Chapter 282 Happy Farm and Kinshasa

"Have you visited the campus network today?"

This was a common greeting among college students in 2007.

Founded in late 2005, Xiaonei.com currently has 300 million registered users and receives nearly 3000 million hits per day.

It covers more than 2000 colleges and universities, basically covering all undergraduate colleges recognized by the Ministry of Education.

Xiaonei was later renamed Renren.

Compared with Huinong.com, the two have a similar number of registered users, but most of the users on Huinong.com are older farmers, many of whom were forced to work on the platform by Jiahe’s technical service staff.

There are few people who can actually use computers, and even fewer who can play games.

The campus network is populated by college students who are full of vitality and willing to accept new things. They are also the main group of gamers.

In this case, the application platform of Xiaonei.com became the number one choice for Happy Farm.

However, Guo Yang has not given up on launching Happy Farm on Huinong.com, but the launch time will be a little later.

This can be considered a lesson!
The group's business models are not fully integrated. Not only Guo Yang, but many managers also subconsciously think that Shahai Agriculture and Animal Husbandry and Huinong.com have no connection.

But in fact, the sub-projects below can produce strong synergy.

Closer to home.

Happy Farm had gone through several waves of preheating before it went online. First, the publicity in the Farmers’ Daily attracted the attention of some people.

Two days before the launch, the game was also promoted on the campus network.

“Grow vegetables and fruits whenever you want, and be a farmer happily with your friends, save energy, plant big trees, and occasionally be a happy thief.”

This is the introduction to Happy Farm on the homepage of the campus network application interface.

He soon attracted a lot of attention, and one of them was Fu Zhiguang from a university in Beijing.

"Playing the role of a farmer sounds like an interesting game."

"What's up with this tree?"

After learning more about it, Fu Zhiguang became more and more interested. "Playing a game, can I plant trees in the desert?"

2 month 5 day.

Fu Zhiguang waited in front of the computer early, and after Happy Farm came online, he logged in to try it out immediately.

Very simple game.

After getting used to playing games like "Zhengtu", playing Happy Farm gives me a very relaxing feeling.

Fu Zhiguang reclaimed a piece of land, planted eggplants, watered, weeded and removed pests, and after careful care, the eggplants finally matured.

He clicked the icon, put it into the warehouse, then looked at the market price and finally chose to sell it and earned the gold coins.

What is the function of gold coins?

Oh.

Buy seeds, fertilizers and other props, farm decorations, and can also be used to expand the land.

He didn't have enough gold coins to buy the land, so he had to save them and continue growing eggplants, and then wait for them to mature again. During this time, he browsed the web.

Found a few schoolmates or other strangers who were also playing the game.

Select Add Friend.

After a while, someone agreed to the friend request. It was a female classmate in the college, Chen Yi, who was quite pretty.

Unexpectedly!

He then visited Chen Yi's farm and found that he could help his friend with farm work, such as killing insects, weeding, and watering the plants. Fu Zhiguang caught a pest and gained experience.

What he didn't expect was that Chen Yi sent him a message very quickly.

"Thank you. I'll come visit you too!"

Fu Zhiguang chuckled.

After he harvested another batch of eggplants, he suddenly thought of trees. Didn't he say he could plant trees?
By the way, where is my personal homepage?

【Name】: Fu Zhiguang (Certificate 0)

[Level]: Level 2

[Experience]: 18
【Ecological Protection】: 0 trees have been planted
【Cash】：0
[Warehouse]: Eggplant × 20...

Fu Zhiguang glanced around and stopped at the ecological protection section. He didn't plant a single tree...

But where to look at the energy?

What a bunch of stupid planners!

Fu Zhiguang exited his personal homepage, and suddenly, he saw a sapling with only two green leaves near the farm house.

It said "go to protect" next to the sapling and 0g was written below it.

Only then did he react with regret.

Clicked in.

I found that there are various daily tasks and main tasks, and I can get energy by completing the tasks.

The daily tasks are weeding, watering, visiting neighbors, etc., and the main tasks are mainly land reclamation and upgrades.

He has now completed several of them, and after receiving them, he has obtained a total of 228g of energy.

Below, he also found the energy progress bar for planting trees.

