Text/Yu Yuan
On the afternoon of December 9, 2020, a charter flight from the United Kingdom landed slowly at Urumqi International Airport.
The flight was a charter flight dedicated to transporting 1,000 pigs.
This batch of pigs is not small. They are great-grandparent breeding pigs imported from the United Kingdom by a pig breeding enterprise in Xinjiang, and the total price of these pigs is as high as 30 million yuan per head, calculated at an average of 30,000 yuan per head. In addition, the air transportation cost of each pig is about 10,000 yuan.
However, this is only the tip of the iceberg of China's breeding pig imports. According to the data, China is the world's largest pork consumer and pig producer, eating an average of 700 million pigs per year. However, 90% of the pigs on our daily table have the pedigree of imported breeds, and the number of breeding pigs imported from abroad in China in 2020 is as high as 20,000.
In the eyes of industry insiders, the fundamental reason for this phenomenon is that we have the risk of being stuck in the neck of "pig chips" - breeding pigs.
At this year's national two sessions, Liu Yonghao, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chairman of New Hope Group, said in a proposal that China's own "pig chip" has a series of dilemmas such as imperfect breeding system, lagging technology, and serious disease threats, which need to be solved urgently.
The history of pig farming in China is thousands of years long, why do we get stuck in the neck of pig raising?
The "pig chip" crisis
China is the world's largest pork consumer and pig producer, eating an average of 700 million pigs a year, and half of the world's pigs are raised in China.
For pig breeding practitioners, breeding pig breeding is the top of the entire pig breeding pyramid system, if there is no spire, there is no way to talk about the following, so it is no exaggeration to say that it is a "pig chip".
However, 90% of the pigs on our daily table are of imported breed ancestry.
China has thousands of years of pig history, local pigs are bred from generation to generation, why do domestic breeding pigs rely on imports now?
Li Jinghui, deputy secretary-general of the China Animal Husbandry Association, told China News Weekly that although the taste of local pigs is not bad, there are three obvious shortcomings.
One is because of "slow", the second is because of "consumption", and the third is because of "fat". For example, the United States Duroc pig, Denmark's long white pig, the United Kingdom's Yorkshire pig (hereinafter referred to as Du growing up) and other imported varieties can be out of the pen in 6 months, generally Chinese native pigs can be fed for one year; the "feed-meat ratio" of the soil pig is still high, want the pig to gain 1 kg, the soil pig needs to feed 4-6 kg of feed, and the foreign pig can be less than 2-3 kg; in addition, the fat content of the soil pig is generally higher, generally up to about 60%, while the foreign pig is only 40%.
With the improvement of living standards, the demand for pork, especially lean meat, has increased significantly, so it is necessary to improve the indigenous varieties.
However, breeding pig improvement is not an easy task.
"It takes several generations to reproduce, the investment is high, the effect is slow," Li Jinghui said, breeding pig breeding is a 1 billion yuan capital to start the industry. "The first one-time investment is as high as 1 billion yuan, including equipment, testing, site and other hard costs, which is not the end, and then hundreds of millions of yuan of breeding costs are needed every year." It is reported that in 2007, New Hope Group began to prepare for its own breeding system, and invested 3 billion yuan in 13 years.
Liu Yonghao said in the proposal that for breeding science and technology projects that require long-term investment, insufficient attention has been paid in recent years, and some enterprises have seriously insufficient investment in breeding, scientific research, and facility construction in order to pursue short-term and fast benefits.
This has led to China's breeding pig market basically becoming the world of foreign pigs, and 90% of the piglets sold on the market belong to the descendants of foreign pigs.
vicious circle
It's just the introduction of breeding pigs, so why worry about being "stuck in the neck"? It's not that simple.
Li Jinghui said that if the light introduction, there is no core breeding farm, do not do their own breeding, will fall into the cycle of "introduction - degradation - re-introduction - re-degradation".
Biologically, imported pigs are good, but they also need to avoid inbreeding, and new blood needs to be introduced to improve the genetic traits of the population. At the same time, breeding pigs generally after 5-7 births, breeding pigs will degenerate, it is difficult to cultivate for a long time, it is necessary to continuously introduce fresh blood to the outside world, to maintain the breeding and continuation of breeding pigs, so that the average 5-8 years need an intergenerational update.
In addition, due to the imperfection of the local breeding system, the imported good varieties cannot be well preserved, bred and improved, making each breeding pig import a "hammer trade", further exacerbating the dependence on imports.
Pork is the "king of meat" on the Table of the Chinese people. According to data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, in 2019, China's annual pork consumption reached 32 kilograms per person, and more than 60% of meat consumption was pork. Such a huge amount of consumption, once the supply is limited, it is easy to be choked in the throat, and the consequences are unimaginable.
