pork

China is so clear that the future of pork lies in ‘skyscraper farms’ that it is doing something: taking them to other countries

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When you think of pig farms, what comes to mind are large farms with pig pens, breeding areas, silos with feed… All of this (of course) horizontally. Things change if we are in China. There they have been thinking vertically for years and betting on farms in buildings of various heights, including authentic skyscrapers, such as the two 26-story towers raised in Ezhou (Hubei) and that are capable of breeding 1.2 million pigs every year. Now China has started ‘international’ model. What has happened? That China has begun to export its model of macro farms pig verticals. Although a few years ago the ‘farm towers’ sounded like science fiction and there were even foreign ranchers who raised their eyebrows reading about them, the bet seems to have worked for Beijing. At least enough to consider take her to Vietnamwhere the Chinese firm Muyuan Foods has joined forces with the local BAF to build a complex in the province of Tay Ninhin the southeast of the country. Its main peculiarity: breeding at altitude. What do they want to do? The idea is to develop a high-rise complex dedicated to pig farming, an infrastructure that will be carried out with an investment of just over 450 million dollars and will integrate a farm of 64,000 pigs with a factory capable of producing close to 600,000 tons of feed every year. In September Vietnam Investment Review pointed out that the project has received approval from the authorities of the province of Tay Ninh, where the complex will be built, and from the state authorities. What does it have to do with China? That one of the promoters of the project is Muyuan Foodshe greatest breeder of pigs from China and a heavy weight of the sector at an international level. In addition to his enormous capacity of production, the firm stands out for its commitment to raising pigs in buildings of up to six floors. “We have replaced traditional single-story pig farms with multi-story ones to improve efficiency and land use, promote recycling of manure and waste and ensure biosecurity,” the company explained during its IPO in Hong Kong, a few weeks ago. What is China doing? Although in other countries macro pig farms in towers may be shocking, in China they have been implementing the model for some time. To understand it, you have to go back to 2018, when the country saw how swine fever undermined its herds. The American Society for Microbiology estimates that in total the outbreak killed or forced the sacrifice of 225 million of pigs. The country is the largest producer and pork consumer in the world and it is estimated that before the 2018 outbreak it housed half of the planet’s pig population. In 2019, the Government formally allowed the use of multi-story buildings for livestock farming and just a year later Muyuan opened its doors. a macro complex in Nanyangwith twenty blocks of various plants capable of producing more than two million pigs each year. Little by little, China has been moving from a model in which pig farming was a common practice in homes (it still is in part of the country) to one based on commercial farms in which it is easier to manage waste and diseases such as swine fever. Why farms in skyscrapers? a few years ago The New York Times I was chatting with an expert of the US pork market that acknowledged that US farmers “look at photos of Chinese farms and just scratch their heads and say, ‘We would never dare do that.’” The truth is that buildings like those of Muyuan or the 26-story towers driven by Hubei Zhongxin Kaiwei Modern Farming in Ezhou have their advantages. This is what its promoters defend, at least, who present it as another step towards industrial agriculture. The same one that has also opted for the vertical farming farms. By thinking vertically, instead of the traditional horizontal model, they basically seek greater biosecurity and more efficient management. Why’s that? In the Ezhou skyscrapers, for example, they boast of incorporating thousands of automatic feeding points and a system capable of collecting, analyzing and using livestock feces. Not to mention that by betting on high-rise models, macro farms such as those in Muyuan, Zhongxin or Guangxi Yangxiang make it possible to address one of the sector’s biggest problems: the availability of land is limited, especially in populated areas. Of course, the tall model also has significant risks. The main one: that diseases spread more quickly through ventilation systems. Now, as Beijing tries stabilize the livestock herd China to avoid surpluses and prop up prices, the country is considering taking vertical macro farms beyond its borders. Images | China-Singapore Kaiwei Modern Animal Husbandry WeChat In Xataka | The new Spanish farmer no longer lives in the town: his name is John, he studied at Wharton and manages olive trees from New York

While everything is getting more expensive than ever, a plague has given us something: cheaper pork

