The Influence Of The Scale Of Breeding On The High Quality Development Of Pig Breeding Industry

High-quality animal husbandry is a strategic industry to continuously meet people’s demand for high-quality meat,eggs and milk in the new era,and it is also a basic industry to ensure farmers and herdsmen’s sustained income increase and realize rural revitalization.The Fifth Plenary Session of the Nineteenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China put forward in the “14th Five-Year Plan”and “2035 long-term goals and recommendations”,“Agriculture must improve quality,efficiency and competitiveness.” As the largest industry in animal husbandry in China,the live pig industry has been widely concerned by the government and the industry.In 2019 and 2020,the State Council issued the Opinions on Stable Pig Production to Promote Transformation and Upgrading and the Opinions on Promoting High-quality Development of Animal Husbandry successively,which clearly proposed to further improve the scale rate of pig breeding and realize high-quality development of efficiency improvement,environmental friendly and stable production.Foreign practice has proved that the continuous withdrawal of individual investors and the resulting increase in the scale of pig breeding are important driving forces to promote the quality of pig breeding.However,the specific implementation path of this process in different countries is quite different.So what kind of scale path is in line with the needs of high-quality development of China’s pig breeding industry has become an urgent problem to be solved.To answer this question,first of all,we need to clarify the impact of breeding scale on the high-quality development of China’s pig breeding industry.Based on a large number of first-hand data of production practice,this study empirically analyzed the specific impact of breeding scale on the key links of high-quality development of pig breeding industry,and then explored the path of high-quality development from the perspective of scale,which has important reference significance for promoting high-quality development of pig breeding industry in China.This study is based on the first-hand field survey data of 238 farms(households)in 16 counties and cities of 8 typical provinces,and supplemented by macroscopic statistical data,this study focuses on the three key links affecting the high-quality development of pig breeding industry--pig feeding,fecal pollution management and epidemic response.Fully consider the scale economy and scope economy changes as well as the psychological characteristics changes of the farms(households)caused by the scale change,and build the relevant analysis framework.On this basis,the mediating effect model,OLS model and PSTR model were used to quantitatively analyze the influence of breeding scale on the three main objectives of high-quality development,namely "reducing feeding cost","controlling environmental pollution" and "stabilizing pig production".And incorporated into the results of this analysis to open under the condition of economic surplus in the model,the measure and compare the current excessive pursuit of monomer mass scale path and set the focus of developing scale farms(households)changes in the economic welfare in different path scenarios,such as,tentatively pig breeding industry under the background of development of high-quality scale path optimization.The main conclusions of this study are as follows :(1)High feeding costs,environmental constraints and the impact of the epidemic have restricted the high-quality development of China’s pig breeding industry.Based on the basic data of typical pig farms of representative countries in the world by Agri-Benchmark,the production cost of pigs in China in 2017 was about 1.68 times that of representative countries such as Germany,showing an obvious disadvantage.According to the survey data of 8 provinces in China,on the one hand,the contradiction between the development of pig breeding industry and environmental protection is relatively acute.The tightening of environmental protection policies around 2018 has reduced the pig inventory in all regions by 5%-20%.On the other hand,the drastic fluctuations in pig production caused by the epidemic impact had a great impact on the healthy development of the industry.45.37% of the respondents were affected by the African swine plague in 2018 and 2019,and about 4/5 of the respondents adopted the panic selling behavior.(2)The expansion of breeding scale can directly and indirectly reduce the cost of pig feeding,but there is an optimal efficiency range.The regression results showed that the marginal effect of the expansion of breeding scale on the reduction of pig feeding cost showed a changing characteristic of first increase and then decrease.When the breeding scale was 1571,the marginal effect reached the maximum,that is,the expansion from small scale to medium scale was the optimal efficiency range for reducing pig feeding cost.Indirect approaches mainly include the improvement of feeding technology,the improvement of pig feeding environment and the reduction of feed purchase price.There is a threshold of monomer scale for improving pig feeding environment.Therefore,the approach of improving the feeding environment to reduce feeding cost must be realized through the expansion of scale.(3)Restricted by the amount of available land around,the expansion of farming scale will increase the difficulty of fecal pollution control and aggravate the pollution risk.The expansion of the scale of farming will aggravate the realistic constraints faced by fecal pollution treatment,amplify negative externalities and aggravate environmental pollution.The environmental cost caused by fecal pollution in extra-large scale farms(households)is about 10 times that of small-scale farms(households).At the same time,the expansion of scale will also lead to diseconomies of scale and weaken economies of scope,resulting in an increase in the cost of feces treatment.The cost of feces treatment in extremely large-scale farms(households)is about twice that of small-scale farms(households).The above effects will eventually reduce the efficiency of feces treatment and increase the difficulty of pollution control.The regression results showed that the efficiency of manure treatment decreased by 0.09% with the increase of 1% of the scale of cultivation.(4)The expansion of breeding scale will drive the farms(households)affected by the epidemic to reduce the number of live pigs to a greater extent.With the expansion of the scale of breeding,the conditions for disease prevention and control of farms(households)will be improved,but due to the psychological factors of eager to reduce production risks,the farms will reduce their inventory to a greater extent in the face of the impact of the epidemic.The regression results showed that when the breeding scale was less than 4952,the farms(households)affected by the epidemic would take the initiative to reduce the inventory of 44.52%;When the breeding scale is larger than 4952,the inventory reduction will increase with the expansion of the breeding scale,which will eventually drive the inventory down by 75.09%.(5)Extra large-scale farms are the main factor driving the improvement of the scale of pig breeding,which can bring about the improvement of producer surplus and consumer surplus.However,only by comprehensively considering the loss of economic welfare caused by pig manure pollution and the impact of the epidemic,can the economic welfare be maximized in the high-quality development process of pig breeding be maximized by expanding the proportion of medium-sized farms(households).Based on the above conclusions,this study puts forward the following policy recommendations:first,guide small and medium-sized farms(households)to moderately expand the scale,reduce the cost of pig breeding;The second is to guide the orderly expansion of pig breeding scale and reduce the risk of fecal pollution;The third is to introduce differentiated support policies for different scales to strengthen the pig breeding epidemic response capacity;The fourth is to focus on supporting medium scale farms(households),optimize the structure of pig breeding industry.