China Hog Farm Closures in Pockets of Resistance

China's 5-year program to clean up rivers by closing pig farms is reaching further into the hinterland where there has been resistance from farmers and tepid support from local officials. Starting in 2013, Chinese officials issued a series of edicts ordering local officials to designate zones where pig farms would be banned, limited, or encouraged, based on potential to pollute rivers, concentration of residential housing, and scenic spots. Environmental officials have reported closing or moving over 100,000 farms, but there have evidently been pockets of resistance.

Polluted canal in Yulin, Guangxi Province shown to demonstrate persisting poll

Officials appear to be making an example of Yulin, a city in Guangxi Province midway between the provincial capital Nanning and Guangzhou. On June 4, the central government's Ministry of Environmental Protection admonished Yulin officials for failing to carry out directives to ban livestock and poultry farms in zones near the Nanliu River and to build waste treatment facilities. Measurements taken in a section of the Nanliu River earlier this year found the level of ammonia nitrogen was up 141 percent from 2016 and the level of phosphorus was up 83 percent. Official news media posted disgusting photos of black water, decomposing pig carcasses, and trash piled along the banks of the river. Yulin City officials have now designated zones containing 10,832 swine farms which will have to be closed or moved.

Pig manure collection tank adjacent to an irrigation channel in Yulin.

A May 2018 Consumer Daily investigation in Qi County of northern Henan Province discovered black ponds for storing swine waste that contained bags with rotting pig carcasses of all sizes. The reporter called the waste a public heath threat and complained that no regulatory officials appeared during the two hours he/she spent at the site.

Bags containing dead pigs were floating in a manure collection pit in Henan Province.

Some other localities are reporting success. Dayu County in central Jiangxi Province reported demolishing and rebuilding two farms with over 1000 pigs each and outfitting them with methane gas digesters after a survey discovered they were not up to pollution control standards.

These open pig sties in Jiangxi Province are reportedly being replaced

Local officials are a target of the propaganda. Meizhou Daily in Guangdong Province emphasizes that Sanhe village instructed local communist party officials regarding the importance of pollution control and the necessity of transitioning from traditional farming to environmentally-sustainable farms. The article highlights a farmer who replaced his pig farm with fruit trees and free-range chickens.

There is some vigorous pushback from farmers. The Meizhou Daily article acknowledges that closing pig farms is difficult because they are an important source of income in the region's villages.

A more vigorous complaint about pig farm closures was posted on a pig industry web site. The author complained that local officials are obsessed with closing pig farms in his district while a nearby chemical plant spews black smoke into the air and unidentifiable yellow material appears in the river when it rains. He attributes the high rate of cancer and loss of teeth by people in their 40s and 50s to pollution from the chemical plant.

This cartoon illustrated the complaint about pig-farm closures. The butcher knife is labeled "livestock-raising ban," and the pig is tethered to a post that says "businessman."

The author said farmers had their fields expropriated with modest compensation which they invested in pig farms. Now the pig farms are being closed with little or no compensation. "What are farmers supposed to do?" the author asks. He accuses officials of going easy on the chemical factory because it is one of the top sources of local tax revenue. He says farmers are not educated enough and lack sophistication to push back against officials taking advantage of them.

The author lashed out at local officials: "You don't care about farmers. You don't care about smokestacks. You only care about stopping pig-farming."