Caragana: windbreak and sand fixation (228g/16930g)

Haloxylon ammodendron: windbreak and sand fixation (228g/17900g).

Seabuckthorn: Soil and Water Conservation (228/18800g)……

Fu Zhiguang suddenly had an indescribable feeling. This game seemed to be different from previous games.

But it’s hard to describe at the moment.

Windbreak and sand fixation, soil and water conservation... Can playing games be related to ecological protection?
Fu Zhiguang fell into deep thought.

When he came to his senses, he found that several ripe eggplants had been stolen by his friend who had just applied.

"Fuck, is it possible to steal vegetables?"

But then he noticed the language setting function that popped up. When someone came to steal things, the system would automatically display the response words you set. You could also set it when someone came to help.

“This game is really awesome!”

Fu Zhiguang quickly harvested his own vegetables and planted the seeds, all of which took only a few minutes.

Then he couldn't wait to steal the ripe fruits from his neighbor's house. After his success, Fu Zhiguang was inexplicably excited.

Is this what it feels like to get something for nothing?

After stealing the vegetables, Fu Zhiguang couldn't wait to add friends one by one, and posted a recommendation on the forum.

At this time, I found that many people have already recommended this game.

In just a few hours, Happy Farm spread rapidly on the campus network like a virus, and the number of active users quickly exceeded tens of thousands.

Role-play the farmer theme and play the game with people you know for no more than five minutes at a time.

Save energy and plant big trees.

This new game mode breaks the public's perception.

……

Pengcheng.

Guo Yang also kept a close eye on the launch of Happy Farm and tried it out himself. Compared to the last time, this time there has been great progress.

Unexpectedly, while playing the game, I received a friend request from Xu Xiaoxue.

Guo Yang nodded his agreement and didn't ask any more questions.

He also felt the popularity of the game. It was really fast to have tens of thousands of users in just a few hours.

But it was in line with his expectations.

Therefore, he is calmer and more rational than the teams of Happy Farm and Huinong.com.

In just a few hours, Zhuang Zheng and Qu Sheng had called him several times to report back.

The messages in the QQ group are also very active.

Guo Yang looked at the time and it was almost time to leave for the airport.

Luo Xiu had been preparing for the trip to Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, two days ago. The entire journey was about 1.5 kilometers.

The Hawker 850 definitely cannot fly there as it would have to refuel at least four times, and applying for an international route is also a hassle.

So the two finally decided to take a civil aviation flight to Ethiopia first, and then transfer to Kinshasa.

At the same time, Guo Yang also called Ning Xiaojing and told her that it was time to buy a new plane.

Luo Xiu walked in and said, "Boss, all the luggage is ready. We can leave at any time."

"Then let's go."

Guo Yang put away his laptop and was busy on the way to the airport and in the waiting room.

Always pay attention to the news in the group.

A game programmer said: "In less than a day, there are tens of thousands of registered users. This growth efficiency is too high."

Qu Sheng: "Brothers, speed up the design process. All this overwhelming traffic has slipped away."

"Working hard……"

"I've seen some active users online for a long time. They've been online since they registered. They level up really fast. We're not a traditional online game!"

"Some users left messages asking for ways to quickly upgrade and accumulate green energy. They wanted to accumulate enough energy as soon as possible to plant big trees."

"How about charging a fee?"

"How do I collect it?"

"Yes, how? The current social game industry model is still unclear, and most of them rely on advertising revenue."

"Having users but no income is the norm. Isn't that the case with QQ as well?"

Guo Yang thought about it and sent some of his ideas to the group.

"You can charge for virtual props, such as fertilizers, gifts, decorations, etc., but it's too early to charge now. Let's wait until the number of users increases."

There was a brief silence in the group.

There is probably no company in the world that charges for virtual props.

But the boss's idea does sound promising.

Guo Yang continued: "The profits from Happy Farm will also be mainly used to establish various public welfare forests, but there is still a question: how to let users monitor and observe the growth of forests and trees?"

"My idea is to use real-life tree pictures and virtual animations to simulate the scene, so that farmers can check the status of their tree planting at any time."

“This sense of participation can further enhance the user’s gaming experience, and the monitoring process can better reflect the public welfare results and significance.”

In the waiting room, Guo Yang typed a long string of words and sent it out.

