The mainland is the largest consumer of live pigs, eating 700 million pigs a year, but what is less known is that 90% of these pigs have foreign ancestry. Due to the short growth cycle of imported seed sources, high feed conversion rate and high lean meat rate, it is more suitable for commercial breeding, and the mainland's indigenous seed sources have lost in the market competition. The long-term introduction of breeding has led to the mainland breeding pig industry falling into a vicious circle of "introduction-degradation-introduction". "Soil chips" are inefficient and endangered, and great-great-grandparent breeding pigs such as "Du Grow" have long relied on imports, which directly affects the quality, speed and efficiency of production capacity recovery after African swine fever in the mainland.
The General Office of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued the "Notice on Supporting the Development of National Seed Industry Array Enterprises" this year, and 25 pig breeding enterprises were included in the short board formation. At present, enterprises such as Dabei Agriculture, New Hope Liuhe, Shunxin Agriculture, and Wen's Shares are cultivating their own "pig chips". In order to achieve long-term economic effects, the industry recommends establishing its own pig breeding system, making good use of domestic breeding pig resources, joint breeding, and making up for shortcomings.
90% of pigs out of the pen have foreign ancestry
"The annual number of pigs produced in China is about 700 million heads, of which 90% have foreign ancestry." Song Weiping, chairman of the Beijing Seed Industry Association and president of Dabeinong, told the Beijing News that domestic pig breeds mainly have three categories: external ternary (Duroc, Changbai pig, and large white pig), inner ternary (the mother is a local pig, and the father is the introduction of seed sources), and soil miscellaneous pigs (80%-90% of the seed sources are from local ancestry). The most introduced species are Duroc, Long White Pig, and Great White Pig, which are from the United States, Denmark, and the United Kingdom, and are commonly known as "Du Grow up" in the industry.
According to the "In-depth Analysis of the Current Situation of China's Breeding Pig Industry and Future Investment Forecast Report (2022-2029)", the market size of the mainland breeding pig industry will be about 112 billion yuan in 2021; 24,462 breeding pigs were imported from abroad, an increase of 60% year-on-year, of which 37% came from the United States, 33.2% from Denmark, 25.6% from France, and 4.2% from the United Kingdom. According to Gong Huazhong, president of the breeding division of New Hope Liuhe Co., Ltd., the current price of introducing a breeding pig in China is about 10,000 yuan. Based on this calculation, the cost of introducing breeding pigs from the mainland in 2021 will exceed 240 million yuan.
Zhang Mao, head of breeding at Pengcheng Food Branch of Beijing Shunxin Agricultural Co., Ltd., said that China is currently the gene bank of the world's excellent breeding pigs, not only all lean breeding pig genes in Europe and the United States, but also 72 domestic local breeds and 15 breeding strains, and the number of imported breeding pigs accounts for less than 1% of pure breeding sows. Compared with imported varieties, although the mainland's native pig breeds have the advantages of rough feeding resistance, strong disease resistance and good taste, there are also disadvantages such as high fat content, low lean meat rate, long growth cycle and poor economic benefits, which do not meet the needs of the current market.
In August 2022, the General Office of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued the Notice on Supporting the Development of National Seed Industry Array Enterprises, and 25 pig breeding enterprises, including Wen's shares, New Hope Liuhe, Dabeinong and Shunxin Agriculture, were included in the short-board formation.
"Making up for the shortcomings means that although the country has its own pig breeding system, the strain is not excellent enough, and it is necessary to fully tap the high-quality germplasm resources." In addition, the domestic pig breeding technology is acceptable, but there are gaps in the yield, performance and quality of its own strains, which should be further enhanced. Song Weiping believes that many enterprises have lost their breeding ability in the process of continuously introducing breeding pigs. There are also many enterprises that lack breeding awareness and excessively pursue economic effects, which in turn forms a dependence on foreign seed sources. "In order to achieve long-term economic effects, we must establish our own breeding system, make good use of domestic breeding pig resources, and make up for this shortcoming."
The vicious circle of "introduction-degradation-introduction"
"As early as the end of the Qing Dynasty, sporadic American Hampshire breeding pigs were introduced into China, but no market was formed. During the planned economy period, due to the difficulty of eating meat, the pig industry had not yet formed, and no breeding pigs were introduced. After the reform and opening up, domestic pork consumption increased, and farms began to introduce foreign breeding pigs to expand their breeding. After 2000, the demand for pig consumption is strong, the pig industry is large-scale, a large number of breeding pigs are introduced, and the emergence of 'Du Growing' just meets the market demand and also drives the rapid development of the domestic breeding industry. Song Weiping said.
