[经济学人] Pig farms in China: Sows in the cloud

Posted on November 12, 2018 本文总阅读量次

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Pig farms in China
中国养猪场

Sows in the cloud
云端的母猪
As swine-rearing modernises, Chinese internet firms go into pigsties
随着养猪业的现代化，中国互联网公司走进了猪圈

The sleek offices of NetEase in Hangzhou, a traffic-clogged city in eastern China, seem an unlikely place to find a farmer. Yet the video-gaming company also runs a pig-rearing division. Ni Jinde launched Weiyang, its swine affiliate, almost a decade ago, after a stint in its financial team. At a state-of-the-art farm in nearby Anji county, Mr Ni oversees the rearing and slaughter of 20,000 organic free-range hogs a year, with the aid of tracking sensors, big-data analysis and soothing music. A second farm, to open in December, will raise another 150,000.

网易时髦漂亮的办公室位于中国东部交通拥挤的城市杭州，里面似乎不太可能见到农民。但这家网络游戏公司还有个养猪部门。在网易的财务部门工作了一段时间后，倪金德于近十年前创办了网易的养猪子公司味央。在附近的安吉县一个最先进的养殖场里，倪金德在追踪传感器、大数据分析和舒缓音乐的帮助下，每年监督两万头自由放养的有机生猪的饲养和屠宰。第二座养猪场将于12月开业，饲养15万头生猪。

NetEase has become part of a gigantic agricultural venture. China’s 430m porkers account for over half of the world’s herd, and its \$1trn industry produces more pork than any other country. Yet pig-rearing remains remarkably inefficient. It has long been a family affair: nine in ten of an estimated 40m pig farmers are thought to raise fewer than 50 hogs a year. Only about one in five Chinese sows is in industrialised production, estimates Bill Christianson of Genus, a British firm that is the world’s biggest supplier of breeding pigs.

网易已经成了一个超大型农业产业的一部分。中国共存栏4.3亿头生猪，占全球总量的一半以上，这个价值一万亿美元的产业生产的猪肉比任何其他国家都多。不过养猪仍然极为低效。这个行业一直是以家庭为单位：全国估计有4000万养猪户，其中九成每年饲养的生猪不到50头。全球最大的种猪供应商、英国Genus公司的比尔•克里斯蒂安松（Bill Christianson）估计，中国只有约五分之一的母猪是工业化养殖的。

But small-scale farms lack measures to prevent the spread of disease; this has allowed a deadly swine fever to run riot since a first reported case in August. In 2013 over 16,000 carcasses of pigs dumped by farmers were dredged from a river that supplies tap water to Shanghai. Since then, new pollution standards that ban livestock production near water sources or towns, and which require proper treatment of manure, have led to closure for tens of thousands of smallholdings.

但小规模农场缺乏预防疫病传播的措施。自8月报告首例疫病以来，这已造成一场致命的猪瘟的肆虐。2013年，从一条作为上海饮用水源的河流中打捞起了农民抛投的1.6万多头死猪。之后出台的新污染防治标准禁止在水源地或城镇附近养殖牲畜，并要求妥善处理粪便，导致数万个小养殖场关闭。

The closures are likely to accelerate China’s transition to modern production. Large-scale experiments in pig-rearing are under way in the form of multi-storey farms. A complex on Yaji mountain in southern China has 13 levels, with 1,000 pigs to a floor. But these structures are pricey, partly because of the measures they require to prevent disease from tearing through the building.

这场关闭潮很可能会加速中国向现代化养殖的转变。大规模养猪试验正在多层建筑养殖场中展开。在中国南方的亚计山上有栋13层建筑，每层养了一千头猪。但这些建筑造价高昂，原因之一是需要各种设施来防止疫病在楼内迅速传播。

China’s internet giants think that bringing technology to the pigsty is the answer. Mr Ni says that farms like Weiyang are “setting the example”. It prides itself on rearing its hogs for 300 days in clean and wholesome conditions before they are sent to slaughter, twice as long as the typical life of a Chinese pig. This makes for tastier pork sausages and other pig products it sells online. NetEase is not alone in marrying tech and animal husbandry. JD.com, an e-commerce firm that is an investor in Weiyang, raises and sells “jogging chickens” that each take 1m steps before the chop, making the meat more succulent than that of sedentary fowl. In June the cloud-computing arm of Alibaba, an internet company based in Hangzhou, unveiled an “agricultural brain” that helps farmers monitor pigs in real time through visual and “voice” recognition powered by artificial intelligence.

中国互联网巨头认为，把科技引入猪圈才是正解。倪金德说，像味央这样的养殖场正在“树立榜样”。味央很自豪，它的猪在宰杀之前要在干净卫生的环境下饲养300天，是普通中国养殖猪出栏时间的两倍。这让它在网上销售的猪肉香肠和其他猪肉产品更加美味。网易并不是唯一一家让科技与畜牧业联姻的公司。电子商务公司京东是味央的投资者之一，它词养并销售的“跑步鸡”在宰杀前要跑够一百万步，比笼养鸡的肉更加美味多汁。今年6月，总部位于杭州的互联网公司阿里巴巴旗下的云计算部门推出了“农业大脑”，用人工智能支持的视觉和“语音”识别技术帮助农民实时监控生猪。

Alibaba’s programme, which is undergoing tests in Sichuan province, picks up the squeal of a crushed piglet or the bleat of a sick sow, and alerts the farmer. Cameras in the pens track daily activity and vital signs by way of numbers stamped on the animals’ backs. It uses this trove of data to draw up exercise regimes. It reckons that its system can increase to 32 the number of piglets per sow per year, a measure of efficiency in the pig business. That would double the output of many Chinese farms.

阿里巴巴的这个项目正在四川做测试，它能监测到小猪被挤压时发出的长声尖叫，或是母猪生病时的哼哼，并向猪农发出警报。围栏里的摄像头通过猪背上印有的数字监控它们的日常活动和生命体征。它利用这个数据宝库来制定锻炼计划。公司估计，该系统可以将每头母猪每年的产仔量（衡量养猪效率的一个指标）增加到32头。这会让中国许多养殖场的产量翻一番。

Foreign suppliers also hope to put their snouts in the trough as pig farming industrialises. Hog Slat, an American maker of pig-barn floors, opened its third plant in China this year and plans seven more within four years. dsm, a Dutch supplier of feed, has launched an app through which Chinese farmers and suppliers can place orders, track inventories and monitor feed quantities, as well as check pork prices. The app will eventually offer live-streaming and facial-recognition tools, which could detect the features of a porker’s face and identify its genetic make-up. In China big data is meeting pig data.

随着养猪的工业化，外国供应商也想来分一杯羹。美国猪圈地板制造商Hog Slat今年在中国开设了第三家工厂，并计划在四年内再开七家。荷兰词料供应商帝斯曼（DSM）推出了一款应用，让中国农民和供应商通过它下单、跟踪库存、监控饲料用量，以及查看猪肉价格。该应用最终将提供实时视频和面部识别工具，可以检测猪的面部特征并识别其基因组成。在中国，大数据（big data)遇上了猪数据（pig data）。

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