil tea to be cultivated on hillsides with less investment in infrastructure, saving both labor and material resources.

In the future, they could be combined as follows: plant Oil King No. 2 on prime, low-lying land to leverage its high oil quality advantage; plant Oil King No. 1 on sloped land near water sources to maintain its high-yield advantage; and plant Oil King No. 3 on sloped land with poor water access to obtain a relatively high yield at a low cost.

These three oil tea varieties are of immense significance for regions with a lot of mountainous terrain.

For example, Fujian Province, famously described as "eight parts mountain, one part water, and one part field," has a huge advantage for developing its oil tea industry.

Of course, the same is true for the Yun-Gui Plateau and the Southeast Hills.

China’s current oil tea cultivation area is 90 million mu. If all of it were grafted with Oil King No. 1, under ideal conditions, it could produce 14.04 million tons of tea seed oil annually. This is equivalent to about 46% of the country’s annual edible oil consumption, and would instantly make it the nation’s number one oil crop.

But that was just wishful thinking.

After all, grafted seedlings cannot retain all the original characteristics. Furthermore, the official 90-million-mu figure for oil tea cultivation is heavily inflated. Many of those plantations were only established to fraudulently obtain subsidies and are now left in a semi-wild state.

If production were to actually expand to such a high level, the price of tea seed oil would plummet.

It was a dilemma.

High production meant it was impossible to maintain a high price.

A high price meant large-scale production was out of the question.

The two were mutually exclusive.

However, Jiang Miao still leaned toward large-scale production. He believed the output should be controlled at around 5 million tons, capturing roughly one-sixth of the domestic edible oil market. At that level, the price for Grade 1 tea seed oil could likely be maintained at around 15 yuan per kilogram of crude oil. This would result in a per-mu production value of 2,000–2,340 yuan, with the procurement price being about 70% of that.

Of course, this production scale was based on Oil King No. 1. If a variety with an even higher yield appeared among the next batch of genetically mutated tea seeds, then production could be expanded further.

After all, a higher yield per mu meant there was more room to lower the procurement price of tea seed oil.

But given the current vegetable oil market, 10,000 yuan per ton for crude tea seed oil was pretty much the floor price.

Why was that the floor price?

Because the current market price for imported Grade 1 sunflower oil is 9,000 yuan per ton, while domestically produced Grade 1 pressed peanut oil is 13,000 yuan per ton.

There was no reason a higher-quality product like tea seed oil should be priced lower than sunflower oil. It would be difficult for it to even fall below 13,000 yuan per ton.

However, if tea seed oil production really were to surpass 5 million tons, the domestic agricultural industry would likely undergo a rapid adjustment, converting some land currently used for rapeseed and sunflower to grow other crops.

As for why rapeseed and sunflower?

The answer is obvious: soybeans and peanuts are dual-purpose crops used for both animal feed and oil, so their production cannot be arbitrarily reduced.

Rapeseed and sunflower, however, are different. Their oil cake constitutes a smaller percentage of animal feed, making them replaceable by oil tea.

Rapeseed oil in particular, which currently holds 23% of the domestic edible oil market, would likely be phased out entirely by tea seed oil.

For one, their yields are too similar.

For another, the value generated per mu from rapeseed is low. The current market procurement price for rapeseed is around 5,400–6,500 yuan per ton, with a national average yield of 135 kilograms per mu.

In other words, growers barely make any money.

If it weren’t for the advantages of mechanized farming, those growers wouldn’t plant it at all.

Jiang Miao could already foresee that once Hailufeng Company’s Oil King series burst onto the scene, the scale of domestic sunflower and rapeseed cultivation would be dealt a heavy blow.

For the country as a whole, this outcome would actually be more beneficial than detrimental.

This is because the land used for rapeseed and sunflower is often flat and easy to irrigate, making it highly valuable. If not used for sunflowers and rapeseed, it could be used for other cash crops.

For example, the domestic soybean industry, which has long struggled to recover, could seize this opportunity to reclaim some of its market share.