At 1:30 a.m (Beijing time).on October 15, 2014 (in the evening of October 14 local time), Wang Degen, President of West Hope Group and Chairman of Dekon Group, signed a cooperation agreement worth 500 million euros (about RMB 4 billion yuan) with an Italian enterprise in a room full of Baroque style murals at Palazzo Barberini, Italy, under the attention of many media at home and abroad, and witnessed by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
At the signing ceremony on that day, a total of 11 projects were signed by Chinese enterprises and financial institutions, including China Investment Corporation, Aviation Industry Corporation of China, China Development Bank, Bank of China, China CITIC Bank, China National Arts & Crafts Group Corporation and other state-owned enterprises. West Hope · Dekon Food and Agriculture (hereinafter referred to as “Dekon Group”) was among them as an outstanding practitioner of the whole safe food industry chain because food safety is the focus of the world. During Premier Li Keqiang’s trip to Europe, the cooperation in the food sector was one of the five key investment fields- this cooperation worth 500 million euros touched the nerves of the country.
On the same day, CCTV-1 CCTV News reported this signing in prime time. Since then, with the extensive coverage of major media at home and abroad, Chairman Wang Degen, who has always been low-key, has appeared in the public eye.
In 1994, Wang Degen, who just graduated from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, gave up his “iron rice bowl” in a military enterprise in Chengdu and started his feed business from scratch. At the age of 28, he was worth nearly ten million yuan.
In 1999, Wang Degen gave up his booming feed business and joined West Hope, which made him the youngest general manager and the “first dealer general manager” in the history of Hope Group. At the age of 32, he was promoted to the sole vice president of West Hope.
Nowadays, Wang Degen, who concurrently serves as the President of West Hope Group and Chairman of Dekon Group, has taken charge of West Hope Group in his early forties. Wang Degen admitted that he had written a legend of the agriculture and animal husbandry industry in just a dozen years, and the secret was the great innovation of “creating something out of nothing”.
(I)
There are only unchangeable poor brains in the world, and there are no unchangeable poor pockets.
To pursue success, you must first have a positive attitude towards success and a strong desire to pursue greater success. Only in this way can something that most people seem like a miracle happen to you.
In 1999, when the feed business was at its peak, Wang Degen gave up his good business with an annual income of more than one million yuan, and joined West Hope Group to become the general manager of Neijiang Wanqian of West Hope Group. He was also the first dealer general manager in the history of Hope Group.
No one ever thought a dealer could be a general manager. The first reason is that the relationship between most dealers and enterprises is positioned as a “game”, and they have never thought of “win-win”; the second reason is that most dealers would “rather be the head of a chicken than the tail of a phoenix”. They feel free to work for themselves, but there are many constraints in the enterprise, and their income will definitely be affected. In fact, the multimillionaire Wang Degen earned RMB 2,280 yuan a month in the first year after joining West Hope Group; in the second year, he earned more than RMB 6,000 yuan a month......In those years, he lost money instead of making money. Family members didn’t understand what he did, but Wang Degen remained steadfast because this was a carefully planned “self-inflicted” transformation. He said that without a bigger and wider platform, it is impossible to enhance his consciousness and realm, and hone his management and leadership skills in a better way.
“The value of dealers must be getting smaller and smaller, and being a dealer will certainly not last long. I have to make a transformation in advance before changes occur. Not everyone can see the trend, and even if everyone can see it, they may not be able to do it- the process of building a highway is difficult, painful and costly, but the efficiency can be doubled after it is completed. I am willing to build a “highway” first.” Wang Degen said that this choice changed the course of his life.
With the accurate prediction and courage that ordinary people cannot reach, Wang Degen successfully completed his first transformation, and innovatively solved the development bottleneck that had plagued many dealers for many years- from a feed dealer to an enterprise manager.
(II)
Wang Degen started his “second business” from scratch when his career was going smoothly. The courage of this innovation stemmed from his lofty sense of responsibility and mission- to innovate large-scale agriculture, which made him the solver of issues relating to agriculture, rural areas and rural people, and the innovator of agriculture and animal husbandry industry.
After long-term observation and in-depth thinking, Wang Degen notices a “strange phenomenon” in the agriculture and animal husbandry industry:
On the one hand, the average number of commercial pigs to be slaughtered after giving birth is as high as 25 per year in developed countries, while in China, it is only 13-14 pigs, which is only half of that in developed countries. Therefore, the breeding efficiency needs to be improved; food safety issues continue to break out, the efficiency of breeding continues to shrink, and consumers are at risk; the No. 1 document issued by the central government has focused on “agriculture, rural areas and rural people” for 10 consecutive years, calling for the solvers of issues relating to agriculture, rural areas and rural people.
On the other hand, almost every province has a number of profitable feed enterprises, but it is difficult to find a high-quality breeding and food enterprise. The vast majority of large enterprises feel that the breeding industry features high investment, high risk and long payback period, so most of them only talk about the concept of industrial upgrading and the overall construction of industrial chain, but they “are unwilling to really do it”. Ordinary farmers are unable to break through technical and financial barriers, so they “cannot do it”, which makes it difficult for feed enterprises to expand their breeding industry, and food enterprises lack a completely controllable supply base, finally leading to an embarrassing situation that the overall breeding level and efficiency in China cannot be effectively improved, and food safety cannot be effectively controlled.
