China has been investing billions of dollars into massive high-rise hog-raising facilities popularly known as “hog hotels” in the last few years with the trend starting out as just two and three-story facilities. But it quickly escalated into monolithic structures of over 10 levels, with tens of thousands of animals raised on each and now, Zhongxin Kaiwei Modern Farming, a privately-owned company in Hubei, is set to complete a 26-story pig hotel touted as the largest such structure in the world. When it’s fully operational the facility will be capable of raising and slaughtering 1.2 million pigs a year.
China is both the world’s largest pork supplier and consumer, and the demand is projected to increase from 51.77 million tons to 60.77 million tons in the next 10 years, according to official estimates, with large farms now stepping in to meet the rising demand.
Zhongxin Kaiwei’s farm in Ezhou expects to produce 54,000 tons of pork from a herd of 600,000 annually in each of the two buildings, the company said. Up until 2019, multi-level pig farms were illegal in China, but as African swine flu outbreaks started wreaking havoc, pushing pork prices through the roof, the Chinese Government lifted the ban in an attempt to increase production to meet demand and along the way also wiped out countless small, traditional farms.
I’m told production began in October when Hubei Zhongxin Kaiwei Modern Farming, admitted its first 3,700 sows into the farm. Zhongxin Kaiwei started out as a cement investor, with multiple cement factories in provinces such as Hubei and Henan but after a slump in the cement and construction industries, they saw modern agriculture as a promising sector and an opportunity to use its own construction materials to build the pig farm.
Clearly, this model will save tons of land and is argued to be more environmentally friendly, as they save on energy and resources, but others say the process remains controversial. Apart from concerns about the quality of life of the animals being raised in pig hotels, experts have expressed concerns regarding the biosecurity of such pig farms. In fact, in order to assist in evading transmission risks, top agriculture regulators in 2021 classified the country into five geographical zones and suggested no cross-zone transportation of livestock, while regional authorities have encouraged an increase in local capacities to keep up with demand.
From what I understand, the waste from the pigs will be treated and used to generate biogas, which can be used for power generation and heating water inside the farm. Also, workers will be required to go through multiple rounds of disinfection and testing before being given clearance to enter, and won’t be able to leave the site until their next break which is reportedly once a week. Even with the precautions, Zheng Zhicheng, public affairs director of the agriculture conglomerate New Hope Group, said that eventual African swine flu outbreaks in pig hotels could bring massive losses, as they would be more difficult to contain.
At present, large-scale pig farming accounts for 20%-30% of China’s pig farming volume, and retail pig farming still accounts for the majority, which is one of the reasons for the fluctuations in pork prices. But as the industry shifts from retail pig raising to large-scale pig raising, it is believed that the pig cycle will become longer and longer. When 70%-80% of domestic pigs are finally raised by large-scale pig farming, the price of pigs will stabilize, and there will be no more “pig cycles”, according to Zhang Banghui, chairman of Tianbang Foods. (Source: theguardian.com, sixthtone.com, odditycentral.com)
