TITLE:
Peasants and Pork: The Changing Contribution of Pig Farming to Rural Livelihoods
AUTHORS:
Chuanbo Chen, Yuying Gong, Lichao Yang
KEYWORDS:
Review of Pig Breeding in China, Small-Scale Pig Farming
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.10 No.8,
July
29,
2022
ABSTRACT: Drawing on data from the National Agricultural Censuses (1996-2016) and
the National Rural Fixed Observation Point Survey (1986-2018), this article
provides a holistic review of China’s pig breeding development during the last
three decades. Pig farming had developed from extremely small-scale rearing in
the mid-1980s to large scale husbandry in the mid-1990s, yet a majority of pigs were still reared by individual agricultural
households. From the mid-1990s, individual pig breeders began to withdraw
because of the growing opportunity cost of labor and the falling need for
organic manure in agricultural activities. Small-scale pig farming has been
replaced by highly commercialized and
specialized companies who have further collaborated with expert large-scale pig farming households to form a whole pig breeding and sales chain. But even
now, pig rearing is still important to the livelihoods of poor rural
households. Policies and subsidies should be in place to protect the interests
of individual breeders.