Based on this situation, Wang Degen, who was born in a farmer’s family, took root in the countryside for many years, worked hard in the field of large-scale agriculture and vowed to go deep into large-scale agriculture, met the difficulties boldly and devoted all his wisdom and passion to this piece of land that he loved.
Archimedes once said: “give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world”. The “fulcrum” of Wang Degen to move the world is to build an “agricultural and food industry chain based on ecological civilization” from feed to breeding and to food.
In order to turn the blueprint into reality, Wang Degen pioneered the development concept of “overall planning, step-by-step implementation, grasping key points and progressing layer by layer”, and built an “agricultural and food industry chain based on ecological civilization” to break down the obstacles among feed, breeding and food, and solve meat food safety and ecological problems. He also pioneered the industry by partnering with Italian companies, introducing EU standards, and jointly building a safe food industry chain from breeding to food.
Since its establishment in 2005, under the leadership of Wang Degen, the Group has made steady progress along the path of three five-year plans: the first step is to produce safe and efficient feed; the second step is to build a healthy and ecological breeding base to provide safe agricultural products; the third step is to do everything possible to provide truly safe food.
Producing safe and efficient feed
Unlike many peers, Wang Degen has positioned himself as a professional manufacturer of high-grade clean and hygienic feed from the very beginning. Through the introduction of new equipment and technologies, the traceability of products is achieved to ensure the feed safety.
By fully carrying forward the traditional advantages of the feed industry and innovative safety concept formed by Hope Group over the years, the Group has become an important new force in the feed industry in just a few years because of its excellent product quality, adhering to the “value marketing” concept of truly creating value for farmers, and a “self-correcting” highly capable team. At the same time, it has laid a solid foundation and provided a strong support for the extension of ecological breeding and safe food industry.
Building a healthy and ecological breeding base to provide safe agricultural products
Wang Degen knows that the breeding link is an insurmountable step that determines the sustainable development of the industrial chain. Therefore, in just a few years, he invested a lot of money to build a self-owned breeding system that can reach the international level to ensure the safety and efficiency of breeding from the source.
Meanwhile, in response to the country’s call for strong support for the development of family farms, Wang Degen has cemented the family farm as an industrial model, that is, the company provides high-quality breeding pigs, feed and feeding management technology, and farmers are responsible for specific feeding management. They can get financial support through the financing platform provided by the company, which can achieve an annual output of 1,000 commercial pigs and a profit of RMB 200,000 yuan per household.
Wang Degen has also established dozens of healthy and ecological breeding bases in Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Chongqing and Jilin, and introduces EU standards, and combines planting and breeding. He has built farms in mountains and orchards to provide ecological and safe agricultural products, eliminate fecal pollution and replace inorganic fertilizers with organic fertilizers, which has improved soil and avoided water pollution. This is the true sense of “circular agriculture”, and is also a road to the sustainable development of breeding industry in line with national conditions.
In this value chain of healthy, ecological and safe breeding, growers and farmers will get substantial economic returns because of improved efficiency and excellent product quality; consumers can enjoy safe meat and organic vegetables and fruits, and have a good health; enterprises have been further developed and expanded by providing high-quality products and services. Finally, China’s agricultural industry has been upgraded as a whole, embarking on the road of sustainable development.
Led by such innovative thinking, the feed business and breeding business are deeply integrated and mutually promoted. The Group has achieved the first place in local market in the shortest time, and the feed production and sales reach a new high. Since 2012, it has won three championships in Sichuan for three consecutive years; the scale of breeding ranks first among local enterprises in southwest China. It has achieved overseas expansion in the shortest time. The unique model is highly recognized by governments at all levels and farmers, which makes it the fastest enterprise in the industry to open up the industrial chain.
Not only that, Wang Degen has a more magnificent blueprint to be realized: in the next 10 years, the Group will also take root in 100 key counties, build hundreds of healthy and ecological breeding bases across the country, and drive tens of thousands of family farms, which can not only effectively improve the breeding efficiency and ensure the safety of agricultural products provided, but also effectively solve the conflicts between breeding and environment, and even achieve soil improvement and water resource protection.
Creating safe food
Through cooperation with Italian companies, the Group adopts EU standards to produce high-quality, high-end and even non-resistant meat products. It has its own feed processing plant and a huge breeding system. It not only exports feed, but also provides high-quality and safe feed for the breeding business. The breeding process is completely controllable, forming a closed-loop system. Each link can be traced to solve the problem of meat food safety in China from the source. In such a case, thanks to the EU standards and certification system, the meat products produced are absolutely safe, reliable and trustworthy, and the premium capacity of the products is significantly improved. Moreover, the value of the entire industrial chain is amplified, the competitiveness of enterprises is significantly enhanced, and the stakeholders in the industrial chain will benefit.
The Liu brothers started their business with RMB 1,000 yuan at that time, and achieved the current “100 billion Hope”; from scratch, the Group is now a fast-growing entity in the modern agriculture sector of Hope Group. More importantly, Wang Degen “dares to do big things, dares to do new things, and is not afraid to do difficult things”. Through successful practice, he has explored a safe, efficient and sustainable development path for Chinese agricultural and animal husbandry enterprises to effectively enhance the overall industrial value, so that all people involved in the value chain, from growers, farmers and commercial partners to consumers, of course, including the enterprise itself, have gained value, which really achieves “value co-creation and value sharing”. It is a real “great innovation”.
