China supersizes pig farms to cut costs in world's top pork market

Wuxuan County, China

SURROUNDED by mountains in a remote part of south-western China, Xinguangan's first large-scale, modern pig farm is getting ready to produce its first offspring.

By the end of the year, 10,000 sows will live inside two huge barns on this 73-hectare site, producing up to 280,000 piglets annually, or about 20,000 tonnes of pork.

The farm, big even by American standards, is one of a record number of large-scale projects that will be built in China this year as it shifts a big chunk of its pork production from backyard pig pens to automated, intensive hog barns of the kind widely used in the United States.

Some in the industry estimate it could build several hundred sow farms with about 5,000-8,000 heads this year, even more than last ye…