牧食记AgriPost.CN English News How Brazil’s Agriness System Revolutionized China’s Pork Production

How Brazil’s Agriness System Revolutionized China’s Pork Production

Brazil boasts the lowest pork production costs among 17 major pig-producing countries, significantly benefiting from low raw material and labor costs and improved production efficiency. This has elevated Brazil to the third-largest pork exporter globally, with China as its main market. Cargill Animal Nutrition introduced the Agriness real-time management system from Brazil to China, promising to boost China’s pig farming efficiency.

Agriness has helped Brazil and Argentina significantly increase their PSY (piglets weaned per sow per year) over the past 20 years. Cargill’s approach in China combines AI with expert teams to interpret data and implement decisions, enhancing productivity and management in local pig farms. Agriness is now integrated with WeChat, making it easily accessible to Chinese users. The system’s success in Brazil and its potential in China underline its global significance.

Unveiling Brazil’s Cost Advantage

According to a comparative study conducted by the International Pig Production Expert Network (InterPig) at the end of last year, Brazil has the lowest production costs among the 17 major pig-producing countries in Europe, North America, and South America. The cost per kilogram of pork in its main producing states was only USD 1.13 (about CNY 8.15), followed by the United States at USD 1.42/kg and Denmark at USD 1.49/kg.

Brazil’s leading cost advantage is attributed not only to lower raw material and labor costs but also to its enhanced production efficiency. This cost advantage has propelled Brazil to become the world’s third-largest pork exporter, with its largest export market being China, linking these two major pig-producing nations across the globe.

Strategic Insights from Cargill

Yi Li, Strategic Marketing and Technical Director for North Asia at Cargill Animal Nutrition, believes that Brazil should be a more optimal benchmark for China than the often-referenced North American and European swine powerhouses. Both Brazil and China are developing countries with similar supply structures across small, medium, and large pig farms, and they share comparable genetic and nutritional philosophies and industry changes over the past two decades.

Acknowledging these similarities, Cargill Animal Nutrition introduced the Agriness real-time swine farm management and analysis system from Brazil to the Chinese market about two years ago. This management software, with over 20 years of development, currently holds over 96% of the market share in Brazil and about 40% in South America. To some extent, it is the world’s largest third-party digital swine farm service platform.

“Through localized application of Agriness, we promise to help Chinese customers achieve PSY+1 per year and aim to support the industry in creating multiple PSY 30+ large-scale farms, contributing to China’s transition from a major swine-producing country to a swine-producing powerhouse!” Yi Li stated.

The Necessity of Digital Management

Yi Li explained that Brazil’s PSY (piglets weaned per sow per year) performance was not always impressive. Twenty years ago, Brazil’s PSY was close to China’s current average level of about 21. However, over the past 20 years, Brazil’s PSY has steadily increased, with Agriness data showing a rise from 24.82 in 2008 to 30.05 in 2023. In comparison, China’s average PSY has fluctuated between 18 and 21 during the same period.

Similarly, Argentina, another South American country that deployed Agriness, saw its PSY rise from 24.90 in 2014 to 28.49 in 2023, mirroring Brazil’s growth and potentially surpassing it. Yi Li emphasized that the precision of these PSY figures, accurate to two decimal places, is due to Agriness’s automated audit of its database, ensuring objective, comprehensive, and consistent data.

In 2023, the average PSY of Agriness-audited farms in China was 24.32, up about 1.2 from the previous year. Currently, Agriness’s platform includes data on over 2 million Chinese pigs, comprising over 200,000 sows and 1.7 million grow-finish pigs.

Comparing the production indicators of different scale sow farms in China, Yi Li found that farms with 200-300 sows performed relatively poorly. He attributed this to the reluctance of these mid-scale farmers to adopt digital management, retaining traditional production and operational methods. However, their management requirements are higher than those of smaller farms, resulting in less ideal outcomes.

Farms with over 300 sows began to value data management. “Even initially using simple Excel spreadsheets demonstrates the value of digital management,” Yi Li noted, with the most productive group being medium-scale family farms with 500-1000 sows, exemplifying the rationale behind advocating for moderate scale farming in the industry.

“We often talk about long-termism and new productivity. In the swine industry, the primary new productivity must be philosophy and management,” Yi Li emphasized. “Behind Agriness’s data and algorithms, the crucial element is the corresponding services and management.”

The Making of Agriness

In 2000, Everton Gubert, a computer science graduate, decided to apply his university knowledge to help Brazilian pig farmers, including his family. He spent over three months living in a pig farm, understanding its operations firsthand. Gubert, now the global CEO of Agriness, has been appointed a senior advisor to the government for his contributions to the Brazilian swine industry.

“The reason for immersing myself in pig farms as a programmer was the difficulty of remote programming due to a lack of understanding of actual farm operations. We needed to plan our product and program calculations based on on-site operations,” Gubert explained. “It was the practical experience and professional knowledge of each farm that helped us gradually build this digital service system.”

Initially, there was little concept of digitalization in the swine industry, and many farmers did not even know what a computer was or how to buy one. Gubert’s team assisted clients in purchasing computers, a service that initiated Agriness’s “real person for real service” approach.

With computers installed and programs written, some farms still struggled with operations. “We then questioned the real underlying issue and realized it was the capability and methods of management,” Gubert recalled. They developed indicator analysis software to understand the impact of these indicators on production improvement. Between 2001 and 2006, Agriness expanded its covered production indicators from a few to over 200.

