Which is more sought after, wild boar meat or domestic pork?
Food safety concerns have set people thinking about what is good to eat and what foods are green, and combined with people's pursuit of the novel and exotic, special breeding industries such as wild boar and pheasant farming have gradually sprung up.
Recently, after investigating the special breeding industry in our province, reporters found that behind the glamour of special breeding lie unknown bitter tears.
Watching TV sparked the idea of raising wild boars
On Miaanqian Mountain, more than 20 km west of Jinyuan District in Taiyuan, the trees are dense, and wild rabbits and pheasants dart freely through the forest. Three years ago, Zhou Jian came alone to the forest on Miaanqian Mountain at an altitude of more than 1600 m and became a “wild boar herder.”
When the reporter met Zhou Jian, he was standing in the pig pen watching his “treasures” feed. He divided the “treasures” into three batches and fed them in turn, letting the big pigs eat first, then the medium pigs, and finally the small pigs. Watching the wild boars scrambling and fighting for food, and listening to the sounds they made from time to time, Zhou Jian smiled and muttered: “Little fools.”
Zhou Jian, 35 this year, had done quite a few jobs before becoming a “wild boar herder”: he sold noodles, ran a restaurant, and also ran a factory. Three years ago, he happened to see a program on CCTV's agriculture channel about getting rich by raising wild boars, and the idea of going into this line of work was born. “He went up the mountain to take a look the first day, and moved up there the next day.” Zhou Jian's wife said he was like a man possessed. Zhou Jian rented a relatively flat area on Miaanqian Mountain and began raising wild boars. The biggest difference between raising wild boars and raising domestic pigs is that wild boars must have an “exercise yard.” Zhou Jian not only built an “exercise yard” for the wild boars, but also built a “swimming pool” inside it, where the wild boars can freely chase each other and sunbathe. Apart from the fenced-in “exercise yard,” the whole mountain is a playground for the wild boars. Every morning, after the wild boars have eaten, Zhou Jian lets them out into the mountain. At first they chase one another, but in the blink of an eye they burrow into the forest and disappear from sight. At this point, all that can be heard is the “whoosh whoosh” of the wild boars moving through the forest and the sound of them cracking wild apricot pits. “Won't the wild boars get lost if you let them into the mountain forest?” the reporter asked with concern. Zhou Jian said: “Around 15:00, the wild boars come back from all directions; that is their afternoon feeding time.”
Tight funds force selling wild boars at a loss
The wild boars Zhou Jian raises like to eat leaves from the mountain and drink spring water from the mountain. “Wild boars can't just eat grass; you also have to add some cornmeal, only then will they grow well.” Under his careful raising, the wild boars grew quickly and could be sent to market in 6 to 8 months. “At present there are more than 100 large pigs and more than 100 small pigs.” Zhou Jian said that although this scale is still relatively small, he does not dare let the sows become pregnant again.
Zhou Jian said wild boar meat is delicious and rich in nutrients. The current market price is 25 yuan per jin, and last winter it reached 35 yuan. But at present his sales channels mainly rely on scattered sales, and the volume is very small. Some time ago, because his funds ran out, he was forced to sell 20 live pigs at 7 yuan per jin. The pigs he sold had already been raised for 2 years. Although the cost of one jin of wild boar is about 13 yuan, he still had to sell at a loss. “Isn't that selling wild boars at domestic pig prices?” the reporter asked. Zhou Jian said that every day these wild boars eat and drink, and the cost is more than 1000 yuan. He is now regulating the increase in the number of wild boars, because as the number of wild boars increases, his costs also keep climbing, but sales cannot keep up.
Although Zhou Jian's wild boar farm is not large in scale, given that there are few large-scale wild boar farms in Taiyuan, he still has a certain advantage. But Zhou Jian said this is where the contradiction lies: because there are so few, people's awareness is low. There is no sensory difference between domestic pork and wild boar meat, so it is impossible to let people know that what he is selling is genuine wild boar rather than domestic pig.
Whether to keep raising them or not is a dilemma
“I never thought wild boar meat would be so hard to sell.” Zhou Jian both loves and hates this project. He said he had once gone to the south to investigate, where the game meat business was booming and wild boar meat sold for 40 yuan/jin. What puzzled him was why it did not work once he got to Shanxi. He said his hometown is in Yuanping, and he could originally have put this project there, where costs would also be very low. Later, considering the market problem, he gave up what was near for what was far and chose Jinyuan District for the farm, precisely to be closer to the urban area and make transport convenient. But things went contrary to his wishes, and he is unwilling to give up.
How can sales be opened up? Zhou Jian has also racked his brains a lot. He once thought of joining forces with a powerful pork slaughtering and processing factory to launch small packages for the market or direct sales, but given his current scale, such a “marriage” is still hard to achieve.