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A ghost haunts the markets throughout Spain and no, it is not a metaphor: MercoLleida, the main European pork market, is already registering drops of between 7 and 17% in the price of pork. It is the biggest disaster in 30 years. And the bad thing for the industry is that this is just the beginning. What is happening? We could say that the most obvious thing is that there are at least 50 wild boars killed in the Collserola mountain range. That is, without a doubt, an indicator of the intensity of the problem. African swine fever, despite not affecting humans, has mortality and morbidity levels close to 100%: “can kill all the pigs on a farm after a few days of fever, coughing and bleeding.” But, in reality, that does not explain the price drop. And then? The price of pork in Spain (and, by extension, in Europe) has collapsed due to something else: fear. Swine fever is a disease so terrible, so resistant and so difficult to eradicate that “the appearance of a single case of plague causes preventive blocking of pork exports”. There are more than 20 countries that, to begin with, they do not accept regionalization and, therefore, the veto of Spanish pork exports is en bloc and immediate. Among them are Japan or Mexico. And the truth is that the situation could be much worse if Spain and China they would not have signed the regionalization agreement just a few weeks ago. That’s the reason for the price drop: suddenly, there’s a lot of leftover pork. Europe’s farm. After all, even with ‘regionalization’ underway (the international blockade of Catalan pork, but not the rest) the tons of meat that have to find a buyer are enormous. With more than 8 million animals and nearly 3.2 billion euros in annual meat exports, Catalan farms They represent 52% of Spanish international sales. How is the price not going to collapse? And the worst, as I say, begins now. Not only because no one knows if the efforts to contain the epidemic they will be successfulbut because the impact on the industry can be devastating. It is enough to remember that Germany was the European country that produced the most pork until in 2020 an infected wild boar crossed the border with Poland and unleashed a huge national crisis that dismantled the sector. That is to say, the Spanish pig is in a critical situation; but at the consumption level it has no problem. First, because the plague does not affect humans; and second (and more important) because no Spanish farm has been affected because of the virus. And they are being reviewed one by one. A trompe l’oeil In the short term this effectively means lower prices than usual. And, in a context of general rise (with chicken in full escalation), it is good news for consumers. What we don’t know is what impact it will have in the medium and long term: if it is a temporary blip, the industry will have some margin. If not, we cannot rule out that prices will skyrocket in the future. The problem is that, as the days go by, the situation looks worse and worse. Image | Kwon Junho | Mossos In Xataka | In a country with almost as many pigs as people, the worst that can happen is that investment funds take over

Spain wants more pork and more safe water in its reservoirs. And he is discovering that both things at the same time are not possible.

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Hidden in the Official Gazette of Castilla y León on Monday, there was something that they did not suspect would be controversial: the authorization to install more than 3,500 heads of pigs on the outskirts of San Cebrián de Castro, province of Zamora. Why would it be controversial? As recognized in the Diario de Zamorais the umpteenth authorization of this type in recent years and, unlike others, this macro farm is not close to any urban center. The only small problem is that, well, it is 100 meters from the Ricobayo reservoir, right where the Esla flows into the Duero. And is that a problem? The idea is to install a pig farm “with capacity for 3,100 sows with piglets until weaning (from 0 to 6 kilos in weight), with 620 replacement sows and six boars.” Just over 132,000 square meters, more than a dozen warehouses, a manure dump with a capacity for 1,215 cubic meters and two enormous slurry ponds with a capacity for 14,000 cubic meters. The project insists that “there will be no discharge into the Public Hydraulic Domain”; but, of course, the doubts are more than reasonable. In 2023, 161 Zamora municipalities They were left without drinking water due to contamination of its reservoirs. Because there is also the issue of water consumption. According to the data, an annual water consumption is estimated at 24,479 cubic meters. It’s a lot of water, but it’s not a surprise either: agriculture and livestock consume almost 90% of the Duero basin. And Ricobayo is a critical reservoir And not only for the Northern Plateau. Because what is happening in the Esla River is something much more important than it seems. Spain It is the absolute leader in European porkbut (or “because”) the legal framework is too fragmented and has huge regulatory gaps. That is to say, the basic management of intensive farms has been broken for years. The sum of an unambitious basic state standard, hydrological plans, municipal plans and environmental authorizations leaves room for dozens of towns throughout the country to spend years denouncing the enormous ecological and health consequences of this type of installations. All of this comes at a difficult time. Because the macro farm industry is about to reach its key moment: it is not only that the administration is following The closest issue is that the prosecution is taking cards in the matter. That is to say, in the near future, Spain is going to have to clarify what it wants to be at an agricultural level and at what cost. But you can’t do it with your back to the externalities it produces. The competitiveness of Spanish pork is based on vertical integration, efficiency and scale; and that pushes farms to have greater capacity and associated plants (feed, slurry treatment, biogas, etc.). That is, it puts completely new pressure on parts of the system that are not prepared to withstand it. Water is one of those problems. The Spanish water reserve is at 51.4% of its capacity and we have just emerged from one of the largest droughts in recent decades: how is it possible that a strategic resource like water enjoys these management problems (and this lack of protection)? That question is indeed more complex than it seems. Image | Bob | Raiden32 In Xataka | The Atlas of Toxic Spain: this is the geography of pollution in our country

