Why are family pig farms the unkillable cockroach of China's pig farming industry?
In the future, China's pig farming industry will no longer blindly pursue excessive large-scale operations; moderate scale will be the focus of future development, and it is also a guiding requirement set at the social and national level. The quasi-scale family pig farm precisely embodies the meaning of “moderate”, and its following characteristics determine its super-strong vitality.
Definition of a quasi-scale family pig farm: generally refers to a pig farm with self-breeding and self-raising operations, with a year-round inventory of 30-100 productive sows, with a husband and wife as the main management and feeding personnel, appropriately equipped with a few hired workers, and without a fixed full-time technician or technical manager.
Quasi-scale family pig farms are the only “bosses” who stay on the production front line year-round. They raise piglets as if they were their own sons and sows as if they were their own wives. Their investment is their entire family fortune, and they cannot afford to fail, which determines that they will not fail. Especially for farms that started early, when others used their profits to buy cars and houses, they used their profits to improve pig production facilities. For farms like these, let alone their own persistence, there are gods three feet above their heads, and even heaven will not let them fail! In summary, after the tragic baptism of low pig prices in recent years, those who remain on the battlefield in the end can only be those dedicated and hardworking family pig farm raisers who do not seek empty fame. And Baineng Company will also devote greater energy and resources to supporting these family pig farms!
In the future, China's pig farming industry will no longer blindly pursue excessive large-scale operations; moderate scale will be the focus of future development, and it is also a guiding requirement set at the social and national level. The quasi-scale family pig farm precisely embodies the meaning of “moderate”, and its following characteristics determine its super-strong vitality.
1. Stronger ability to resist market risks.
This is not to say that quasi-scale family pig farms have how much abundant capital strength, but that farms of this scale can better control their funds. Take a quasi-scale family pig farm with 60 sows in inventory as an example. If the mating, pregnancy, lactation, weaning and finishing pig marketing of productive sows can be well arranged, then on average each month, that is to say, in every half year, 1/6 of the 60 sows will farrow each month. In this way, it can be maintained that there are always 10 sows whose fattening pigs are marketed each month, which means 100 fattening pigs are marketed each month. Even at a current loss of 300 yuan per head, that is only a loss of about 30,000 yuan per month. For a quasi-scale family pig farm that has been operating for many years, this will not constitute a fatal blow, especially since such farms should have accumulated financial strength during the good market conditions earlier. As long as a quasi-scale family pig farm does not market 600 pigs all at once within one month, or hold them back for several months, then even if such market conditions persist for 7-8 months, there will not be too much risk of a capital break. Of course, the premise is that such a quasi-scale family pig farm has decent production levels and accumulated a certain amount of profit funds in the good market years earlier.
2. More conducive to pursuing refined management.
The boss of a family pig farm often has multiple roles at the same time, such as feeder and technician. They stay on the front line of pig farming at all times, can promptly discover problems on the farm, and thereby make accurate and rapid adjustments in farm management to achieve the best breeding level. Compared with large-scale pig farms with complex personnel matters, the discovery and resolution of problems are often affected by the responsible parties' sense of responsibility, the setup of layer upon layer of management, and the fact that the final decision-making boss does not grasp the truth of the problem in place, leading to inadequate management, frequent problems on the farm, and a management level that is instead inferior to that of family pig farms.
3. Strong cost control ability.
One of the biggest costs in pig farming now is labor cost. Because of their moderate scale, family pig farms do not need a large number of feeders, and often they themselves are the feeders, which saves labor expenses very well. In addition, for example, they do not have expenses such as site rental, nor do they have high loan interest and the like.
4. Production indicators are easy to improve.
Quasi-scale family pig farms are the only “bosses” who stay on the production front line year-round. They raise piglets as if they were their own sons and sows as if they were their own wives. Their investment is their entire family fortune, and they cannot afford to fail, which determines that they can raise pigs very attentively and well, and production indicators cannot be poor. We can sum up one point: raising many is not as good as raising well. For large-scale pig farms relative to small pig farms, benefits are not necessarily proportional to scale, and may even produce the opposite result.
Where exactly should the pig farming industry go? A major reshuffle is already unavoidable; this is a fact no one disputes. But what is worth discussing is the path of the reshuffle and what the final result will be, which is what everyone cares about most. There is one view that is now mainstream, namely eliminating small households and keeping large-scale pig farms. In fact, this is only a result obtained by analyzing surface phenomena, just as the government's guidance in previous years and the current result are completely opposite. What I want to say is that if we truly analyze the reality of China's pig farming industry, the conclusion reached may very well be a strange phenomenon of removing both ends and keeping the middle: backyard and large-scale operations as the two ends will decrease, while family-style pig farms will prevail. It seems strange, but it is actually not strange; this is determined by China's national conditions, and even more by the particularity of the pig farming industry.