"If you don't study well, then go back and raise pigs." This was once the teacher's mantra for educating students to study seriously.
For a long time, pig raising has been synonymous with being dirty, tired and not making money. It is such an industry that has been disgusted, and now it seems to have a new year, which is enough to subvert our imagination.
Pork is the most fundamental source of meat for Chinese people, accounting for 70% of Chinese meat consumption. Every year, China occupies 20% of the world’s population and eliminates 50% of the world’s pork, which also makes the domestic pork market reach an astonishing trillion level.
Under such huge temptation, many Internet companies broke into the field of pig breeding. So, is it really that simple to raise pigs on the Internet?
Pig breeding is so fragrant?
The huge market is the main reason that attracts Internet giants the most. Pork is the main source of meat for the Chinese, making China the world's largest pork consumer. The annual pork consumption exceeds 50 million tons. The huge pork consumption means that the market prospect is very huge.
However, the domestic supply of live pigs has not been able to fill this huge consumption demand, and China's imported pork has been rising year after year. As the domestic pig farming structure is mainly composed of retail investors, the entire pork market industry is still in a fragmented state. From breeding to transportation and finally to slaughter and sales, there are disconnects in all links, and a complete industrial chain has not been formed, and the output of live pigs is low. Therefore, this also provides a good entry point for Internet giants to enter the game.
Data source: National Bureau of Statistics, General Administration of Customs
In addition, the introduction of the policy has further laid a good foundation for the future development of the pig breeding market. In 2013, there were a large number of floating dead pigs in the waters of the Songjiang end of the Huangpu River in Shanghai, which prompted local governments to increase the management of free-range farmers and at the same time introduced relevant policies.
With the continuous tightening of domestic aquaculture environmental protection policies, small and medium-sized farmers with poor conditions have gradually withdrawn from this wave of reshuffle, while large-scale farms with better environments and conditions have gained better development space. At the same time, the high requirements for environmental protection will be able to raise industry standards and accelerate the establishment of a modern breeding system. Internet companies that started by relying on the Internet have their own strong technological attributes when they enter the breeding market. Under such an environment, they will be able to adapt to the modern breeding environment and be relatively more proficient in the application of new technologies.
Many factors have attracted many Internet giants to join the "pig-raising army" across the border, setting off a wave of Internet pig-raising.
Is raising pigs on the Internet more than just a gimmick?
On November 25, 2016, Netease Weiyang Black Pig opened its first auction. A whole head of black pork was sold for a staggering 88801 yuan. A pig worth 88,000 yuan aroused heated discussions at the time. Whether it was really worth the price or just speculation was the focus of the debate among all parties. Is Internet pig raising really a feasible way?
In fact, it is still facing great difficulties to enter the pig breeding market. Although the market is very broad and it seems to have a lot of room for development, in fact, the entire current pig farming is still similar to the Red Sea market and is in a relatively saturated state. At present, the entire domestic aquaculture market is still dominated by retail farming, and the concentration of the aquaculture industry remains at a very low level.
According to the statistics of Ruiguan Consulting, in the current Chinese pig breeding industry market, industry leaders Wen's shares, Muyuan shares and Zhengbang Technology together account for only 5.6% of the entire market, and up to 94.4% of the market is still composed of other small and medium-sized enterprises. Occupied by retail investors. This shows that the current domestic pig breeding industry concentration is extremely low, and Internet giants will face greater competition if they want to enter into large-scale breeding.
Source: Ruiguan Consulting
Secondly, pig breeding is not as "simple" as imagined, and requires a lot of money and time. NetEase announced its pig breeding plan as early as 2009, but it was not until 2016 that the first pig was released. It is conceivable that it will take 7 years for NetEase to start slaughtering pigs after entering the pig farming. It is conceivable how much money has been spent after that. Breeding sites, feed, and a series of related personnel are the most basic expenses.
In addition, the research and development and investment of various technologies require a lot of capital and manpower. This requires that Internet companies entering this industry require a lot of costs, and it is destined that only Internet companies with strong capital advantages can enter this market.
The last point is, does Internet pig raising really have this demand? Although the transformation of live pig breeding to modernization will inevitably require the intervention of technology, is the cross-border breeding industry of Internet companies just a gimmick created to increase the valuation of their own companies? At least for now, the role of the Internet in the breeding industry is still insignificant.