At present, the world's breeding pig breeding technology is mainly monopolized by a few countries such as the United States, Canada, France, Denmark and so on, so in this regard, China is facing a similar dilemma as a chip.
Not only that, over the years, the continuous introduction of breeding has also caused the group of commercial breeding pigs in China to leave a large number of hybrids with unclear blood, resulting in the mixing and even disappearance of good breeds in some local places.
The Ministry of Agriculture has done statistics that there are a total of 90 local breeds of "native pigs" in China, but 8 breeds of pigs such as Hengjing pigs and Hongqiao pigs have become extinct, 5 varieties such as forked black pigs are endangered, and 25 varieties are endangered, and the number of individual pig breeds is even less than that of giant pandas.
Liu Yonghao said that the "foreign chip" is not localized, the "soil chip" is inefficient and endangered, and the great-great-grandfather breeding pigs such as "Du Grow" have long relied on imports, which directly affects the quality, speed and efficiency of China's production capacity recovery process after the impact of African swine fever, and greatly restricts the supply of pork and the development of the pig industry in China.
In the past two years, China's pig industry is in a stage of rapid change. While the industry ushered in the "era of huge profits" that has not been encountered in a hundred years, it is also facing a sharp rise in the cost of breeding, and when the tide recedes, the essence of market competition still has to return to cost competition and technical competition.
Shi Shouding, deputy director of the Pig Industry Branch of the China Animal Husbandry Association, said that in the context of increasing feeding costs and declining profit margins, improving the production performance of breeding pigs is the only way to improve the efficiency of pig raising. Whether the efficiency of pig raising can be improved depends on the breeding and feeding costs of breeding pigs, and the former accounts for a larger proportion.
Turn around
In the mid-1990s, breeding pigs in China gradually developed. Today, the self-sufficiency rate of Chinese breeding pigs has reached the level of 94%, and independent breeding can be basically achieved.
As of June 2019, China has built 55 national-level local pig genetic resource breeding farms, 7 protected areas, and 1 national livestock gene bank, and more than 80 provincial-level local pig breeding farms (districts and libraries) have been built in various places, and the protection capacity and protection level of local pig genetic resources have been greatly improved.
Although China's breeding types and quantities of breeding pigs have made considerable achievements, it is undeniable that the gap between the quality of domestic breeding pigs and developed countries still exists objectively.
Wang Lixian, a researcher at the Beijing Institute of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, pointed out that there are still some problems in breeding pig breeding in China, which are manifested in the imperfect breeding system; the application of new technologies is lagging behind; the measurement foundation is weak; the breeding investment is small and the sustainability is not strong; the threat of disease is serious; and the development and utilization of local pig resources are insufficient.
In this regard, Liu Yonghao put forward three suggestions:
First of all, as soon as possible, the "China Breeding Pig" major project research and development and promotion subsidy policy will be introduced, and the seed industry enterprises will be encouraged to actively invest in the development of breeding pig research and development, infrastructure, talent training, international cooperation and other key research projects with the principle of "enterprise investment first, state subsidy", and declare key breeding projects in the case of relevant capabilities, and the state will give subsidies after evaluation and confirmation in accordance with relevant standards.
Secondly, provide non-plague prevention and control land support for core breeding farms and seed preservation farms to ensure the biosecurity and operational capabilities of ancestral breeding farms.
Finally, encourage the combination of various forms of international cooperation of seed industry enterprises to "introduce technology" and "wisdom", and reward the shortage of talents who cross-industry transnational research "pig chips".
Shen Nanpeng, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and founder and managing partner of Sequoia Capital China Fund, suggested in the proposal of this year's two sessions that support the development of local characteristics and high-quality varieties and the application of geographical indication products to promote the protection of local seed sources and the selection and breeding of good seeds. On the one hand, it establishes endangered and local breeding protection areas, and on the other hand, it sets up special projects to support scientific research institutes, seed enterprises and e-commerce companies to jointly build commercial breeding centers and improve endangered and local varieties.
The Central Economic Work Conference at the end of 2020 clearly put forward the idea of "determined to fight a battle to turn the seed industry around", and the No. 1 document of the Central Committee in 2021 made a top-level design for "fighting a good battle to turn the seed industry around". It is proposed that long-term and stable support should be given to basic research and key projects of breeding, accelerate the implementation of major scientific and technological projects for breeding, support leading enterprises to establish and improve the commercial breeding system, study subsidy policies after the research and development and promotion of major varieties, and promote the integrated development of breeding and breeding.
In this regard, Li Jinghui said that judging from the degree of intensive policy introduction, the state has made up its mind this time. With the gradual establishment of a breeding system based on enterprises and supported by the state, and the gradual release of policy dividends, I believe that this time it is expected to catch up.