Business Field

Analysis of the advantages, problems and prospects of building pig farming

The outbreak of African swine fever in 2018 caused a catastrophic blow to China's pig industry, and also made pig farmers in the industry realize the importance of biosecurity, so building pig breeding, iron barrel pig breeding, pig farm complex, gas building mode pig breeding, three-dimensional pig breeding, pig hotel and other forms of building pig breeding have become hot topics and new favorites in the industry. Building pig breeding has relatively strong advantages in improving land utilization, saving production management costs, and improving the scale of breeding, but there are also some problems.

The current situation and existing problems of pig breeding in buildings

The problem of leakage prevention between floors

During the period when the pig market was very good, many enterprises were rushing day and night to build building pig farms. The construction period is tight, so in the construction, design, supervision, there are serious deficiencies, even the most basic waterproofing, leakage prevention practices and on-site pouring manure gutter bottom vibration methods are insufficient, so that several large-scale pig buildings, after the hasty washing, immediately began to carry out pig production, and found that there were many problems such as excretion and urine between floors.

The problem of difficult fire protection in building pigs

Building pig breeding in the fire protection design, the use of industrial and civil building fire protection standards, one-time investment facilities cost is relatively high, coupled with the state in the building pig breeding has not yet introduced corresponding standards and regulations, there is no absolute mandatory requirements must be equipped, so it also leads to many pig farms in the fire protection facilities are not equipped or incomplete, resulting in serious losses in the event of fire.

The problem of high cost of raising pigs in buildings and transferring pigs to herds

Building pig farming is relatively expensive in terms of pig transfer operation. In terms of the number of floors, it is generally recommended that the floor be controlled within 6 floors (24 m), and normal pigs are best transported by ramp, and the slope does not exceed 10%.

Compared with single-storey pig houses, although the building pig farm has saved in terms of floor space, but the investment in building construction will increase, including building structure, elevator transportation, epidemic prevention passages, ramps, etc. will increase the cost of construction, which requires cost control from the design aspect, in the long run, can effectively improve the economic benefits of the pig farm.

The problem of high infrastructure costs for building pig farming

Compared with building pig raising and flat floor pig farming, building pig raising is 50% higher than flat floor pig raising in terms of input cost. High investment means a longer payback cycle, even if the price of pork remains high, the pig breeding projects in each building are still mainly based on the breeding of breeding sows, because the production of piglets is more efficient and can quickly return the cost. According to industry estimates, when maintaining high profit margins in pig farming, the building pig breeding project of fattening pigs also takes at least 3~4 years to recover the principal, and if it encounters a period of low pig prices, the cycle of recovering the principal will double. Therefore, when laying out related projects, enterprises should pay close attention to changes in market conditions, strengthen research and judgment, and avoid risks in time.

There are structural safety problems in building pig farming

"Early construction, early production, early income" is the goal of most large pig breeding enterprises, but this will cause some structural safety problems in the building.

In the building pig house built during the rainy season in the south, the structural safety problem is mainly reflected in the impact of rainfall on the concrete pouring of the building.

Building pig farm "tofu residue" project may have a negative impact on the industry: if one day there are one or two cases of "tofu residue" project in building-type pig farming, and there is a collapse and death phenomenon, the state and the government will definitely come forward to completely stop, sort, rectify, rectify and ban building pig farming, such a decision will also be another big blow to the pig industry.

There is a risk that pigs in buildings will be difficult to prevent epidemics

Building pig raising is in the traditional mode of superimposed incremental pig breeding, high production must need high density, density is too large, the most important is the pig epidemic prevention and control problem, if the disease prevention and control problem, is to do 99% right, even if 1% is not done, it will also cause a devastating blow, the loss will be very heavy. The epidemic prevention risks of building pig farms are mainly manifested in: leakage between floors, air cross-contamination, cross-infection caused by personnel, epidemic prevention pressure brought in by materials (including express mail, food and spices purchased in vegetable markets, etc.), cross-contamination of excreta (fecal transportation, etc.), transport pollution before harmless treatment of sick and dead pigs, regional cross-contamination of social pig collection vehicles and material delivery vehicles, and contamination of the entire farm by small pathogen vectors (such as flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches, mice, birds, etc.).

