The voices of China’s Animal Husbandry Industry
With the effective control of the COVID-19 outbreak in China, China's animal husbandry industry is essentially back to work and production. In these exceptional times, VIV QINGDAO interviewed some well-known domestic animal husbandry companies about various perspectives, such as business development, trade strategy, industry growth and problem solving experiences in this epidemic. Let’s take a look at what the Chinese animal husbandry leaders share with their overseas industry colleagues.
Company: Ningbo Sansheng Biological Technology Co., Ltd.
Interviewee: Sun Zhiyong
Position: Technical Service Director
What do you think of the new challenges for the animal husbandry from the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic to the present stage? In what way will it influence the strategies in China and overseas market?
The COVID-19 virus was prevalent in the past months in China and now in the whole world, many industries enter a period of stagnation. However, the influence on the animal husbandry is not as serious as in other industries because the most production locations are in the countryside and the people in these areas have strong biosecurity consciousness. The African Swine Fever does much more harm to the animal husbandry industry compared to COVID-19. It is almost one and half years ago that the African Swine Fever first broke out in Liaoning province and it is now prevalent in the whole swine industry in China. Actually, the prevalence of ASF has a serious influence on the Chinese swine industry, such as pork producing and breeding and industry supply chain and more:
- The direct influence on the production volume of pork. Before the outbreak of ASF, the total amount of livestock was 32,000,000 sows in China, comparing the figure in July 2019, the production is below 20,000,000 sows, a 60 percent loss. Some farms change to producing poultry, and that led to the poultry market quotation dropping quickly.
- The influence on the breeding system. For most of the breeding farms were destroyed after the ASF, the supplying of the replacement gilts is insufficient. People used the commercial pigs as the gilts to mate and this kind of situation will last for 3 to 5 years in the future.
- The serious influence on the feed applying With the rapid drop of the livestock of pigs in China, most of the small feed mall go bankrupt, big feed companies purchase idle farms to to maintain the producing ability.
- The influence on the animal healthcare industry. The producing and sales of vaccines dropped quickly together with livestock volume of pigs and bio-security. The figures in 2019 show that the vaccine producing volume had dropped 40 percent compared with that in 2018. Typically, the purchase of PRRS, PCV-2 and Mycoplasma vaccines reduced the most. 3 to 5 years in the future, the conventional vaccines will keep dropping and the same goes for anti-infection and anti-parasite products .
- Up to now, the epidemic of the COVID-19 virus in the world does serious harm to all industries. My friend who is a member of New Hope Group told me some days ago that they had stopped working and that it would last at least four or five weeks. With the absolute control of this disease in China, the husbandry industry has recovered in March and the influence is temporary. However, some other industries will not recover that much and that it leads to the decrease in consumption of pork, thus decreasing the need of the pork and impact the swine producing.
In the face of the Covid-19 epidemic, the animal husbandry industry shows new vitality. What do you think of the future developments and changes? Which trends will be more obvious?
- The first influence is that the diseases will push the husbandry industry to be industrialized and more intelligent. ASF has led the all kinds of great losses for smaller farms, while the big companies developed quickly in the past year because they have many advantages, such as technology, breeding and funding. The middle and small-scale farms have no way to fight against the ASF, so some of them will disappear in this industry. The backyard farms may have some opportunity to survive because they have less transportation and risk. New family farms will be built widely in the future to cooperate with the big companies.
- The shape and scale of the swine industry will be developed to be Big husbandry companies have dominant positions, and the sum of the middle farms will shrivel while the family farms which cooperated with big players will develop in the near future.
- Small swine feed malls must face the challenge of the market pressure with their customers disappearing. Big players survive for they invest in swine farm purchases.
- The swine animal healthcare companies have met great challenges during the period of ASF , maybe some small players will be culled in the near future. Some big swine companies will enter the animal healthcare industry for they have strong funding abilities through purchases or sharing stocks, to serve for their own farms or take part in the compare with other animal healthcare companies.
After the global pandemic eases, mainly in the second half of this year, will the market demand for products and technologies increase substantially?
COVD-19 and ASF are the hottest topics in the past season in the animal husbandry industry，the technology or products for ASF control were referred by people often.
1) Equipment of biosecurity such as driers, disinfection equipment, hygiene equipment, high quality disinfectants and professional pig transport vehicles will be needed widely in Chinese husbandry industry.
2) Quick, accurate, cheap and convenient test kits will be demanded widely in the near 5-10 years.
3) Great abundant replacement gilts will be demanded.
4) The producing management technologies and related products for promoting the performance of commercial pigs which were used for standard replacement gilts.