In the short term, Internet pig raising is only in its infancy, and the entire pig raising market is still in a very backward state, which means that the future integration with the Internet has a very broad prospect. In the long run, what prospects does Internet pig raising have?
Can a pig sitting on the Internet take off?
Since 2019, under the influence of African swine fever, pork prices have soared, which has made the pork market a hot topic at once. But behind the soaring pork price is the fact that many domestic small and medium-sized farmers have been forced to withdraw from the pig breeding industry due to the swine fever epidemic. Due to lack of technology and management experience, this part of small and medium retail investors suffered heavy losses.
In contrast, large farms have not been greatly affected, but have made a fortune due to the outbreak of the epidemic. This can be seen from the stock prices of leading breeding companies represented by Wen's shares and Muyuan shares. Therefore, the African swine fever epidemic has accelerated the advancement of pig breeding in the direction of scale, which has increased the demand for Internet technology.
In 2018, Alibaba and JD.com also launched their own smart farming solutions for agriculture and animal husbandry, combining AI and other technologies with live pig breeding. With the help of machine vision technology and infrared temperature measurement technology, an independent file is established for each pig for real-time data monitoring.
At the same time, by combining with big data technology, AI technology is used for data analysis to achieve early warning of the epidemic and other related functions. Internet pig raising is actually digitizing the entire pig raising process, introducing a large number of intelligent analysis technologies into the breeding process, and completing real-time data monitoring of each process, and all conditions can be intuitively reflected through data.
In the current situation of rising domestic demand for live pigs, although the proportion of live pig farming in China accounts for 56.6% of the world, it still cannot guarantee domestic pork supply. Deaths and swine fever infections are the main reasons that affect the slaughter rate of pigs. Professional breeding combined with the Internet can greatly reduce the fatality rate of sick pigs and swine fever, thereby increasing the slaughter rate of pigs.
From this point of view, Internet pig breeding will inevitably be the future development trend of the entire pig breeding market, and the prospects are promising.
Internet pig raising, raising is not the key, how to make pork is
Internet pig raising seems to focus on how to raise pigs, but in fact, the most fundamental place is how to sell.
The entire pig industry chain is mainly divided into five links: pig breeding, feed production, slaughter and transportation, meat production and product sales. Among them, breeding, slaughtering and meat production are the core, these three are the core of the entire pig industry chain. Among these three items, meat production is the most critical.
Pig industry chain process
Compared with the U.S. market, the size of the U.S. pork farming market is about 50 billion U.S. dollars, of which the monthly market of 37 billion U.S. dollars is for meat products, and only 13 billion U.S. dollars is for live pigs. Meat products account for the bulk of the entire market. The domestic pork farming market is quite the opposite. Although my country's market has reached 1.4 trillion yuan, more than 1.2 trillion of which is live pigs, and only 200 billion is meat products.
This means that Internet pig raising not only focuses on how to raise pigs, but also needs to pay attention to the processing chain of pork meat products. This will be an important point of competition for Internet companies in the competition of traditional breeding companies. Who can open up the entire chain from breeding to meat processing will be able to take the lead in the pig breeding market.
Internet giants raise pigs across borders, they can only have a chance if they don’t take the usual path
Although Internet companies entered the pig breeding market across borders, relying on their strong capital strength to better realize the scale of the pig industry chain, traditional leading enterprises also have strong capital strength, and they have been working in the entire industry for longer , With a leading edge, it is relatively difficult for Internet companies to catch up.
Internet companies entering the market across borders can only "snap the frontier" if they want to catch up in the lagging pig breeding market. Alibaba Jingdong uses its own technical advantages to create a complete set of intelligent breeding solutions to cooperate with traditional breeding companies and enter the breeding market from a technical perspective. NetEase has established the entire pig industry chain, from breeding to sales, and at the same time creating a high-end pork consumer brand. With the help of the current consumption upgrade, it has realized a new development direction.
At present, among all the Internet giants that have entered the game, only NetEase has opened up the entire industry chain, and the stronger Ali Jingdong is only building its own intelligent breeding program. Will Ali Jingdong let go of this huge market in the future? It is conceivable that the future live pig breeding market will inevitably set off a fierce confrontation, and more giants will cross-border into the game to join this "pork battle".
Article source: Songguo Finance, please indicate the copyright