Building pig farming carries the risk of land attribute change

Local agricultural and rural departments are currently allowed to raise pigs in buildings on issues related to the management of agricultural land for facilities. If the development of a few more years, the contradiction between supply and demand in the pig industry is alleviated, the profit of pig breeding is not so dividend, and the pressure of government assessment at all levels is also small, these buildings originally used for pig breeding are decorated, the nature of the land is changed, and it is also very likely to be converted to other uses, and such cases have long appeared in other provinces in China. When the pig industry returns to balance or surplus, the original basic farmland is converted into general basic farmland, and the land temporarily used for pig buildings will be changed back to the original land nature as the contradiction between pork supply and demand is alleviated? This question is also worth pondering.

There is a risk of policy changes in building pig farming

Since the introduction of African swine fever into China, China's pig industry has been hit hard, and there is even no pork to buy in many places, in order to stabilize the "vegetable basket", the state frequently introduces relevant policies to promote pig breeding, enhance pork supply capacity, allowing "high-rise pig farming" is also one of them. The state and the government have also issued many regulations that were previously prohibited, and now in order to restore the supply and demand of the pig industry as soon as possible, many policies have turned on the green light, all to provide favorable resources for the pig industry, but after a few years, when the pig industry returns to balance or surplus, will the policy change? This possibility is worth considering.

The advantages of raising pigs in buildings are more advantageous

Building pigs to save land

The building pig farm is a three-dimensional superposition mode of flat-storey pig house, and the development space to the sky can save a lot of land resources, especially in areas where there are many mountains and less land resources.

The biggest advantage of building pig farming is that it greatly improves land utilization, and the centralized management of pigs is more environmentally friendly. Especially in China's land shortage and strict environmental protection measures, building pigs is more in line with national policies.

Building pig farming saves management costs

Building pig breeding is more suitable for the use of intelligent feeding equipment, convenient management, one worker can feed 5 000 pigs, saving manpower input, but also improve breeding efficiency, indirectly improve economic benefits. Put into use advanced automation equipment, so that the pig farm to achieve automatic water supply, automatic feeding, automatic temperature control, automatic lighting, automatic sewage discharge, etc., high degree of automation, coupled with the popularization and application of Internet of Things technology, can automatically extract all production data for intelligent analysis of daily, monthly, quarterly and annual reports, can effectively improve management efficiency, reduce management and labor costs.

Building pigs is more conducive to environmental protection

Flat-layer pig raising not only covers a large area of the pig house, the manure treatment area also covers a wide area, and the odor dispersion area is also wide, which also has a great impact on the lives of the surrounding villagers, and the building pig breeding covers a small area, and the manure above 2 floors can use the height difference of the building, and the solid-liquid separation is automatically carried out without power, so that the urine flows directly to the sewage treatment area through the closed pipeline, and the feces are automatically dried and fermented into organic fertilizer semi-finished products by using the height difference of the building and the excrement's own gravity; The odor discharged from the pig house can be centrally deodorized, sanitize treated, and finally discharged into the atmosphere up to the standard, which has less impact on the surrounding villagers and the environment.

Building pig farming is relatively easy to achieve unmanned pig farms

Building pig breeding is more suitable for the use of advanced Internet of Things intelligent management system, it is easier to realize the real-time status of pigs from unmanned feeding, unmanned transfer (such as RGV and AGV), intelligent monitoring of personnel, vehicles, materials, feed, pigs, etc., to achieve unmanned contact in the whole process, reduce the probability of pathogens flowing into the pig farm, and then use intelligent identification and sorting equipment to fully implement unmanned pig farms, saving manpower input while effectively improving breeding efficiency.

Building pig breeding is more conducive to modular promotion

Modular construction technology has been realized for many years under the condition of high labor costs abroad, including modular schools, modular hotels, modular square warehouse hospitals, etc. The construction of building pig farm can also adopt modular construction technology, transfer a large number of on-site operations in the traditional building construction process to the factory for standardized and batch production, process various building components in the factory, and then transport them to the site for lifting and connection to form a modular assembly building. The construction of modular pig farms has shown obvious advantages in saving design costs, construction costs, improving construction speed, reducing on-site installation costs, green environmental protection and asset preservation.

Application prospect analysis

In the future development of the pig industry, there is a relatively broad space for development in the case of shortage of land resources. However, the development of building pig breeding should be based on the actual situation of each enterprise to make decisions, not to "fashionable" thinking to participate in building pig raising, because building pig raising has very high requirements for the safety of the production process of the building, the structural safety of the building, the safety of the whole epidemic prevention, the safety of equipment operation, etc., and it is not as simple as the construction of flat-layer pigs. Building pig breeding has extremely high requirements for the overall epidemic prevention design, once there is a loophole, it will bring huge losses to the production and operation of the pig farm, so the choice of building pig breeding needs to think calmly before making a prudent decision.