Inside a 5,000 cow dairy farm in China

Walking on to the 5,000-cow Jinshan Ranch dairy farm with its rows and rows of cubicle sheds, you would be forgiven for thinking you’re walking on to a dairy farm in California or Texas.

The difference is that this farm is in warm and humid China, situated on the edge of Shanghai, one of the largest cities in the world.

The farm is owned by Bright Dairy, one of the largest dairy processors in China, which is headquartered in the centre of Shanghai.

While Bright is a well-known company and brand within China, it has recently acquired a majority stake in New Zealand dairy company Synlait, bringing it to international attention. It also owns a 50% shareholding in Silver Fern Farms, New Zealand’s largest meat processor.

Bright Foods is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and is owned by subsidiaries of the Shanghai Municipal Council, which is ultimately under the control of the Chinese government.

Unlike in Europe or the US, dairy companies in China are directly involved at every step of the process from growing crops and milking cows right through to processing, marketing and distribution of dairy products and ingredients.

Dairying expansion

When the Jinshan farm was built in 2005 it was one of the flagship farms in the region, but recent expansion of dairying in China means that the farm is now overshadowed by much larger facilities in other provinces, some with up to 25,000 cows per farm.

During my visit, workers were busy putting the finishing touches to a new visitor walkway through the farm.

The air-conditioned corridor with glass walls will run through the farm giving visitors views of the cubicle sheds, milking parlour and feed stations.

Due to its proximity to Shanghai, the company plans to use this facility as an education centre for Chinese consumers on dairy farming. The Shanghai metropolitan area has a population of 29m people. To put that in context, Greater London has a population of nine million people so Shanghai is over three times larger.

Unlike London, green spaces are at a premium in Shanghai and visitors to Jinshan Ranch expecting green, open spaces will be disappointed.

The farm is located about one hour’s drive from Bright Dairy’s HQ in downtown Shanghai, which was my meeting point with Bright employees on a warm morning in September. Together with my interpreter and representatives of Bright’s public relations team we hopped on a company bus to the farm.

Polytunnels and glasshouses

Despite its scale, the farm is very much located in the suburbs. While there are allotment-type holdings growing crops like corn and vegetables, many under polytunnels or glasshouses, there’s definitely a more suburban rather than rural feel to the area.

The farm is located in a complex that looks more like a 1980s industrial estate and the only real giveaway that a dairy farm was nearby was the smell of slurry and the distant purr of a John Deere engine. The biosecurity measures consisted of spending 15 seconds in a mist chamber and disinfecting our hands.

High humidity

With temperatures in the mid-30s, it was uncomfortable being outside in the high humidity. The new walkway means that visitors to the farm don’t actually have to put on a hazmat suit while still seeing everything that’s going on from the comfort of the air-conditioned walkway.

We were introduced to farm manager, Changzhi Chen, and other Bright Dairy employees who between them answered all of my questions during the tour and subsequent discussion. Like everyone else we met in China, the people were warm and friendly. Their opening line is that Bright Dairy has over 60 years of history in milk production and the pride they take in the company and their roles was clear to see.

A scale model of the facility is located in the reception lobby and it shows the sheer scale of the farm. The similarities with a US-style dairy are plain to see. There are rows of cubicle sheds connecting to a central 80-point De Laval rotary parlour like a double ‘H’ shape, with calf sheds and feed yards to the side.

High-yielding Holstein Friesians

The 2005 redevelopment of the site replaced older, traditional dairy buildings and the herd size was multiplied. Cows were brought to the farm from other farms owned by Bright Dairy. The high yielding Holstein Friesian cows are milked and fed three times per day and Chen says the cows produce 11,700 kilos per cow per year.

The milk is delivered to the nearby Bright Dairy plant and the milk is used for the growing fresh milk market, supplying Shanghai’s more affluent consumers with fresh milk, rather than UHT or reconstituted milk powder as is more normal in China.

There are large fans in the cubicle sheds and in the collecting yard to keep cows cool and they are misted with cold water six times per day. Chen says that the high temperatures makes managing mastitis difficult, particularly in the summer months when temperatures get very high. When I visited the farm, the SCC was between 207,000 and 250,000.

The cubicles are bedded with what we would know as green bedding. This is dried and heat-treated animal manure, which is commonly used on farms across Europe. Because the manure is dry and has been heat treated to above 76C, Chen says that bacteria doesn’t grow on it. The bedding is topped up daily.

Each milking takes between five and six hours with the first milking starting at 6am and the last milking ending at 10pm. There are 120 people working on the farm between administration, labourers and management. Chen says that there are challenges getting people to work on farms, and says it is easier to find staff in more remote locations where jobs are not as plentiful as they are next to the big city.

There are two shifts operating per day, with each shift lasting eight to 10 hours. He says that employees work for four days followed by one day off. There is a large dormitory on the farm, but a lot of the staff live locally and so go home when not working.

Despite the scale of the farm and challenges in warm weather, Chen says the cows are very healthy and they certainly look it. They are vaccinated for pneumonia and foot and mouth disease along with clostridial diseases. All of the cows have imported automated heat and health detection collars. The milking parlour is equipped with milk meters and each cow is milk-recorded daily with the figures fed into the herd management software.

Animal welfare credentials are high, with cows in good body condition score. The cubicles are all the flexible plastic type and the milking parlour and collecting yard area is spotlessly clean.

Cows are typically in milk for 400 days before being dried off and typically remain in the herd for three lactations. Approximately 1,000 dairy heifers join the herd each year and these are reared on the farm with average age at first calving 22 months.

