A masterclass for pig producers in South Korea

09-02 | Market trends/analysis | Article

September 2021: The first group of Korean meister pig farmers have completed the master class by Wageningen University and Research.

As a country, South Korea is very advanced indeed in many aspects. In terms of pig production, however, the Asian country could use a little bit of help, Robert Hoste found out, senior pig production economist at Wageningen University & Research. He set up a masterclass for pig producers, with a fourth round starting in spring 2024. A short introduction to cross-continental knowledge transfer.

Curiosity – that is what drove Korean pig producers Song Il-hwan and Kim Mun-jo (both aged 57) to participate in a masterclass programme offered by Wageningen University & Research (WUR) on location in South Korea. The Dutch university started to offer these masterclasses in an attempt to help Korea’s pig industry move ahead a few steps.

Within the institute from the Netherlands, Robert Hoste has been a driving force in increasing the cooperation. He is senior pig production economist at the WUR and has been interested in South Korea’s pig industry for a decade now. During a multi-year cooperation project between South Korea and the WUR, he analysed the country’s pig industry and became more connected to the Asian country, which has a pig industry consisting of 6,000 producers, both integrators as well as independent producers. He says, “South Korea as a country is being advanced in many ways, and that includes a professional feed and meat processing industry. Yet, its pig industry, with on average 18 finishers per sow per year, could do with a little help.”

Masterclass series

To that end, in cooperation with Prof. Chang-gil Kim of Seoul National University, Wageningen UR coordinated the set-up of a masterclass series, consisting of 10 sessions focusing on topics such as pig nutrition, economics, management and animal welfare. The aim of these sessions was to help Korea’s producers to progress, but also to invite them to take a look at Dutch farms via real-time online farm visits.

The first group of seven producers graduated in September 2021. They were approached after first having completed a Korean meister programme, which is an extensive educational programme that has been offered by the local authorities since 2009. In this way, there was a logic whom to approach first for courses with knowledge from overseas. Ever since, WUR has been giving various rounds of new masterclass courses for Korea’s pig farmers. A third round finished in December 2023, with the next round starting in March 2024. So far, a total of 39 producers managed to attend the three courses.

Dr Song Il-hwan and Kim Munj-jo were both in the first group of seven producers that completed the programme. In the boxes below, they explain what kind of farm they are running and how the master classes have benefited them.

Dr Song Il-hwan

Planning 10 or 20 years ahead

Dr Song Il-hwan (age 57) joined in the first masterclass group given by Wageningen UR. Together with his wife and student son, he runs a 750-sow farrow-to-finish farm with a total capacity of 12,000 head. His farm is located near the city of Gongju, in South Chungcheong Province, in the west of the country.
His farm is unique for Korea in the sense that, for the past 15 years, he has been providing probiotic-enriched yoghurt diets to his pigs by purchasing grade 2 and 3 milk from a dairy farm 55 km away. The main reason for this is to improve gut health, giving probiotic-rich yoghurt feed to his pigs from about 10 days after birth until 70 days post-weaning.
He also cares about the environment around his farm. He is actively trying to reduce odour emissions, ferments liquid manure to use as fertiliser, and the solar panels on the roof of his farm help reduce energy requirements. Dr Song says, “Together with the yoghurt initiative, I hope all these things help to change the perception of the people, and show them that swine farming is not that harmful to the environment.”
Dr Song was a bit hesitant initially whether he should join the WUR masterclasses or not, because he was in his mid-fifties. The fact that the Netherlands is acknowledged as having an advanced swine industry did the trick for him. “I could discuss with experts from this country and exchange ideas. In total, I have convinced 13 other swine farmers to also take this course. In that way, they can share their experiences with other farmers in Korea, as well.”
“With every session there was plenty of homework involved. We constantly were asked to make 10- or 20-year plans, based on what we had been discussing in the studies.” As important issues he mentions aspects like the environment, society and government. For all to co-exist efficiently, transparency is very important, he says. As his farm is located close to a community, the aspect of living together peacefully matters to him.
In terms of practical take-aways, he points to two points in particular. “The first one is applying biosecurity. Even though we all take showers and change clothes before entering a farm, and even though we all follow the biosecurity regulations, the Dutch farmers had less cross-contamination inside the farm. We will have to follow the Dutch farmers more in the future.
“The other thing is on how to achieve carbon neutrality. The Korean ministry would like to reduce farm size to reduce carbon emissions. This will help farmers to deal with the pressure.”

Kim Mun-jo

Better ways of communicating with foreign workers

Animal welfare is top of mind for producer Kim Mun-jo (age 57), who is another participant in the first group of participants in the Wageningen Advanced Agriculture Masterclass (WAAM). He owns an average-sized farrow-to-finish farm of about 200 sows, with a 2,500 finishing pig capacity. His farm is located at 600m above sea level, in Geochang, Gyeongnam Province.
He has made a commitment to a high level of animal welfare in the operation of his farm. He explains, “A first step involved the construction of group housing systems for gestating sows. In the beginning that was a matter of “getting used to,” and I made quite some mistakes. I started with an Electronic Sow Feeding system, but that was not ideal for me. So I added free stalls, as well. I now have a hybrid system, with one feeder per seven sows.” Sows are provided with plenty of straw and 2.5 times as much space than would happen on conventional farms in Korea.
Growing and finishing pigs also have more space; the finishing pigs even have an outside playground at their disposal. Kim joined an animal welfare inspection scheme and he receives up to KRW 15,000 (€ 10.65) as an additional premium per finisher pig.
Kim became interested in the WUR masterclasses because he already knew Prof. Chang-gil Kim from attending the meister classes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he thought the WUR masterclasses would be a good opportunity to increase his knowledge even further. Through the course, participants could exchange ideas and experiences. That in itself is new, he says. “Each participant had his own strong point. So we can learn from each other’s skills.”
“In the first of 10 sessions, there was a speaker from the Netherlands Embassy, focusing on the importance of sharing in sessions like these. That was a very interesting point for me. Apart from that, I learnt a lot from the sessions on economic management, how to make better revenues with swine farming, for instance through the use of data. My biggest help was the ideas I got for human resource management. My farm consists of mostly foreign workers from Nepal, and the WUR course helped me to improve the communication with them. They normally speak English quite well and are also learning Korean. The course gave me better tools to also give presentations to the workers about why they have to perform certain tasks.”

This article became possible with the kind help of Kyohyun An and Prof. Chang-gil Kim.