From the perspective of the Dekang Agriculture and Animal Husbandry (02419) model to teach farmers to raise sows, we look at innovative practices that balance efficiency and people's livelihood

“I used to think I could only see the world if I worked part-time, but now I've discovered that if I'm rooted in my hometown, I can break into fame.” When he first returned from the construction site in 2017, “Zhang Gong” was not good at raising pigs. He is now a homecoming entrepreneur who manages a farm with more than 3,000 pigs a year in Hechuan, Chongqing. He is an “model benchmark” on the Dekang Agriculture and Animal Husbandry (02419) cooperation list. According to his recollection at the most difficult time, the meat ratio for each batch of pigs remained high, and the quality ratio was even less than 95%. After being empowered by Dekang's technology and management system, his farm experienced drastic changes. The 2024 production data showed that the ratio of 142 kg commercial pork raised on his farm dropped to 2.39, and the genuine product rate reached 99.13%.

From “Zhang Gong” to “farm boss” who is good at raising pigs, behind this change in life roles, intermediary Dekang Agriculture and Animal Husbandry played a critical role. As the first enterprise in the industry that empowers farmers to raise sows well through technology, Dekang Agriculture and Animal Husbandry has always made “linking agriculture to agriculture” and achieving collaborative chain development the key tasks of the enterprise since its inception. More than 10 years ago, Wang Degen, chairman of Dekang Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, realized that “being able to raise sows” is an important competitive advantage for pig farmers. In particular, after he traveled overseas to observe and learn about Europe's advanced breeding industry chain, Wang Degen became even more determined about this.

However, the traditional self-breeding and “company+farmer” piglet surrogacy models have always been mainstream in the market. At first, even within the company, Wang Degen, who wanted to promote the new “No. 2 Family Farm” model to hand over sows to farmers and teach farmers to raise sows well, met a lot of resistance, and it was even more difficult for farmers to wholeheartedly approve Dekang's innovative practices.

Based on the corporate value of “don't be difficult, don't do it”, Reedkang Agriculture and Animal Husbandry has developed a development path with its own characteristics in the past ten years. According to Wang Degen, for pig farmers to “be able to raise sows,” they first need to cultivate a high-quality group of farmers. To this end, Dekang has set up a special farm service department to continuously export “a complete set of methods for raising sows” to farmers with a team of high-quality professionals as a starting point.

Mr. Li, a specialist in the Hechuan Service Department of Dekang Heguang Regional Company, is a master's degree graduate majoring in veterinary medicine. Laboratory research at the master's level gave him a solid theoretical foundation, and his practice and further education at Dekang's social university really made him an excellent farm keeper. From feed ratio to temperature control, from observing pig herd behavior to equipment maintenance, it was under Mr. Li's fine management that in 2024, there were no abnormalities in household management within its jurisdiction throughout the year, and the average marketing rate of genuine products reached over 96%.

Mr. Li's farm service department is a key department for Dekang Agriculture and Animal Husbandry to reach and serve family farmers well. After years of exploration and accumulation, Dekang Agriculture and Animal Husbandry has now built a complete management model for the scientific standards of family farms, and can provide long-term support covering the entire life cycle of cooperative family farms. Before formal cooperation, Dekang will conduct necessary screening based on farmers' own conditions. After establishing cooperation intentions, farmers will be given family farm enclosure construction, breeding technology training, and corporate culture training. Production can only begin when the assessment meets the requirements. Afterwards, during the cooperation period, Dekang will also provide comprehensive technical guidance and support to farmers, and arrange production management specialists to regularly visit family farms to supervise and guide farmers.

Thanks to Dekang's full technical support and management, countless farmers, like Boss Zhang, who had no previous pig farming experience, can now also grow into unique pig farming standards. It is this ability that makes Dekang a “platform+ecosystem” service enterprise: of course, its empowering scope not only covers newbies starting from scratch, but also deeply serves existing pig farmers with breeding experience. For the latter, Dekang has systematically improved its breeding efficiency and production performance by providing high-quality pig breeding resources, refined data management and professional technical services. The author believes that this path is essentially an asset-light production capacity integration model — Dekang itself does not directly add production capacity on a large scale, but rather modernizes the existing production capacity of traditional farmers through technology and management output, transforming relatively backward productivity into advanced productivity, thus opening up new growth space in the upgrading of the industry structure.

Judging from actual results, farmers' acceptance of the Dekang Farming and Animal Husbandry No. 2 family farm model is steadily increasing. This is because the model can actually help farmers establish more resilient profitability. Through systematic technology and management empowerment, Dekang continued to optimize the production efficiency of cooperative farmers — PSY (number of weaned pigs produced per year) was raised to 27 in the first half of this year, along with better feed conversion rates and disease prevention and control systems, achieving significant efficiency gains and cost reductions. This series of measures not only enables farmers to fully share industrial dividends during the upward period of the market, but also enhances operational resilience with a lower cost bottom line during periods of industry fluctuations, so as to obtain more sustainable and stable profits.

Zhitong Finance believes that the proven effective Dekang Farming and Animal Husbandry No. 2 family farm model is a win-win situation for all parties. For enterprises themselves, the asset-light, strong binding, and efficient characteristics of this model not only help Dekang cross the cycle and stimulate new growth potential to the greatest extent in the future; for farmers, Dekang's idea of “teaching people to fish” and teaching them to raise sows has added a good landing point for migrant workers to return to their hometowns to start businesses and college students to start businesses in rural areas; more specifically, Dekang's “Connect Farming with Farming” innovation model is also expected to have a positive effect on the country's continuous contribution to solving the three agricultural problems and achieving common prosperity as soon as possible.