Please pay attention to the five "pits" of agricultural investment.

First, where is the money? -- the financial difficulties of agricultural enterprises

Before dawn, this is the most sorrowful scene of many agricultural investments. The Qingdao blueberry and Sichuan kiwifruit bases acquired by Lenovo are also suffering from "pre-dawn darkness" to some extent. Although Lenovo is not a "beautiful girl marrying a rich family," at least it avoids the tragic outcome caused by the poor capital chain. Why are so many agricultural enterprises suffering from serious funding bottlenecks? In general, there are the following situations:

The first is to get the investment estimate wrong.

Copying the industrial model of "emphasizing assets over liquidity", thinking that the initial investment should be focused on land expropriation, construction and equipment, and a small amount of liquidity can operate, the result is far from the case. If the ratio of fixed investment to liquidity in industry is 8:2, agriculture needs to be reversed, at 2:8. Unfortunately, investors from the secondary and tertiary industries to the primary industry often do not expect the huge demand for liquidity from agricultural enterprises.

Very simply, the seasonality and periodicity of agriculture is very strong, the occupation of raw materials and storage costs are also very high, and the turnover speed of liquidity is obviously slower than that of industry, which is bound to lead to the occupation of a large amount of liquidity. Pigs, for example, have a relatively short cycle in the modern agricultural industry, but it still takes six months to turn around. And it must be noted that in this cycle, pigs do not grow up, absolutely can not be sent to the slaughterhouse, that is, there is no refund in this cycle, only blindly additional liquidity, hard to carry.

While industrial products can at least be sold while producing, or dealing with some products at low prices, there is no way for agriculture to deal with emergencies. What is more fatal is that agriculture is the production of living life. In the worst case of industry, the production line can be suspended because of the shortage of flow, while agriculture cannot even be stopped in this worst case. Pigs cannot be fed four times a day. There is absolutely no shortage of water and fertilizer in the critical period of vegetables. Dairy cattle must continue to supply dozens of jin of forage and water every day, and animals and plants all grow according to their own biological laws. I can't stop.

In the second case, the investment cycle is shortened.

Although the payback period of investment is clear in theory, the influence of various factors in reality often leads to serious deviation from investment expectations, and the income period is too late to wait. For example, it is planned to complete the transfer of farmers' land in winter and start infrastructure construction or sowing in spring, but if the transfer of land in the hands of several farmers is not smooth, so that the overall transfer of land cannot be completed in spring, then the whole plan is out of the question. Or delay the completion of land transfer until the summer, although infrastructure construction can be done, but the sowing season has been missed and can only wait for next year.

In the process of production and operation, it is also possible to encounter serious natural risks at any time, resulting in the destruction of seedlings and fields, and the only thing to do is to start all over again, not only heavy losses, but also a serious extension of the cycle. For example, severe cold in winter may cause newly planted seedlings to freeze to death in autumn and can only be replanted in spring, but the effect is not good; severe cold in late spring can lead to freezing death of flowers and young fruits of fruit trees, resulting in serious production reduction or even no harvest in that year. For example, in 2012, 374.43 million mu of crops were affected, accounting for 15.3% of the total crop sown area of 2.451235 billion mu, of which 172.1235 million mu, accounting for 7.0%, and 27.3945 million mu, accounting for 1.1%. The natural risk of agriculture is not only high, but also actually normalized.

Third, it is easier to think about the difficulty of financing.

Industrial land is state-owned land, and once the right to use it is obtained, it can be mortgaged; and industrial factories, products, and machinery can all be mortgaged, so there are still many ways to alleviate the predicament of liquidity. But agriculture is different. first of all, agricultural land is owned by collectives. if enterprises transfer farmers' land, they can only obtain the management right of rural collective land, which cannot be mortgaged; secondly, livestock, trees and crops operated by agricultural enterprises cannot be mortgaged, which is exactly what the rural people say, "everything with hair does not count." Third, since the wealth of agricultural enterprises is like this, it is also very difficult to find a guarantee. Of course, the third Plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee has decided that the contracted management right of agricultural land can be mortgaged, but it still needs a process of amending the relevant laws, and it will take time to formally implement it.

Therefore, the financing of agricultural enterprises is very difficult, basically only rural credit cooperatives can lend, but the interest is high; there are policy-oriented agricultural development banks, the conditions are very strict, the scope is small. In the process of agricultural management, once there is a shortage of funds in the critical period of production, such as the shortage of pig feed and the topdressing of fruit trees in the critical season, some agricultural enterprises have to rely on usury to save the emergency, which belongs to the practice of drinking poison to quench thirst. Only heavy interest will overwhelm the enterprise, but there is nothing we can do about it for a long time. Some of the operators of agricultural enterprises I met talked about the shortage of funds in the critical period of production, and they really had the idea of selling their children, which made people sympathize with them.

In the fourth case, policy expectations have failed.

In the past, when we talked about agriculture, we relied on policy, input and technology. Now this formulation is still not out of date. Because of the weakness of agriculture, the importance of state support to agriculture is self-evident. As long as we take a look, we can find that some listed agricultural enterprises mainly rely on policy subsidies to maintain positive profits to prevent delisting. But the problem is that most cities and counties lack a large amount of financial resources to subsidize agriculture, mainly by striving for projects at the middle and provincial levels, and this variable is quite large, although there may be instructions from the above leaders and guarantees from local administrators, but the results are still unreliable. Not to mention, the national policy will be adjusted with the changes of the market, it is obviously impossible to catch up with the change and adjustment of national policy with the long cycle of agriculture.

For example, since 2012, due to the surplus of the pig industry, the state has basically stopped the policy support projects related to the pig industry since 2008. during this period, it is obviously impossible for enterprises to invest in the pig industry to get subsidies and projects. coupled with the bad market situation, we can only encounter the plight of adding to the frost. There is also a situation in which local governments invite enterprises to settle in in the name of attracting investment, but it is likely that preferential policies will not be in place after landing, and policy changes caused by changes in county leadership may turn earlier government commitments into smoke. Although it can not be said to rely on projects for a living, but once the failure of policy expectations, it will have a considerable impact on the production and operation of agricultural enterprises.