STAFF REPORTER
Two years after it opened in late 2022, China’s 26-storey pig farm in Ezhou, Hubei Province, is still turning heads as people take in the scale of its vertical livestock farming.
Ezhou, a prefecture-level city in eastern Hubei Province, had a population of 1,079,353 according to the 2020 census—meaning a lot of mouths to feed in a region where pork remains a staple food.
Operated by pork industry giant Yangxiang, which raises over 2.5 million pigs annually. The skyscraper is capable of raising and slaughtering up to 1.2 million pigs annually. Designed for efficiency, the high-rise hog farm uses gravity-fed silos, from the roof top, to deliver over a million pounds of feed daily, while elevators shuttle pigs between floors.
The operation is monitored from a high-tech control centre where feed intake, health metrics, and even waste output are digitally tracked for thousands of pigs.
Roughly 25% of the feed ends up as dry waste, which is converted into methane to help power the building. Built by a cement firm, the structure recycles factory heat for warm pig baths, promoting faster growth.
The animals are divided into groups and transported to their designated floors using elevators, initiating their life cycle within the skyscrapers 800 staff are employed, which means they oversee around 1,500 pigs each. The pig factory has faced criticism from animal welfare advocates.
Nonetheless, the farm continues to stand as an answer to feed China’s population by industrialising pork production amid rising demand and disease concerns.
