High on the hog: skyscraping hi-tech China swine farm produces 1.2 million pigs a year
- Unusual urban farming operation in central China brings home the bacon, keeps normally dirty pigs clean
While they are not quite of the flying variety, a high-living army of pigs in China is raising eyebrows at home and abroad.
The porkers are part of a vertical farming project involving two 26-storey skyscrapers in Ezhou, in the central province of Hubei.
Playing on the mythological character Zhu Bajie, also known as Monk Pig, from the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, mainland social media has dubbed the skyscrapers Bajie Buildings, referring to the pigs as “the second elder brother living in a high-rise.”
From the outside, the high-rise blocks look no different from normal residential buildings.
However, instead of housing people, they are home to an industrial-scale vertical pig farming operation.
Jin Lin, general manager of the farm, which was built by Hubei Zhongxin Kaiwei Modern Husbandry, told Global Times that each building has a floor area of 390,000 square metres and together they can produce 1.2 million pigs a year.
The operation employs more than 800 people, meaning each member of staff is responsible for approximately 1,500 high-living hogs.
Operations began in September 2022 when the first batch of sows was introduced.