GARZE,June 20 (Kangba TV)--In the mountains as high as over 4,000m in altitude, 271 Tibetan pigs are foraging here and there. Before night falls, at the invitation of whistles, these long-nosed, long-haired animals jump high, swiftly gather together, and follow their owner Dampa to go home.
Dampa, a 28-year-old Tibetan, comes from Chatreng County, Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province. With a strong unwillingness to live in poverty as his elder generations, he left for Chengdu all alone 8 years ago. In Chengdu, he did several jobs: cleaner, dishwasher, lobby boy and restaurant waiter. Later, he operated a bar with business partners.
His hometown is a small village where there are only 13 households. This January marked the end of Dampa’s career in Chengdu. He returned to his hometown with his savings, resolving to do breeding business. He had a quite simple hope to make villagers become well-off by means of scientific and ecological breeding.
According to this junior high school graduate, he has conceived this idea for a long time: to bring hometown pork to cities and make local villagers become well-off through pig-raising.
Aware of the indispensable role of knowledge in the realization of his dreams, Dampa took advantage of spare time to learn pig-raising skills by reading books and surfing the internet. This February, he registered his company Chatreng Sonam Tibetan Pig Ecological Agriculture Co., Ltd.
The company has built two breeding bases with an investment of RMB 800,000 and supplied 13 households with 169 pigs without charge. Dampa promised that he would provide technical support to raisers and all grown-up pigs would be purchased and resold by the company. “After the selling, raisers will get piglets of the same number as their sold pigs. We try to make every raiser household have more than 10 pigs,” said Dampa.
Unlike other pigs, Tibetan pigs are raised in the wild. Even the pigsty is in the open air. For that reason, Dampa has employed 7 villagers as feeders and rent 1.27 hectares of land to cultivate crops like highland barley and barley to feed pigs.
According to Nyasog Ladrang, the 13 pigs are expected to be sold in this year, bringing an estimated income of more than RMB 30,000. “I can earn RMB 1,500 every month by feeding pigs and managing crops at the base. I can spend much free time doing the housework. It’s far better than outside employment.” Nyasog Ladrang’s words indeed resonate with many other villagers.
As a lean meat type, Tibetan pigs are of delicate, delicious and nutritious meat. The market prospect is very broad. Apart from main channels of agents and online stores, Dampa also strives to create channels of urban supermarkets and customization services, bringing Tibetan pork to more citizens.
“Our Tibetan pigs all come from authentic areas. This year, we won’t sell pigs at our base. We plan to use them as breeding pigs to expand the feeding scale. We try to realize an annual yield of 1,000 pigs in three years,” said Dampa. He hopes to build the largest breeding base of Tibetan pigs in Tibetan-inhabited regions, popularize scientific breeding technologies, and enrich villagers through pig-raising.
