When African swine fever hit the Chinese mainland last year, Ma Suyun came up with three lines of defense in a desperate attempt to prevent the virus from entering her pig farm. She dusted uncountable bags of bleaching powder, closed her doors to visitors and added medicinal herbs to animal feed.

Her 100 hogs were safe, but the lethal virus wiped out nearly 41 percent of China's hog herd, killing 44.4 million pigs, according to the most recent data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS). With almost half of its pigs gone, China – the world's largest consumer of pork – could not escape a sharp rise in the price of meat.

Last month, prices skyrocketed, more than doubling to reach a record high of 35 yuan (almost five U.S. dollars) per kilogram. A similarly steep price hike happened in June 2016, when pork sold at 31.56 yuan per kilogram. 

Pork the new gold

Today, a fattened hog can sell for 5,000 yuan. At such prices, Ma will soon be able to call herself a millionaire.

With the help of government incentives, her farm in Luanxian County in north China's Hebei Province will earn nearly three million yuan by the end of the year. "Even a leaner hog weighing 160 kilograms would fetch me 3,000 yuan," said Ma.

Experts say pork is the new gold in the Chinese market. The number of sows has plummeted by 37.4 percent, adversely affecting new births in coming months, which will further lead to an increase in pork prices.

Globally, growing demand and deadly viruses have transformed the meat industry drastically. In China, a series of disease outbreaks and natural disasters led to a transition in the pork sector.

A "high fever blue-ear disease" epidemic killed nearly 50 million pigs in 2007. In the same year, a long, harsh winter in Guangxi, Hunan and Jiangxi killed approximately one million pigs. A year later, the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 buried four million young hogs.

The massive scale of death and disease prompted the central government to make urgent policy changes to ensure a robust meat supply chain. China transitioned from backyard farming, raising five to 10 pigs, and household pig farms with 50 to 100 pigs to large-scale production.

In the last decade, the share of backyard producers fell from more than two-thirds of the country's total breeders to about one third, according to NBS. The large-scale farms, many of them fully automated and fattening thousands of animals at their facilities, have increasingly dominated the pork industry since 2007.

Shi Qinglong, general manager at Huanshan Group, one of the biggest pork producers in east China's Shandong Province, pointed out that small-scale pig breeders face difficulties in controlling outbreaks within a specific time frame.

"The result is disease spreading to other farms affecting millions of livestock. On the contrary, large corporations adopt standardized measures for animal disease prevention and control," he said.

The share of hogs raised by backyard producers stood at 73 percent of the country's in 2002, but the number dropped to 52 percent by 2007 – a 29-percent decrease in only five years. By 2011, the share slipped to 35 percent.

In 2015, many backyards farms shut down after the government banned unscientific disposal of waste and restricted the use of agricultural land for raising pigs.

While backyard pork farms were closing down, household farms expanded rapidly. In 1999, specialized households accounted for 14 percent of the total pork production. A decade later, the share climbed to 30 percent, data published by China Economic Review said.

Pig farms to get fatter

Last month, the government announced an array of incentives to boost pig farming, including easing agricultural land-use restrictions for raising hogs, providing insurance coverage, and offering credit to household pig farmers.

Ma Suyun, whose farm is categorized as a specialized household pork producer, received hefty government funds to expand her farm. She was given an interest-free loan worth 1.5 million yuan and a 200,000-yuan grant to modernize her pig farm.

"Having larger operations would also help China meet the growing demand for pork in the cities. Small pig farms are less efficient when it comes to pork production, and fluctuations in their output are not conducive to ensuring the sustainable provision of the staple food," said Feng Yonghui, an analyst at industry website Soozhu.

"It is also in the interest of protecting food safety since big producers are under more scrutiny," he added.

Buoyed by government policies and the susceptibility of the pork sector to diseases, large tech giants like Alibaba and JD.com are keeping a close eye on the industry. A few of them, like NetEase, have already jumped into the fray. The firm currently produces 670,000 pigs annually.

Return of small and medium pig farmers

In order to further boost pork production, the government and agricultural sector are working towards reviving backyard pig farming under a new model.

Under the new production design, pig farmers would buy piglets from large corporations, raise them, and then return the adult hogs to the corporations. While farmers would be compensated for their labor, the profit from selling the pigs would be pocketed entirely by the corporation.

The model helps in mitigating risks associated with the industry. "Disease outbreaks like African swine fever are difficult to contain as the virus is highly resilient," said Yu Biao, a veterinarian at Huanshan Group, one of the largest pig producers in east China's Shandong Province. 

"The virus remains hidden in wooden structures in pig farms, water and walls as well as frozen pork stored in the farms."

Once African swine fever strikes a pig farm, it becomes tough to destroy the virus, making pig farming practically nonviable for farmers who suffered losses in the past, he added.

Future of pork industry: Low risk, low profit

Not all household pig farmers have been as fortunate as Ma. Wang Xuefei from Anxiang County lost around 200,000 yuan because of the African swine fever. He added that almost all farmers in his county in central China's Hunan Province had suffered losses.

Yu Junhua from China's pig-breeding heartland of Shandong Province met with a similar fate, but managed to save 100 pigs from a 300-strong herd. "The loss of hogs has pushed most of the small producers neck-deep in debt. We will need loans to revive the business," said Yu.

Despite the loss, Wang wants to raise hogs again. "The profit margin for pigs this year is tempting," said Wang. "I don't want to raise chicken or ducks as the price in the poultry sector remains unstable. Profitability in pork is a meaty one this year," he added. 

A research by Dutch lender Robobank said pork cannot be easily replaced by other proteins like chicken, duck, seafood, beef and lamb. "We believe this will result in a net supply gap of almost 10 million metric tons in the total 2019 animal protein supply."

Wang plans to make use of the profitability that the supply gap will bring. He is considering collaborating with large pork corporations to hedge risk. He plans to buy piglets from large farming corporations, raise and then return them once they reach maturity.

He is now actively searching for a large plot of land to raise hogs since large corporations require pig farms to raise at least 1,000 heads to qualify for a contract. 

"The profit is low but so is the risk," Wang said.