Six men take the stage, bow to those present and place their hands on a huge screen to start a countdown.
Upon reaching zero, to the rhythm of triumphant music, images of gigantic buildings follow one another;
some arise from the bowels of small mountains thick with vegetation, others are located on large plains, next to small hills surrounded by forests or even not far from a lake.
They are the vertical farms that China is building throughout its territory to exclusively raise pigs, the most popular meat among consumers in the country and whose supply is considered a strategic imperative.
“Why should we promote pig farming on vertical farms?
To improve efficiency and reduce costs!”, they pointed out in the presentation of the III Forum of Buildings for Pig Farming, held earlier this week in the city of Qingdao, in eastern China.
Protecting and modernizing the pig industry is a priority for Beijing, which has accelerated the construction of these macro-farms in the last five years to reverse the ravages caused by the African swine fever (ASF) epidemic that killed tens of millions of pigs. in the country between mid-2018 and 2019, almost half of its pigs, according to Bloomberg estimates.
“The price of pork shot up in 2018, and that made many investors, especially in the real estate sector, decide to bet on this industry,” explains Wei Jinquan, a representative of Deba Brothers, a supplier of animal husbandry equipment.
This is the case of Zhuge Wenda, owner of a concrete and cement company in Hubei province (central China) who was forced to reinvent his business due to the slowdown in construction activity: instead of building blocks of flats for humans , I would do it for pigs.
He is now the chairman and majority shareholder of the Hubei Zhongxin Kaiwei Modern Animal Husbandry, the 400,000-square-meter, 26-story skyscraper that made headlines upon opening in October as the largest high-rise farm on the planet.
The monstrous building located on the outskirts of the city of Ezhou, on the banks of the Yangtze, is valued at about 4,000 million yuan (526.8 million euros) and is one of the most modern macro-farms in all of China -if not the most —.
According to the description available on Chinese portals, verified by
The New York Times
, from a control room, the staff monitors the animals 24 hours a day and issues food and water preparation orders for each floor, which functions as a autonomous farm for the different stages of life;
it also controls in real time the indicators of temperature, humidity, ventilation and concentration of toxic gases.
The farm is fully automated to increase efficiency: feed is supplied by huge pipes and distributed via automatic feeding points.
In addition, it has more than 30,000 control points that determine the precise feeding of each pig, based on the growth, weight and health of the animal, and waste is eliminated through a comprehensive waste treatment system based on biogas, which converts manure into clean energy.
China: the largest importer and largest exporter of pork in the world
The expansion of these mega-constructions, against the backdrop of the ASF outbreak and the trade war with the US, eased after the Council of State (the Executive) issued a decree in October 2019 urging all government departments to “stabilize pig production and guarantee market supplies”.
To this end, the goal was set that, by 2022, 58% of the country's total pig production should come from macro-farms and, by 2025, 65%.
Pork became a staple in the Chinese diet when the Asian giant began pushing agricultural modernization in the 1970s, but it reached most households this century, thanks to increased purchasing power. of the population.
China is currently the largest producer and consumer of pork in the world, but also the largest importer.
In fact, in 2021, it was the main destination for Spanish pork exports (around 1.4 million tons, 39% of the total, according to data from the European Commission).
Workers at a pork processing plant in Zhengzhou, China. Dominique Patton (REUTERS)
Keeping pork available and at a stable price worries the authorities so much that there is a state reserve that releases batches of pork to maintain supply and boost the market in times of higher demand (such as national holidays) or in case of shortages .
Since 2019, the procedures for acquiring land for pig farming have been streamlined, the requirement for a special permit to build on agricultural land has been eliminated (as long as the factories are for the pig industry) and vertical construction is allowed for achieve the maximum economic use of the land.
According to what was stated at the Qingdao forum, as of May 2021, 116.8 billion yuan (15.378 million euros) had been invested and 1,832 multi-storey farms distributed in 24 of China's 31 provinces and regions had been built.
The largest farm of this style is located in Yuguan, a town in Henan province (central China), which has an area of more than 1,000 hectares and has 21 six-story buildings;
its annual production is 2.1 million pigs.
Unable to compete with these rates, the trend among small pig farmers has been the opposite: between 2007 and 2020, the number of farms raising fewer than 500 pigs per year contracted by 75%, to 21 million.
The labor shortage
But the Ezhou skyscraper also has its detractors within the local sector.
"Building such a tall building is not effective, it's just marketing," a partner of Wei from Deba Brothers openly criticized in his presentation.
According to statistics, the current trend is that these buildings have about six or seven floors.
“There has been a boom in the construction of these buildings in recent years, because people with money wanted to get on the boat, but the reality is that there are multi-story farms finished without pigs inside.
If you want to stay in this industry, you have to cut costs.
And, the more pigs, the more costs”, Wei specifies to EL PAÍS.
According to data shared in Qingdao, currently only 35% of the total capacity that China has built is in use.
“The biggest challenge we face is not finding enough manpower.
Young people believe that the salaries are very low for working conditions on a farm,” says Mr. Liu, a salesperson for the equipment manufacturer Luohe Green, who adds that, on average, salaries are between 16,000 and 20,000 euros gross per year.
The solution, he says, is to go for a high degree of automation, which allows a single person to be in charge of up to 2,000 pigs.
Regarding the risks that this model of intensive farming entails, such as the rapid transmission of diseases when raising so many animals in the same closed space, the sector considers that this type of structure is advantageous because "the problems are clearer and it is more easy to deal with."
“We use intelligent breeding techniques, with a higher level of biosecurity.
In addition, the regulations require that all buildings have a sanitary inspection module, so we are much faster and more precise when it comes to detecting possible outbreaks”, says Xu Jin, from the construction company SEME.
Activists against climate change state that there is little evidence that these production models can bring these benefits to sustainability.
In the colloquia that EL PAÍS had access to, the environmental problems caused by large-scale farming were barely addressed, such as soil contamination by feces and air contamination by the emission of CO₂ and ammonia.
On this, Xu limited himself to ensuring that "all our buildings are built in remote areas to comply with environmental laws."
Although China intends to reach peak emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality in 2060, the government does not seem willing to attempt against the expansion of macro-farms, currently seen in the country as the messianic solution to stabilize the energy market. pig.
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