At 3 p.m., Dean Xu assigned tasks to other researchers and then went to the alliance office.
General Manager Li was already waiting for him in his office. As soon as he entered, General Manager Li handed him a cup of tea.
"Try it, Qiu Man brought it back from his business trip, it tastes good."
"You know perfectly well I don't drink these!"
“I didn’t drink before, but I can drink now. After I finish drinking, I’ll go take care of important business.”
Seeing that General Li looked serious, Dean Xu picked up the teacup, blew on it to warm it, and then took a sip.
After Dean Xu finished his drink, General Li asked, "Not bad, right?"
Dean Xu genuinely didn't understand these things, but he still nodded politely, "Hmm, that's good!"
"Right, I think so too. Qiu Man still has quite a lot, go ask him to give you some."
Dean Xu really wanted to say he didn't want it, but looking at General Manager Li with a half-smile, he opened his mouth again and again but couldn't say it.
Seeing that Dean Xu was still in a daze, General Li smiled and said, "Don't worry, I've already talked to him."
Well, Dean Xu now completely understands that all that General Li said was to get him to go find Qiu Man, and the reason given was to ask for tea.
Dean Xu nodded and then went to Qiu Man's office.
Before he could even speak as he entered, Qiu Man smiled and gestured for Dean Xu to sit next to his desk. "I heard from the boss that you like tea, so I brought you some on my trip to Huai City."
Dean Xu remained silent. Qiu Man took a cardboard box from the drawer and pushed it in front of him. "There's not much. Drink this first, and come find me when you're done. I have more here."
Dean Xu stared at the cardboard box in front of him, hesitated for a moment before taking it in his hand, and glanced at Qiu Man before opening it.
Qiu Man nodded, and Dean Xu opened the door a crack.
This...this isn't tea...
Dean Xu suddenly understood something, accepted the gift without making a sound, put it in his briefcase, chatted with Qiu Man for a while, and then returned to the research institute.
Upon arriving at the research institute, Director Xu discreetly opened the box, which contained a box of seeds and a few green grass leaves, with a note at the bottom.
Dean Xu took out the note and read it carefully. Then, unable to hide his shock, he quickly took out a lighter and burned the note to ashes.
Subsequently, Dean Xu took the box into the laboratory and did not come out for three days and three nights.
After President Xu left, General Manager Li instructed his secretary to announce the start of a meeting. When he arrived at the meeting room, he found the bigwigs whispering among themselves.
General Lee assumed everyone was discussing the latest developments regarding the HZ virus, but as he approached, he heard them asking, "Was the coffee good this morning?"
Li Zongmeng was sweating profusely. "Have you been shortchanged in terms of food or drink?"
"Boss, we were out doing some research this morning, would you like to let us try some of your premium coffee beans?" After learning that Li Heng and his group had survived, one of the big shots was in the mood to joke with Li Heng, the Alliance Leader.
"Exactly, exactly! We can't have theirs and not ours, can we?"
"Yes, yes, I want some too! The main thing is that they drink the one brewed by the Grand Alliance Official himself, which we've never had before!"
When General Li sat down, he noticed that everyone seemed to be in a good mood, probably because the good news from the research institute had relieved a lot of their stress.
"Let's have a meeting first. You might not be in the mood for coffee after the meeting!" Chief Li dropped the bombshell, revealing today's topic: bad news!
"No way, boss, something big has happened again?" The big shots immediately stopped joking around and sat up straight, getting into work mode.
General Manager Li whispered a few words to his secretary, and then the secretary left the meeting room.
"Qiu Man went out on an inspection and discovered some unpleasant things." After saying this, General Li asked Qiu Man to tell everyone about the locusts.
Qiu Man not only told everyone about the locusts he saw in Shenjiadi, but also shared the information he had found after returning home.
"Although our Qinghua Kingdom has not yet experienced a locust plague, the number of locusts in the fields is increasing. If we let them continue to grow, it may affect the summer grain yield."
Moreover, prolonged drought inevitably leads to locust plagues, and locusts during a plague can fly tens of thousands of miles. If other countries experience locust plagues, our Qinghua Kingdom will not be able to remain unaffected.
Qiu Man did indeed bring bad news, and the bigwigs were definitely not in the mood for coffee after hearing it.
During this time, they have been focusing on the HZ virus and on people, but they have forgotten that the food in the fields is the foundation of their livelihood.
The bigwigs all shook their heads and sighed, feeling powerless once again.
They're all quite old to have reached this position, and most of them still remember the locust plague that struck Qinghua Kingdom thirty years ago, which left the land utterly barren.
"We were already helpless against the locust plague, and now we don't even know the true situation in other countries!" A bigwig directly raised the key issue.
"Yes, we don't know if other countries have experienced locust plagues, and we don't know the direction and speed of locust movement in the countries that have experienced locust plagues."
"If our reporters were still outside, they could bring back the real situation, but now..."
"Should we send our foreign correspondents back overseas after the pandemic ends?"
General Li shook his head. "If we send them out, they might never come back, which goes against our original intention of bringing them back."
As for the situation abroad, let the Ministry of Foreign Affairs negotiate with other countries, or perhaps we could cultivate a few local residents abroad to regularly relay information to us.
"A spy?"
Li Zongmeng asked with a smile, "Have you ever seen an ordinary person without training become a spy? It's just getting the other side to give us a heads-up, tell us about the weather and people's lives abroad, we don't pry into their internal affairs."
"Okay, I'll go ask the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a bit."
General Li nodded, then turned to a certain bigwig and asked, "How does the agricultural department usually deal with locust plagues?"
The expert sighed, "Spraying pesticides, catching insects, and natural enemies are basically the only three methods, and they only treat the symptoms, not the root cause. If you want to eradicate the problem, you have to address the environmental issues."
"Explain in detail?"
Not only General Manager Li, but other bigwigs also turned their attention to this bigwig.
The bigwig thought to himself, "Locust plagues are not so easy to control. If they were, why are there so many countries in the world powerless in the face of locust plagues?"
But he still said, "To fundamentally prevent locust plagues, we must increase vegetation coverage. Without bare land, locusts cannot reproduce, but we can't prepare for battle right now."
If a locust plague does occur, we can use airplanes to spray pesticides. This method has a high insecticidal rate and a wide range of extermination, but it is costly.
Another method is to have people hunt and kill the locusts directly in the field, or to release chickens, ducks, and frogs into areas infested with locusts so they can prey on them.
The bigwig sighed, "These are the only methods we have, and they're not very effective."
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