Bright Dairy has its own AI stud, using local and imported bulls from the US, Canada and Spain. They use a version of the US genetic index Total Productivity Index (TPI) to rank bulls. On top of this, DNA samples from young bulls are sent to the US for genotyping before they enter the breeding programme in China.

Chen says sexed semen is not used on this farm. He says that it is available but because they have good reproductive performance and can generate enough heifers as is, he doesn’t see the value in it. Embryo transfer is carried out on some of the best cows, but in the main its conventional Holstein semen that’s being used.

Male calves that are not good enough for breeding are sold off the farm at about two weeks of age. He says that prices for calves have fallen, with the calves making around €50 per head. The heifer calves are kept and reared to replacement stage on the farm. Beef bulls are not widely used.

In terms of herd management, cows are grouped according to age and stage of lactation, with each group consisting of 190 cows. The type of feed offered to each group will vary, depending on stage of lactation, with all animals on a total mixed ration (TMR) with no in-parlour feeding. Animal welfare credentials are high, with cows in good body condition score. The cubicles are all the flexible plastic type and the milking parlour and collecting yard area is spotlessly clean. Cows are fed their TMR three times a day to coincide with milkings. When cows are at the parlour the central passage is cleaned using a sort of vacuum tanker to scrape and suck up the manure.

Feed sources

With little farmland near the dairy enterprise, Chen explained that all the feed is purchased in, much of it imported. The nearest feed source is grown 200km away and this is maize silage, or corn grass as they call it.

The rest of the forage comes from North America, Australia or Spain and this is primarily alfalfa and cereal grasses like sorghum. There is a dedicated unit within Bright Dairy responsible for sourcing feed and feed quality control on all the Bright Dairy farms.

The typical ration for the milking cows is 22kg DM of forage including maize, cereal grass and alfalfa. This makes up about 50% of the overall diet with the rest made up of 14kg of concentrate and 4kg of other feeds such as brewers grains, beet pulp and minerals and vitamins. The typical concentrate diet consists of ground corn, rolled cereals and pulses such as beans and vegetable and corn seeds.

Strict criteria

Chen says there is a strict set of criteria used when purchasing feed to ensure it meets quality standards. There are seven dairy farms in the area that are not owned by Bright, but they are supplying milk to Bright Dairy. The feed being used on these privately owned farms is also supplied by Bright to ensure high quality milk is produced.

For an Irish dairy farmer its difficult to get your head around importing forage from half way around the world to feed dairy cows, but this is what is happening at large scale in China.

The country accounts for about 20% of the world’s population and yet just has 10% of the world’s arable area, so food security is a constant topic of concern for the Chinese government.

As recently as last June, new laws were introduced mandating each local authority to come up with a plan to be self sufficient in grains and limit reliance on imports for human consumption. Rice is by far the largest crop grown in China, with the south-east of the country providing the best climate and soil type for rice production, getting three harvests per year in many places.

Decline of rice growing

The further north one goes the lower the number of rice harvests per year to the point where rice is no longer grown and instead wheat and other cereals are the main crops, due to changes in soil and climate.

Some of the new dairy farms being built by Bright Dairy are in the traditional rice-growing areas and I was told that in one particular complex of three farms with tens of thousands of cows there is 7,000ha of land, currently used for rice, being converted to grow animal feed for the cows. The Bright Dairy representatives say that the plan is to grow maize silage and when this is harvested they can grow a crop of wheat and harvest that in the same year.

Manure from the dairy farms will also be used to fertilise this land. Which brings us to the question of what happens to the manure on the farm I visited? Chen says there is a treatment plant on the farm with the treated manure going into the public sewer system. What level of treatment takes place on farm and what happens to the treated manure when it enters the public sewers is unknown.

With so much feed imported and with no land to spread the manure on, dealing with it is both a problem and an opportunity for Chinese dairy farms. The opportunity is referenced by Chen when he discusses the farms’ plans to reduce the carbon footprint of the milk they produce.

Anaerobic digestion plants

He says that anaerobic digestion plants have been built alongside most of the recently-built farms in the other provinces and that plans are in place to build an AD plant on the farm we visited. This would reduce the carbon footprint of the milk produced and the resultant energy from the manure could be used for biogas or electricity generation.

There are also plans to install solar panels on the shed roofs and to convert the tractors from diesel engine to electric. Like their counterparts in the west, Chinese dairy farmers have a roadmap to reduce their carbon footprint, but when that roadmap is enacted will depend on regulations.

The regulations will become more apparent in 2025 with the publication of China’s 14th five-year plan, something that was referenced more than once during my visit to the farm. These five-year plans are developed by the ruling Communist Party and the top-down approach to government means that they will actually make progress on reducing agriculture’s carbon footprint quite quickly if they put their mind to it.

Milk price and profitability

In terms of milk price and profitability, Chen says the farm is currently operating at break-even and is going through a cost reduction programme. He says that each region has different milk pricing mechanisms, but in the Shanghai district the milk price is determined by the average costs of production in the region plus a margin. He adds that this is reviewed every six months and a new price is negotiated.

In general, dairy farmers in China are unhappy with the current price as there is an over-supply of milk on the market. Imported milk sells at a cheaper price than domestic milk as production costs in China are high due to so much of the feed being imported.

The Chinese dairy sector has undergone rapid expansion, increasing milk supply by 40% since 2018. Imports have reduced but the economic downturn has also reduced consumer demand for dairy. However, growth in domestic production has continued as the country attempts to be more self-sufficient in food. But, as we have seen, while the cows might be milked in China, there is still a high reliance on imported feedstuffs.