When it comes to meat, science knows there’s something better than protein shakes: lean pork

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If you are one of those who he takes his gym workouts seriouslyyou will know that the post-workout window It is almost sacred. It’s time to give the body what it needs to repair and build muscle, and protein is the undisputed queen. This is where the big question comes in: does the type of protein we provide to the muscle matter? This is exactly what the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign wanted to answer. with a new study. What we think. Within this world of wanting to be as ‘masked’ as possible, without a doubt one of the diets that has transcended the most into the annals of history is the chicken and rice. In this way, chicken has almost taken first place in the type of meat that best suits us after training for its amount of protein and its low fat content. But in the case that we eat pork, it is important to make several distinctions according to science. The study. The research that has been published in the journal The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, reveals that when eating pork after a weight training session, the lean version is significantly more effective in stimulating muscle growth than its counterpart with more fat, even when both provide the same amount of protein. The experiment. To reach this conclusion, scientists, led by Professor Nicholas Burd, designed a rigorous experiment with 16 young, physically active adults. The goal was to compare how the body responded to three different “meals” after a hard leg workout with press leg and quadriceps extension. A routine that would leave many shaking. In this case, participants consumed one of the following diet options: Low-fat pork: a burger with 20 grams of protein and only 4.4 grams of fat. High-fat pork: A burger with the same 20 grams of protein, but only 20.6 grams of fat. Carbohydrate drink as a control measure without any type of protein to measure only the effect of exercise. The measurements. Once the dietary intervention was applied, muscle construction had to be measured. To do this, they used an advanced technique based on the administration of a ‘labeled’ amino acid, specifically L-(ring-13C6)phenylalanine. By marking it, it could be very easy to follow this ‘brick’ that was going to constitute part of the muscles that were hypertrophying. To follow up, a blood sample was taken as well as a muscle biopsy before and after exercise and food. And this allowed us to see in real time how quickly the body was generating new proteins that would end up in the muscle, in a process known as myofibrillar protein synthesis (MPS). The results. As expected, both types of pork increased muscle protein synthesis above resting levels. However, lean pork did so much more potently, despite having the same protein levels. The difference between the two groups was so marked that the anabolic effect of the high-fat hamburger was not statistically significant to that of the carbohydrate drink, which did not contain any protein. In other words, the high concentration of fat seemed to negate the benefit of the protein consumed. Because. The reason for everything seems to be the speed of digestion and absorption of macronutrients. The blood analysis revealed that participants who ate the lean burger experienced a faster and more pronounced spike in essential amino acids and specifically leucine in their blood than those who ate the fatty version. This is fundamental for the leucine “trigger” hypothesis. This theory postulates that a rapid and high increase in the amino acid leucine in the bloodstream acts as a powerful signal for the body to initiate the muscle-building process at that time. The lean pork activated this trigger effectively, while the pork fat probably slowed down gastric emptying and, thus, the arrival of amino acids into the blood and muscles. In fact, the study found a direct correlation between the magnitude of the leucine spike and increased muscle synthesis. The decision. In a time where protein shakes are the ‘norm’, the question may be asked whether it is better to eat food or drink protein. There is scientific literature that points Because it is always best to have a protein diet with food, since they not only provide protein, but also other components such as lipids, carbohydrates, micronutrients and bioactive compounds that can enhance muscle protein synthesis and improve the overall quality of the diet. In this way, drinking a protein shake can be a good way to complement the diet, but without forgetting about real foods like meat. Contradicting. This study has also come to ‘fight’ with the rest of the research teams that pointed out that naturally fattier whole foods such as whole eggs or salmon showed a superior anabolic response. The difference, according to the researchers, could be in the “food matrix.” The pork in the study was processed (minced and blended), which could alter how its nutrients interact, unlike an unprocessed whole food. Conclusion. This study has come to show that not all sources of animal protein are equal. If the goal in this case is to maximize muscle gain and you want to eat pork, opting for the lean version will give a clear anabolic advantage. This way, it’s not just about how much protein you eat, but how it is packaged and how quickly it gets where it needs to go. Images | Alora Griffiths Cindie Hansen In Xataka | The largest study on sustainable eating confirms it: vegetable protein wins the game

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