In Gong Huazhong's view, the reason why foreign breeding sources occupy a dominant position in the domestic pig market is related to the economic advantages of the breed. "The offspring of imported breeding pigs have a short growth cycle, high feed conversion rate and high lean meat rate, which is more suitable for commercial breeding." Domestic breeding a year weighs about 80 kg-100 kg, and the commercial pigs cultivated by imported breeding sources can grow to 120 kg out of the pen in half a year, and the lean meat rate of imported breeding pigs is high, which is more in line with people's eating habits. ”
"The United States, Denmark and other countries have formed a relatively complete breeding system, and the selected breeds have excellent performance. In order to accelerate the expansion of production capacity, domestic enterprises will import breeding pigs from these countries. Zhu Zengyong, a researcher at the Beijing Institute of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told the Beijing News reporter, "Taking the Danish breed as an example, the number of effective sub-pigs provided by each sow can reach more than 36, while the current average on the mainland is less than 20." What worries him is that foreign breeding companies will not sell the best breeding pig resources to China. Because domestic enterprises do not pay attention to strengthening the maintenance of breeding pig breeding performance, the performance will be degraded, and then form a vicious circle of "introduction - degradation - introduction".
Gong Huazhong explained the reason behind this situation. Long breeding cycle, more investment, slow effect, a breeding pig often has to go through three generations of testing, one generation needs to breed 8-10 months, three generations will wait until 30 months to test performance. This long-term investment has brought great pressure to enterprises, and has also caused a situation of heavy introduction and light breeding in China. "New Hope Six and its own breeding pigs, the indicators are not lost to foreign countries at all, but it took us 5 years to achieve this level."
Liu Yonghao, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chairman of New Hope Group, once proposed during the two sessions of the National People's Congress in 2021 that at present, the mainland has problems such as imperfect breeding system, serious lack of investment, serious shortage of infrastructure for qualified modern breeding farms, lagging application of new technologies, shortage of technical talents, weak foundation for breeding pig measurement, small scale of individual projects, serious threats of diseases, and insufficient development and utilization of local pig resources in the mainland. "Soil chips" are inefficient and endangered, and great-great-grandparent breeding pigs such as "Du Grow" have long relied on imports, which directly affects the quality, speed and efficiency of the mainland's capacity recovery after the impact of African swine fever.
Can joint breeding break the game?
In order to grasp the autonomy of "pig chips", New Hope Liuhe began to build a breeding system in 2008, and has currently bred about 12,000 purebred pigs. For each 1500-head purebred pig farm, the expansion coverage capacity can reach 3 million heads.
Shunxin Agriculture's "Xiaodian" breeding pig has won the industry's first well-known trademark and is one of the research and development units of China's breeding software GBS. At present, Shunxin Agriculture has a national core breeding farm, which has provided nearly 1 million breeding pigs to the society in the past 40 years of breeding history, and the breeding and promotion of the two varieties has won the first prize of the Agricultural Technology Promotion Award issued by the Beijing Municipal Government.
The combination of production, education and research has always been the breeding concept that Song Weiping has adhered to for a long time. In 2016, Dabeinong established Tangshan Dabeinong Breeding Company, which has long cooperated with universities and scientific research institutes in breeding projects. In 2020, the Great North Agricultural Pig Research Institute was established, introducing a number of doctoral talents to carry out research in breeding, digital pig breeding, molecular breeding and other aspects. Nowadays, Dabeinong has an Canadian and American pig breeding system, providing more than 100,000 high-quality purebred pigs per year, which can provide excellent germplasm genetic resources for domestic pig breeding.
According to the data, the United States, Canada, Denmark and other breeding pig powers have their own joint breeding systems, and joint breeding has become a social consensus. According to Gong Huazhong, all breeding pig enterprises in Denmark are members of the association, and enterprises can exchange breeding pig genetic information to prevent inbreeding, forming a good breeding society and business atmosphere. This time, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs supports seed industry array enterprises, which is a promotion for joint breeding. Zhang Mao also proposed that a joint breeding mechanism has been established in the industry, hoping that breeding enterprises can jointly exchange genetic materials, share data, and jointly promote the construction of the mainland breeding system.
Zhu Zengyong suggested that breeding pig breeding requires joint development of various subjects, not only between enterprises and enterprises, enterprises and scientific research institutes, but also upstream and downstream feed enterprises and slaughtering and processing enterprises should also join in, so that joint breeding can effectively promote the development of the entire breeding system.
On September 13, 2022, Sankei Weekly "Seed Industry Chip" Attacked.
Beijing News reporter Qin Shengnan
Edited by Guo Tie
Proofread by Yang Xuli