How to raise pigs intelligently with RFID

Recently, Huawei launched the "Huawei Smart Pig Raising Solution". Their speech at the 2020 Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Digital Intelligence Ecological Development Forum said that the so-called "smart pig raising" is nothing more than outputting ICT technology to pig farms, including sensors, The focus of the Internet of Things technology and the artificial intelligence algorithm behind it lies in the upgrading of pig farm facilities.

Huawei's "smart pig raising" project is in the ascendant, and the corresponding chain reaction has begun to ferment.

Jinxinnong took the opportunity to release the signal that pig farming is moving towards intelligentization, and the stock price, which has been depressed for many days, immediately began to rise; Tang Renshen publicly stated that the smart pig farm management platform is being promoted in an orderly manner, and the company will comprehensively promote intelligent pig farming; Zhengbang Technology and New I hope that I will continue to express to the outside world that intelligent and automated pig raising will be the general trend...

From Internet giants to real estate developers, they began to join the pig raising industry one after another. Including the early NetEase, newly joined Internet giants such as Alibaba and JD.com, as well as real estate companies such as Vanke, Country Garden, Wanda and Evergrande. According to the data from the professional version of Tianyancha, there are currently more than 1,400 enterprises in my country whose business scope includes both "pig" and "real estate", and which have the dual roles of "real estate" and "pig raising", most of which are strong.

2020 will usher in rapid growth again. As of December 7, the number of new pig farming-related enterprises in my country has reached nearly 157,000, an increase of 88% year-on-year.

Can RFID smart pig farming become the mainstream method in the future?

At the JDD-2018 JD Digital Technology Global Explorer Conference, Cao Peng, vice president of JD Digital Technology and general manager of the technology research and development department, said: "One-half of the world's pigs are raised in China, but the efficiency of China's pig industry is not high enough. Jia, the cost of raising one pig is equivalent to raising two pigs in the United States."

In other words, China raises half of the pigs, but basically consumes three-quarters of the global cost of raising pigs. How to save costs and make pig raising more scientific and rational has become a rather thorny issue for current pig raising enterprises.

As early as 2009, Netease used mature RFID identification technology to monitor pigs' physical condition and food intake in real time, analyze and determine the location, behavior and status of pigs, and achieve quality and taste through 300-day refined feeding. The increase, and the price has also been further soared.

JD Digits also released a smart breeding solution for agriculture and animal husbandry with three modules of "Shennong Brain + Shennong Internet of Things Equipment + Shennong System" to solve the problems encountered in the pig farming industry chain.

The origin of Ali, JD.com and “pig raising” can even be attributed to the product of To-B. In the context of the transformation of the Internet to To-B, whether it is Alibaba Cloud's AI pig farming or JD Digits' "pig face recognition", they are essentially transforming the traditional farming model with new technologies.

How to raise RFID smart pigs?

By wearing RFID electronic tags for pigs, and according to the unique ID code of RFID electronic tags, one-to-one information editing with pigs (including pig breeds, weight, vaccine epidemic prevention, etc.); , pig feeding trough, pig weighing platform, when the pig enters the recognition range of the UHF RFID Reader, or when the breeder holds the RFID handheld terminal close to the pig, the RFID handheld will automatically identify the relevant information of the pig (such as Body weight, eating, drinking water, vaccines, sickness and feeding conditions, etc.), the collected information will be automatically uploaded to the data center, and the management personnel can check the status of the pigs through the operating system.

RFID Animal Ear Tags

What functions does RFID intelligent pig farming realize?

1. Realize accurate feeding and accurately record the daily feed intake of pigs.

2. Accurately measure and record the feed intake of growing and finishing pigs.

3. Accurately monitor body weight, train and improve feed intake of growing and finishing pigs by reasonably increasing daily feeding amount, so as to improve pig production performance.

4. By comparing the difference between the actual feed intake and the recommended daily feed intake of each pig group provided by the system, the production status and feed quality of the pig farms can be evaluated.

5. The output daily, weekly, monthly and annual feed consumption of each pig herd can provide reliable data information for the pig farm to understand and monitor the production status of the pig herd in time and adjust the corresponding management measures.

6. Breeding companies and pig farms can monitor the production performance of their breeds and the operation of each production plant.

Why are major technology companies starting to raise pigs one after another?

The answer is inseparable from the high profits of "pig farming". According to the 2020 annual performance forecast released by Muyuan, the net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies is about 27 billion yuan, an increase of 341.58% over the same period last year. The average profit of a pig is 1,500 yuan, which is equivalent to the profit of two bottles of Kweichow Moutai.

Just attribute the reason to the "huge profits" of pig farming, which may not be enough to attract the attention of Huawei. After all, there will be a pig cycle every three or four years in the pig industry: rising pork prices--expansion of pig-raising industry- - Overcapacity of hogs - Pork prices fall - Big pig farmers switch jobs - Hog supply declines - Pig prices rise again. If the pig cycle is misjudged, even the top players in the industry may be forced out.

From the standpoint of technology manufacturers, "smart pig raising" may not be an easy path, but it is a blue ocean market that cannot be missed. A simple economic account: by the end of 2020, the number of live pigs in China will be 407 million, and the cost of pig houses will be around 1,000 yuan per head, which can be said to be a veritable 100 billion-level market.

What's more, judging from the potential market trend, there is no lack of possibility of breaking the situation in the short term.

On the one hand, hog futures have been listed on DCE in early 2021. With reference to the centralization process of the scale of hog breeding in the United States, hog futures have played an indispensable role. Large-scale breeding enterprises can avoid the risk of market price fluctuations through hog futures, and then continue to force small and medium retail investors to withdraw from the market. At least in the more than 20 years since hog futures were launched in the United States, the proportion of the stock of extra-large hog farms with more than 5,000 heads has increased from 20% to 74%. There is no possibility in China that relying on hog futures to accelerate the process of centralization.

On the other hand, large-scale production will ensure a stable market supply to a large extent, and then stabilize the "pig cycle", forcing the focus of competition in the pig industry to shift to production costs and production efficiency. The imagination of "smart pig farming" lies in: liberating people through technologies such as the Internet of Things, big data, artificial intelligence, and RFID, which not only reduces uncertain risks such as epidemics, but also accelerates the transformation of pig farms to standardization and unmanned pig farms. transition. In the context of the centralization process of the domestic pig industry, "smart pig raising" is destined to be a must-choice topic for Muyuan.