Feeding 1 in 6. Vertical pork (episode 2)

Episode summary

Today China produces roughly half the world's pork. Getting there required swine genetics from multiple continents, feed from Brazil, and a disease outbreak that wiped out hundreds of millions of animals. This episode asks how they did it, and what that cost - to the household pig, to the smallholder farmer, and to ecosystems thousands of kilometers away.

[ Transcript available ]

About the guests

Ron Lane

Ron Lane is a Canadian agricultural consultant who has spent 26 years working inside China's pig industry, advising on swine breeding and genetics, feed, equipment, and farm management.

Li Zhang

Li Zhang is an assistant professor at Amherst College whose work sits at the intersection of development sociology, environmental justice, and public health in rural China. Her book The Origins of COVID-19: China and Global Capitalism (Stanford University Press, 2021) traces how the entanglement of Chinese authoritarianism and global capitalism increases the risk of diseases spilling over from animals to humans. She has a forthcoming book tentatively titled: Defying Slow Death: Unsafe Food, Governance, and Quiet Social Movements in China.

Gustavo Oliveira

Gustavo Oliveira is an Assistant Professor of Geography at Clark University whose work sits at the intersection of political ecology, socio-environmental justice, and the geopolitics of natural resources. He has spent more than 15 years researching the Brazil-China relationship, with a particular focus on how Chinese investment in agribusiness and infrastructure is reshaping land use, deforestation, and rural livelihoods across the Cerrado and Amazon. His research connects the daily realities of farmers and ecosystems on the ground to the trading companies, state policies, and global capital flows that determine their fate.