After waiting for a while, I got a reply.

"Okay, boss."

In the Happy Farm team’s office, several young people showed surprised expressions.

"The boss is quite knowledgeable!"

The person in charge, Qiu Ming, praised: "Although I have never met the boss, since the project was launched, every time the boss put forward suggestions, they have hit the nail on the head."

"Is such that."

“Maybe the virtual props model will really work.”

“I feel like I’m going to get rich!”

“This is a public welfare project.”

"Sand control and tree planting all cost money. It's impossible to spend so much money to make a game just for charity, right?"

……

Guo Yang was not clear about what the Happy Farm team was thinking. The farm game project took nearly two years to be implemented.

It's already very, very slow.

Now that there are finally results, Guo Yang just wants to do it better. His original intention was indeed to use the farm game to do charity work on sand control.

Making money is naturally part of the equation. However, Guo Yang does not plan to put the money into his own pocket, but to form an ecological cycle by learning from the model of the future Ant Forest.

It can not only realize its own interests, but also create a corporate image of shouldering social responsibility.

On his notebook, Guo Yang completed another round of crop harvesting and discovered another problem.

"Planting + harvesting + gold coins + tasks + energy + planting trees, there are already enough links. The path to generate green energy can be simplified a little bit. For example, the daily task rewards can be automatically generated, and the others are similar. In short, we can reach the core function as quickly as possible."

"There are too few ways to obtain energy. We can increase the number of ways to obtain energy appropriately."

Guo Yang sent the last message and then went to check in.

Forty minutes later.

The plane roared, accelerated, and then suddenly lifted off and rushed into the sky.

This is a 2-3 day journey.

In the past two or three days, Happy Farm has become very popular, and its explosive growth has broken people's previous perceptions.

In particular, its model of "saving energy and planting big trees" has attracted widespread attention from all walks of life.

That night, the campaign to save Minqin was the first to reach a climax online.

Every user who logs into the forum can see the pending topic posts on the forum homepage.

The poster is the founder of the website and volunteer association [A Pine Tree].

A detailed introduction to Happy Farm.

This new 'social + game + charity' gameplay mode quickly attracted a quick response from forum netizens.

"Shahai Farming and Animal Husbandry has really overturned my cognition time and time again. This method is great!"

"I have missed several volunteer tree planting activities and never thought that I would be able to participate in sand control in this way."

"+1..."

"Hahaha, I've already started playing it. You know what, this game is really fun..."

"Don't just play around, our goal is to plant more trees, so hurry up and promote it and recruit people..."

"Yes, yes, yes! With the backing of Shahai and Jiahe Group, this tree can definitely be planted!"

For various reasons, it is difficult for those Minqin people who have moved away from their hometown or those who care about the environment to personally participate in voluntary tree planting activities.

At this moment, they found a brand new way to prevent and control sand.

More and more people are promoting themselves spontaneously.

The next day, the number of daily active users of Happy Farm exceeded 10, and it soon ranked among the top ten among all application developments on the campus network.

But what caught the attention of the entire gaming community was that many social media and official media reported on Happy Farm.

When did a game receive so many positive reviews?

Aren’t games always a symbol of wasting time?

Can Happy Farm really plant trees?
With the media's interpretation, Shahai Agriculture and Animal Husbandry hidden behind Happy Farm has once again surfaced.

The lewd report was dug up.

Flying sand and rocks, and rising dust covered the sky and the sun.

In such a harsh and difficult environment, the people of the Shahai fought for several years and miraculously built an ecological barrier between the two deserts.

The forest network is crisscrossed, the oasis is vast and boundless. Just as the host said: it is like a myth of the stars changing and the sea changing!

Shahai Agriculture and Animal Husbandry is really controlling desertification!

From the initial hundreds of thousands of acres, to last year, we contracted millions of acres of desert!

To the current public welfare forest!
No one doubted it anymore.

Farmers' Daily had already been promoting Happy Farm before the game was launched. This is a serious media outlet!
Everyone believes in the virtual tree in Happy Farm, and the people of the Sand Sea can really plant it!
For office workers who don’t have time to plant trees themselves, it feels good to be able to contribute to the country’s greening in this way!
Some people don’t care whether they can plant trees or not, they only care whether it’s fun.

