China Livestock Farm Closures Proceed

213,000 livestock farm closures during the first half of 2017 were featured in a news conference held by China's Ministry of Environmental Protection last month that reported progress on a “Water Pollution Prevention Action Plan.”

Local authorities across China have been ordered to designate zones where livestock farms are banned, where they are limited, and zones suitable for livestock farms. Commercial-scale farms must close or move out of the zones where they are banned--near bodies of water, drinking water sources, residential communities, and scenic areas. If they want to continue operating, farms must invest in facilities to collect animal waste, re-use waste water, and utilize manure for biogas and organic fertilizer.

According to a report on the news conference by the China Livestock Farming Alliance, 49,000 livestock-farming-ban zones covering 636,000 square km have been designated nationwide. So far this year 213,000 livestock and poultry farms have been closed or moved from livestock-ban zones, and the rest are due to be closed or moved by the end of 2017. Fourteen provinces (Shanxi, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Hunan, Guangxi, Hainan, Tibet, Guizhou, Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Xinjiang) have not completed their delineation of livestock-ban zones and progress is slow on closing and moving farms.

Livestock companies such as Wen’s Group, New Hope Liuhe now have to devote 20%-30% of spending on new farm construction to environmental protection. The bigger the company the more attention they have to give to environmental protection. Sichuan Province’s environmental protection bureau published a list of the province’s key enterprises for monitoring that included livestock companies like Wen's, West Hope, Tian Zhao Group, and Tieqi Lishi Group.

With the deadline for completing the farm closures five months away, local governments are under greater scrutiny and more likely to use more aggressive means to close or move farms.

Some localities--primarily in Zhejiang and Fujian Provinces--have gone to the extreme of declaring pig-free villages (无猪村) and towns. In Pingchuan Town, in a mountainous area of western Fujian, the county government declared last year that all of the town's villages would be pig-free. After eight months of hard work by village cadres, 175 pig farms with 20,000 pigs in five villages have been closed. Now the "water is clean, the land is green," and one villager declared, "It's much better now, and we no longer have that horrible smell!" Elsewhere in Fujian, in pig-free Xingang Town the communist party secretary has given up raising pigs and is now planting fruit trees on land rented from neighbors. He began raising pigs 20 years ago when the government urged villages to take up pig-farming as a sign of advanced economic development.

The top priorities for dealing with the livestock pollution problem was the southeastern river systems, the Yangtze River basin, and large cities Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai. Now attention is turning to a new set of regions. On July 31, an environmental inspection team was posted in Shandong Province, a major livestock-producing province. Local governments there have been issuing plans for designating livestock-ban zones and closure or removal of farms.

A propaganda piece on a Shandong TV station shows pigs and ducks being hauled away and farms being dismantled. A lady named Zou closed her pig farm after the party secretary paid multiple visits. The villagers are willing to close their farms once they realize the significance of the pollution problem, the news report said. Teams are guiding the farmers to switch to other businesses like growing mushrooms, ginger, and garlic.

Another news item reports that local governments in Shandong are under pressure to meet the environmental requirements, but warns farmers not to panic. According to this item, the directive only applies to pig farms selling 500 or more head or specialized households selling 50-500 head. Local officials cannot designate pig-free zones or declare "pig-free villages" without a solid basis for doing so, the news item said. The farm closures also cannot disrupt the supply of meat, eggs, and poultry.