A new challenge arose: how to ensure all clients understood these 200+ indicators and knew where to start to achieve cost reduction and efficiency gains. Agriness added farm performance diagnosis functions, introducing composite indicators like NPD (non-productive days) and PSY.

“Often, adjusting a single indicator can lead to the decline of another, which may not be crucial for current production performance. Thus, we need to focus more on composite indicators,” Gubert explained.

As early as 2006, the Agriness team identified NPD as a critical composite indicator affecting farm performance and profitability differences. This indicator still causes significant performance disparities between China and Brazil. In 2023, Agriness recorded an average NPD of 25.78 days for Chinese farms compared to Brazil’s 14.45 days, with the top 10 farms in China and Brazil averaging 14.87 days and 6.46 days, respectively.

Sharing the production experience behind excellent data to benefit more farms became Gubert’s next focus. Starting in 2007, his team initiated the Best Farms selection and award program in Brazil and other Agriness-deployed countries. The recent Future Pig Farm Summit in China is the latest example of this initiative.

“Our awards, known for high data quality with stringent online review and offline real-person audits, have gained high recognition from the industry, and winners feel very proud and happy,” Gubert said.

At the first China Future Pig Farm Summit, Chongqing Jiawosi Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd., with 2,436 sows in production, won the Golden Pig Award with a PSY of 32.47.

However, one farm does not make a spring. Similar to the current situation in China, Brazil had significant performance disparities among pig farms in 2007. Narrowing this gap became a heavy responsibility for Gubert and his team. From that year onwards, Agriness began providing management “Golden Triangle” (knowledge, methods, leadership) training, focusing on talent and management in production issues.

“These trainings start from the premise that only people with the ability to analyze information can make the right decisions and implement these decisions through processes and methods in actual production,” Gubert noted. The Golden Triangle of management also forms part of the core knowledge source for the P+ Academy, launched in China earlier this year.

In 2013, combining over a decade of development and application experience, the Agriness team published specialized training books and formally transformed from a software company into a service company. “We work with clients daily, ensuring skills and decisions are implemented on farms through real-person service and using the simplest tools to convey the most complex information, so all farm employees understand why and how to do things and what results they achieve.”

Gubert stated that while Brazil represents experience and the past, after evaluating the Chinese market and collaborating with the Cargill team, he saw the enthusiasm and flexibility of Chinese pig farmers and the market’s vast potential. “Actually, China represents the future of the global swine industry,” he said.

Agriness is now applied in 24 major pig-producing countries globally. Gubert hopes to see a PSY growth curve similar to Brazil’s in China soon. He told AgriPost that the Chinese team’s interim goal is to increase the serviced sow count from the current 200,000 to over 1 million as soon as possible.

Achieving Localization in China

Yi Li explained that although Agriness has a long history, it is still a new intelligent system for the Chinese market. Therefore, the Cargill team considered various factors when deploying it two years ago, ensuring it fits the local users’ application habits and fully utilizes its potential as a management platform.

“Even though the system’s AI can automatically analyze and output results, users’ understanding of the results varies,” Yi Li said. Cargill China’s approach is a human-machine combination model: a team of about 10 experts helps interpret the system’s management suggestions, a service team of about 80 people ensures the implementation of decisions, and a business team of about 800 people promptly tracks service outcomes.

Moreover, Agriness is fully integrated with WeChat mini-programs, allowing users to use it directly without purchasing or installing software and hardware.

Cargill has also partnered with China Agricultural University to create the P+ Academy, focusing on performance improvement, profitability enhancement, and personnel empowerment. By introducing swine farm management training programs, the industry aims to improve talent quality comprehensively. “If choices are more important than efforts, details determine success or failure, and leadership determines a company’s success height,” Yi Li noted.

Regarding the leadership qualities urgently needed by swine industry managers, Hongfei Zheng, President of Cargill Animal Nutrition North Asia, highlighted three: a stable mindset, strong team execution, and continuous learning ability.

Zheng observed that compared to other livestock types also experiencing losses, swine industry “bosses” tend to overreact to industry cycles. She advised maintaining a calm attitude, focusing on raising pigs well rather than seeking quick profits from short-term market rebounds.

In terms of business management, data systems or external services ultimately require a team with strong execution capabilities. “We see many swine enterprise bosses knowing the problem, receiving solutions, understanding methods, but unable to execute decisions, which is the most critical issue,” Zheng emphasized. The swine industry still needs to strengthen its execution capability.

Simultaneously, she pointed out that swine management concepts and technologies are continually evolving globally, requiring swine industry managers to maintain an open mindset and continuously learn new concepts and technologies.

AgriPost.CN – Your Second Brain in China’s Agri-food Industry, Empowering Global Collaborations in the Animal Protein Sector.

牧食记AgriPost.CN 专注中国农牧食品产业原创报道与决策参考;本站原创内容,未经书面许可,谢绝转载,违者追究法律责任。授权联络 editor@agripost.cn

定位为农牧食品企业的第二大脑的“牧食记”由多位具有媒体、市场、咨询等从业背景的中国农业大学校友于2018年底联合创办,通过资源整合、协同共生,为国内外猪禽牛(肉蛋奶)全产业链的利益相关方提供立足于中国市场的公关传播、品牌营销和决策咨询服务。https://www.agripost.cn/2024/07/26/how-brazils-agriness-system-revolutionized-chinas-pork-production/
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