But from the ratings of Happy Farm, we can see that it has a very high reputation among the player community.

On just the third day, the number of daily active users of Happy Farm exceeded 50, and is still growing rapidly.

Official media, social media, and online media all came out to praise this pioneering "social + charity + game" initiative.

The rapid rise of Happy Farm has also attracted more and more attention from the gaming community.

A gaming media commented:

"In Happy Farm, players who own a farm have a new identity. As a farmer, they go to the store to buy seeds, plant them, weed, water, and kill insects during the growth of crops, wait for them to germinate, bloom, and bear fruit, and finally harvest the fruits through hard work. They go to the store to sell them in exchange for gold coins to make the money in their pockets more substantial. After they have money, they can use the gold coins to buy decorations and houses to decorate their homes. This is a miniature social scene.

Its operation mode is also a reflection of people's real life, which reflects the most essential way of life and production in human society: relying on one's own labor to build one's own life. But unlike the real world, in the virtual farm, players as farmers are more likely to have a sense of self-realization, while our real world is far from that simple.

In addition, the most surprising thing is the ecological protection attribute of Happy Farm. Through the ecological model of "saving energy and planting big trees", users can lower the threshold of environmental protection and public welfare in the process of turning virtual trees into real trees, and further increase the fun of the game. "

Qu Sheng, Zhang Wen and other core team members of Huinong.com watched the booming Happy Farm and urged Zhuang Zheng and Qiu Ming all the time.

"Boss, we've been working on it since before the launch. It's been online for three days now, so Huinong.com should have Happy Farm by now!"

"Wait another three days... no, a week." Qiu Ming said, "We also need to prepare enough servers."

"Alas, three days and three days."

Qu Sheng saw that many students and urban white-collar workers gradually became diligent vegetable farmers: growing vegetables, harvesting vegetables, and stealing vegetables from friends to their own homes from time to time.

How great it would be if this kind of scene appeared on Huinong.com! ——
Kinshasa.

At that time, it was already the second largest city in sub-Saharan Africa, with a permanent population of more than 900 million.

It took Guo Yang and Luo Xiu three days to finally arrive here.

There is only a dry season and a rainy season here, with the rainy season being from October to May of the following year.

As soon as I got off the plane, the hot and humid air hit me in the face, as if I had stepped into a huge steamer.

The sun was scorching and sweat quickly soaked my clothes.

As soon as they walked out of the terminal, Luo Xiu said, "Over there, President Yu brought people to pick us up."

Following the direction pointed by Luo Xiu, Guo Yang also saw Yu Honghai, with four sturdy men standing next to him and two cars parked.

The two of them walked over with smiles on their faces and greeted several people one by one.

Yu Honghai waved his fat hand and said, "Let's go back first."

When Guo Yang got into the car, he inadvertently caught a glimpse of the gun hanging around the waist of one of the men.

Outside the car window, the tropical vegetation is lush and green. Guo Yang said: "This place is very suitable for plant growth!"

Yu Honghai, who was sitting in the co-pilot seat, looked back and sighed: "It is precisely because of this that even if no food is grown, the locals can eat plant roots and leaves, as well as wild mangoes, bananas, papayas, etc. as substitutes. This self-sufficient mentality and crude diet structure also restrict agricultural production and development."

Guo Yang asked: "Do you know the grain prices here?"

“US$400-500 per ton.”

"you sure?"

"Sure, it will probably go up." Yu Honghai said with a wry smile: "Cassava and corn are still relatively cheap food here. The local people's dietary tradition is to mix cassava flour and corn flour to make food."

"Congo spends at least $10 billion a year importing food."

Guo Yang was silenced for a moment.

Domestic grain prices have been rising for several months, but the current price of corn is still between 1500 and 1600 yuan per ton.

In Kinshasa, the rate has more than doubled.

Food trade also makes money!

"The food for Jiahe Grain and Oil has been prepared." Guo Yang thought, "We need to determine the recent development strategy first."

Yu Honghai shook his head: "There are too many problems if we want to develop large-scale agriculture."

This is a country that has just emerged from war. All industries are in decline and hungry people can be seen everywhere.

Guo Yang knew the difficulty and asked, "Where are we going now?"

"We bought land in the northwest suburbs of the city and built a demonstration center there, which is about 60 hectares."

