Chapter 103 - 88: King of Oils
Chapter 103: Chapter 88: King of Oils
That might not paint a clear picture.
Let’s take an oil-seed camellia plantation, also in Gan Province, as an example. A company called Shengke Ecological Agriculture has a plantation in Huangsha Town, Xiu County. It spans 1,500 mu with oil-seed camellias that are already bearing fruit. Annually, it yields 370,000 kilograms of fresh fruit, which produces 18,000 kilograms of oil.
Based on a 1,500-mu scale, the yield of fresh fruit per mu is around 250 kilograms. This means each mu can only be pressed to yield 12 kilograms of camellia seed oil.
Even if the wholesale price of a kilogram of camellia seed oil reaches over a hundred yuan, the value generated per mu is a pitiful sum of just over one thousand yuan.
Furthermore, harvesting oil-seed camellia is difficult to mechanize and must be done by hand. After deducting costs for fertilizer, pesticides, land rent, and equipment depreciation, a per-mu value of just over one thousand yuan means you’re guaranteed to lose your shirt.
If left unmanaged, semi-wild oil-seed camellia trees yield just over fifty kilograms of fresh fruit per mu at most. In a bad year, there might be a total crop failure.
No wonder oil-seed camellia cultivation is so unpopular.
As for those online posts and videos boasting that per-mu yields can reach three to four hundred kilograms and that the oil yield from the seeds can hit 50%—it’s best to take those with a huge grain of salt. Believing them will only lead to disaster.
For example, one post described a major oil-seed camellia grower who supposedly produced 300,000 tons of camellia seed oil annually.
Keep in mind, the total annual domestic production of camellia seed oil is just over one million tons. And a single grower produced 300,000 tons? Do they take everyone for an idiot?
This kind of exaggerated content is obviously being fueled by the seedling companies behind the scenes.
The major growers who get lured into planting oil-seed camellia are better off, at least. After all, they’re wealthy and can afford to lose a few million. Plus, some regions offer subsidies for planting it.
It’s the small-scale farmers who really get screwed over.
Of course, it is possible for some plantations to achieve a per-mu yield of three to four hundred kilograms of fresh fruit. This is true for those that use superior varieties on fertile land with proper water and fertilizer management, especially after the trees enter their peak fruiting period in the fifth year.
On the other end of the line, Jiang Miao continued with a smile, "Haozi, I’ve got a new variety of oil-seed camellia here. If you’re interested, you should consider it."
"A new variety? For real?" Haozi sounded surprised.
"It came from a feral, large-fruited oil-seed camellia. I think it has a lot of potential, so I’ve been doing some research and crossbreeding. If you’re interested, you could start by planting ten or twenty mu," Jiang Miao said, full of confidence, even though he didn’t actually have the new variety on hand yet.
"An experimental variety?"
"Yeah. Don’t quit your job yet. Growing oil-seed camellia doesn’t require much management anyway, and there are local subsidies. Your job at the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureau makes things even more convenient. You can easily farm on the side. Just register the plantation under your parents’ names. Once it starts turning a profit, it won’t be too late to quit."
"Alright, I’ll think about it."
"Okay. When you’ve made up your mind, just give me a call."
"Alright, I’ll let you get back to it."
After hanging up, Jiang Miao picked up his desk phone and called Wang Feng in the purchasing department. He told him to purchase a batch of common varieties of oil-seed camellia fruit as soon as possible, ordering at least five tons of each.
In truth, oil-seed camellia had considerable potential.
Especially in the hands of someone like Jiang Miao, who was practically playing with cheat codes.
The main drawback of current oil-seed camellia varieties was their yield.
Even if high-yield varieties could produce three to four hundred kilograms of fresh fruit per mu, with a seed oil content of 50%, it was practically useless.
This was because for every kilogram of fresh fruit, only about one-tenth of the weight consisted of the actual seeds.
In other words, the per-mu yield of the seeds themselves was only thirty to forty kilograms. Even with a 50% oil yield, that only translated to fifteen or twenty kilograms of camellia seed oil.
Therefore, his strategy for selecting new varieties was very clear: prioritize variants with a high seed-to-fruit ratio. High fresh fruit yield was a secondary concern.
As long as the per-mu yield of the seeds could exceed 100 kilograms, oil-seed camellia cultivation would become profitable.
Of course, Jiang Miao wouldn’t just select for high yield and abundant seeds. He also needed to consider oil quality, growth cycle, cold and drought tolerance, disease resistance, and dwarf characteristics.
That was what would make for a truly superior oil-seed camellia variety.
As for the harvesting difficulties, that was simply because the per-mu yield wasn’t high enough. Agricultural machinery companies had no incentive to invest in developing specialized harvesters.
If a truly high-yield variety were to emerge, it would be entirely possible to commission an agricultural machinery company to develop a harvester for the fruit.
A machine similar to the shaker-harvesters used for pistachios could be modified and adapted for harvesting oil-seed camellia fruit.
If there was profit and a market to be had, agricultural machinery companies would even take the initiative to develop the necessary equipment themselves.
Developing a new variety of oil-seed camellia wasn’t just a sudden whim for Jiang Miao. He’d had a plan for it all along, he just hadn’t mentioned it before.
Although the country’s current supply of grain and edible oils was relatively sufficient, a large part of that sufficiency was dependent on raw materials from the international market.
Moreover, there was an issue that many people failed to realize.
Not all vegetable oils are created equal. They differ significantly in their oleic acid profile, the proportion of various fatty acids, trace elements, vitamins, and so on.
Among vegetable oils, camellia seed oil is the emperor, and olive oil is the queen.
Pressed peanut oil, low-erucic-acid rapeseed (canola) oil, avocado oil, and sunflower oil were in the middle tier—not particularly good, but not bad either.
Soybean oil, coconut oil, palm oil, and flaxseed oil were considered lower-quality oils.
Why was flaxseed oil, which seems perfectly healthy, categorized as a lower-quality oil?
The reason was that flaxseed oil spoils very easily, and its low smoke point makes it unsuitable for high-heat cooking.
That was why Jiang Miao had long planned to develop a high-yield oil-seed camellia variety—so his fellow countrymen could have access to inexpensive, high-quality camellia seed oil that was beneficial to their health.
The country currently consumed 38 to 40 million tons of edible oil annually, but only one million tons of that was camellia seed oil. It was nowhere near enough to meet the national demand.
If camellia seed oil production could be increased tenfold, it could displace a significant portion of the soybean oil market.