Chapter 315 - 159: Drought (Part 2)

Chapter 315: Chapter 159: Drought (Part 2)

The products from the Monan Branch included soybeans, yellow cattle beef, small-tailed Han mutton, fermented cattle and sheep manure, artificial nutrient soil, and leguminous forage.

These were all Hailufeng Company’s own products.

Therefore, there was no need to integrate accounts from other merchants. The app only needed to handle customer accounts and the company’s product interface, which meant it could be kept very lightweight.

Jiang Miao also had no intention of incorporating any financial services into the specialty store app; it was simply meant to be a pure shopping app.

With the theme laid out by their boss, Qin Xingzu’s IT department adopted a "slow and steady makes for fine work" approach. It only took them about four months to produce the first version of the app.

Of course, since it was their own app and only had a few dozen products, the IT department’s design team created a vast number of exquisite interfaces and product descriptions.

Jiang Miao was also concerned that the IT department might not write the product descriptions well, so he specifically instructed the Technology Division, Market Research Department, and Legal Department to cooperate closely with them and scrutinize every detail.

After all, the company’s product descriptions had to be legal and compliant, incorporating valid product testing data and ingredient lists, all while being presented with compelling ad copy. This was not something the IT department could handle on its own.

For example, ad copy that exaggerated a product’s effectiveness or claimed it had medicinal benefits could not be used for food products.

All of this required the cooperation of specialists.

In addition to developing the specialty store app, the IT department’s other app projects were also progressing.

Although Jiang Miao was monitoring their progress in secret, he didn’t point out the specialty store app’s various bugs right away. He decided to wait a while before sending a list of them to the IT department under the guise of "a friend of Jiang Miao."

This would not only help train the team but also ensure the app wouldn’t have any major bugs.

However, Jiang Miao was in no mood to worry about the IT department right now. The company had run into an unexpected problem.

Drought!

After the Qingming Festival, there was still no rain anywhere in Lingnan. In fact, the entire southern region hadn’t seen more than a few showers exceeding 10 millimeters.

Jiang Miao frowned as he looked over the data collected from various national weather services. "Looks like this is another El Niño year."

"El Niño?" Shuya, who was in the office helping Jiang Miao with some files, looked up. "Didn’t that happen last year?"

"Yeah. The sea temperature of the Peru Current is still higher than usual this year. While not as extreme as last year, it’s still bad for the sardine catch in the Peruvian Fishery. Extreme weather has been getting more bizarre and unpredictable these past few years." Jiang Miao rubbed his temples. "I thought this was going to be a La Niña year, but I guess it’s El Niño again."

"So, will this affect the company?" Shuya asked, turning her attention back to her work for New Le Kang Pharmaceutical Company.

"It’ll definitely have an impact. El Niño doesn’t just cause the catch from the Peruvian Fishery to drop. It also leads to widespread heavy rains and flooding in South America, while Southern East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Australia will experience widespread drought."

KNOCK KNOCK...

Seeing his brother-in-law at the door, Jiang Miao smiled and called out, "Come in! Have a seat."

"Ah Miao, thank God for your foresight. We’d be in real trouble otherwise." A look of lingering fear crossed his brother-in-law’s face.

"What’s wrong?" Jiang Miao asked, pouring him a cup of tea.

As soon as he sat down, his brother-in-law explained the situation at the farms. "The water levels in the fish ponds in the surrounding villages have dropped drastically. Thanks to the solar panels we installed, the indoor sections of our farms, and the water recycling systems you set up last year, we can just barely maintain our water supply for now."

Hailufeng Company had already been affected by a drought last year, forcing them to apply for permission to pump groundwater to maintain the farms’ water levels.

Having learned his lesson, he had since installed solar panels to reduce evaporation from the open-air ponds. At the same time, instead of changing the water in the open-air ponds every two weeks, they now used filtration equipment to treat the water and pump it back in, reducing overall water consumption.

He also improved their aquaculture methods. For instance, of their 1,000 mu of open-air eel ponds, only 200 mu were still used for freshwater farming; the remaining 800 mu now used pumped seawater. After all, eels can thrive in seawater with just a slight adjustment to their feed formula.

This change alone eliminated the need for freshwater for 800 mu of ponds.

As for the Egyptian Catfish, their farms were all indoors. With proper internal water purification, their freshwater consumption could be reduced by a staggering 95%.

But Jiang Miao knew perfectly well that Hailufeng Company could not remain unaffected by such a widespread drought.

Hailufeng Company needed to purchase Egyptian Catfish from other farmers, all of whom raised them in open-air ponds. Moreover, their ponds had neither solar panels to reduce evaporation nor water recycling systems, meaning they would be hit hard by the drought.

Of course, many farmers had already caught on and quickly bought black shade nets to cover their ponds, which reduced some of the evaporation, but it wasn’t enough.

Jiang Miao made a call, telling Fang Yi, the head of the Feed Division, to come to his office.

「Half an hour later.」

Fang Yi hurried in. "Boss."

Jiang Miao poured him a cup of tea. "Have a seat, Manager Fang. The drought in the south is severe, and we have no way of knowing when the rains will come. We have to make preparations."