About half an hour later, we arrived at the edge of the city, where the flat and open land was clearly distinguished from the buildings in the city.

After walking another twenty or thirty kilometers, we arrived.

Guo Yang looked at the farm in front of him and said, "This looks pretty real."

"This is the national team's dryland crop demonstration center." Yu Honghai curled his lips and pointed to another location, "That's our land, and it hasn't been fully reclaimed yet."

"It's not bad, better than I expected." Guo Yang said with a smile.

Jiahe's African office has also temporarily settled in the Dryland Farming Center.

This was originally a presidential farm.

Later it became an aid station for Taiwan, and since 1973, the national team has taken over this place.

In an office, Guo Yang and Yu Honghai met Gan Jian, the head of the Dryland Farming Center.

"I've heard a lot about you, Boss Guo. The embassy has already sent me news that two large domestic companies are planning to invest in agriculture in Gang."

"Oh?" Guo Yang asked, "Besides Jiahe, which other companies are coming?"

"Central Energy, a subsidiary of Central Communications." Gan Jian said, "The country's next agricultural aid project will be undertaken by them."

"People who work in IT are also involved in agriculture. Do you know what they do?"

"We should plant rice in the near future. Hubei Dadi Company has successful experience here."

Yu Honghai then explained: "Hubei Dadi Company was originally an aid project of the Hubei Agriculture Department in Kinshasa. The year before last, it was changed from government-led to enterprise-led. However, due to land disputes after the war, it is still on hold."

At this time, someone outside gestured to Gan Jian, and Gan Jian stood up and said, "Let's go, let's eat first and talk while we eat."

After a few drinks, Guo Yang gradually got to know the situation here during the chat.

Agriculture in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is still in the slash-and-burn stage, with burning and rotation of crops everywhere. There are no good seeds, no fertilizers, no irrigation, and all operations are done manually.

This is the current state of agriculture.

Take the nearby area as an example, known as the Nsale area, which has tropical silt sand soil, severe water and fertilizer permeability, and the loss of potassium and other substances in the soil.

Large tracts of land were left barren and there was a serious food shortage.

One of the reasons is the lack of mature dryland crop food production technology, especially corn, which has a small planting area and low yield of about 130 kilograms per mu.

The research content of the Dryland Farming Center is to establish a set of high-yield corn cultivation techniques for the local area.

Gan Jian's experience is that it is difficult to improve the soil in the early stage, and a large amount of fertilizers must be used. However, most of the fertilizers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are imported, which is very expensive.

The seed parent selected for breeding is also maize from Zambia.

Guo Yang was in a trance. Could it be that in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, they also had to rely on corn seeds to break the situation?
"Team Leader Gan, can Jiahe import some of the parent seeds from the Dryland Farming Center?"

"of course can."

For two or three days, Guo Yang was familiarizing himself with the environment here, while also keeping in touch with the embassy and the Ministry of Agriculture of China.

For example, in terms of funding, experts from the domestic inspection team suggested that Jiahe could discuss local financing solutions with the National Development Bank, China-Africa Fund, etc.

The Congolese Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Public Works and other departments can also be invited to participate in agricultural development projects.

At the same time, Guo Yang also knew that the country would soon send people to visit the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The most important thing right now is to determine the investment plan.

Guo Yang read the investigation report written by Yu Honghai again and again, and gradually made a decision.

Growing food in the short term.

Mid-season fruit trees.

Development of palm oil and biodiesel in the medium and long term.

To sum up, there are four problems.

One is the land ownership dispute.

Second, transportation was inconvenient. The railways between suitable agricultural production areas and major consumer markets were destroyed during the war.
Third, Congo (DRC) has no restrictions on importing agricultural products. It may face dumping at any time when faced with agricultural products from developed countries with high subsidies.

Finally, there are risks such as war, turbulent situation, and laws and regulations.

In addition, the climate and soil environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are unique, with distinct rainy and dry seasons.

The soil has poor structure, low organic matter content, low plant nutrient content, and poor water, fertilizer and heat retention capabilities, which is not conducive to the cultivation of grains such as corn, rice and wheat.

For most companies, this is an insurmountable gap.

For Jiahe, it is the most unbreakable moat.

(End of this chapter)