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Entry 444Filed under Breeding

105,000 Sows Stacked Six Stories High: Inside China’s Planned Mega-Farm

In 2021, Successful Farming reported plans for a 21-building, six-story pig complex designed for 105,000 sow places. Its projected output is not verified current production.
3-minute read By Animalso Team
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The headline describes a specific pig complex that Successful Farming reported as under construction in China in April 2021: 21 six-story buildings designed to hold 105,000 sows in total. The plan arranged breeding, nursery and finishing operations on different floors, with elevators moving pigs between them. The report’s annual production figures were projections, not confirmation of what the complex produces today.

What “105,000 sows” meant

The proposed complex belonged to Muyuan Meat and Food Industry. In Betsy Freese’s April 28, 2021 report for Successful Farming, swine consultant Michael Ellermann described 21 buildings, each planned for 5,000 sows—2,500 on either side. The 105,000 figure referred to sow places across the complex, not the total number of pigs at every stage of production.

The buildings were designed for farrow-to-finish production: breeding animals, piglets and pigs raised for slaughter would be housed within one integrated operation rather than at separate sites.

How the six-story layout was supposed to work

According to the 2021 report, the floors divided the production stages vertically:

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  • Top two floors: sows and gilts.
  • Fourth floor: the nursery.
  • First three floors: finishers, or pigs being raised to market weight.

Elevators were intended to move pigs between levels. The reported sequence was for piglets to leave farrowing rooms for the nursery, then move down to the finisher floors after seven weeks. Production was planned on an all-in/all-out basis by floor, meaning groups would move through a production stage together rather than being continuously mixed with incoming animals.

More than a tall pig barn

The plan was an integrated complex, not just a stack of animal-housing floors. Successful Farming described feed processing, pig production, slaughter, meat and food processing, and tourism as parts of the development. It also reported plans for automated carts to carry finishers to the slaughterhouse and a feed mill designed for 720,000 tons of feed per year.

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The same report described filtered air entering and leaving the farm, worker dormitories and food restrictions as elements of its biosecurity arrangements. These details reflect what the trade publication reported in 2021; they do not independently establish how the systems performed or what outcomes they achieved.

What the production numbers do—and do not—show

Successful Farming reported that the completed operation was expected to produce 2.1 million pigs per year and that slaughter and processing capacity was also planned at 2.1 million annually. It reported 5,000 jobs as a projected figure. These were plans and expectations in the 2021 account, not verified current output, employment or proof that the entire complex was completed.

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Later figures put Muyuan Foods’ broader business in context but cannot verify this particular facility. Its 2022 annual-report summary, published April 28, 2023, reported 61.201 million pigs sold company-wide. Its 2023 annual-report summary, published April 27, 2024, reported 63.816 million pigs sold company-wide. Neither figure is a count for the complex described in the 2021 article.

Why build vertically?

The design concentrated breeding, nursery and finishing stages within a single site and used multiple floors instead of spreading all housing across a conventional low-rise footprint. That is the basic logic behind the headline’s “stacked” description. But the report does not provide comparative land-use, cost, animal-health or environmental data, so it cannot establish that this arrangement outperformed other farm designs.

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Ellermann’s answer in the report to why a farm on this scale was being built was: “Just to show you can.” The same article mentioned farms in mountainous parts of China that were reportedly nine or eleven floors high, but named no examples or comparative data. That remark should not be read as a verified ranking of Chinese pig farms.

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What is known about the project today

The facility-specific account available here is the 2021 report, which described the complex as under construction. Muyuan’s later company-wide sales figures do not say whether this project was completed or whether it reached the forecast 2.1 million pigs per year. Without more recent facility-specific evidence, its present status and output remain unconfirmed.

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