Following the Water Ten Plan’s issuance in April 2015, provincial and county governments across China designated non-livestock production regions along rivers, lakes, and protected water sources, and issued closure or relocation orders to existing farms within these zones. Zhejiang Province, one of the most intensively affected, targeted approximately 70,000 pig farms. By mid-2017, the Ministry of Environmental Protection reported that approximately 213,000 livestock farms had been closed or relocated nationally, with the majority being small-scale and backyard pig farms. The closure mandates disproportionately affected small-scale operators; large, capital-intensive producers were better positioned to comply through relocation or facility upgrades. Structural concentration in the pig sector accelerated, with the share of pigs produced by backyard farms declining from approximately 57% in 2015 to below 52% by 2017. Pig production geographically redistributed from water-sensitive southern and eastern provinces toward northern and interior regions with greater spatial capacity. The 2015–2017 closure and relocation window was declared completed by end of 2017; subsequent policy focused on maintaining compliance and preventing new production within ban-zones. After the 2018–2019 African swine fever outbreak, government policy shifted toward promoting large-scale industrial pig farming as part of a production-restoration strategy, which rebuilt national pig numbers under different spatial and ownership structures. Later policy adjustments eased environmental approval requirements for small-scale pig farms, indicating some recalibration of the earlier closure-driven approach while the underlying zoning architecture remains operative.

Anticipated Effects

If the zoning framework continues to be enforced as designed, pig farming in water-sensitive ban-zones would remain prohibited, preventing return of pig production to ecologically sensitive river, lake, and urban fringe areas.

If enforcement continues to favour large-scale, standardised facilities while restricting small-scale operations, the structural concentration of pig production in China would be expected to deepen over time, altering the mix of housing systems and waste-management practices across the sector.

If later policy recalibrations — including reduced environmental approval requirements for small-scale farms — are applied broadly, the spatial zoning logic of the Water Ten Plan may become more selectively enforced, with uncertain effects on the distribution and total volume of pig farming in formerly restricted areas.

Significance Rationale

Assigned Reduces Exploitation (impact direction) because the Water Ten Plan directly mandated closure or relocation of pig farms in designated ban-zones, with approximately 213,000 livestock farms closed or relocated by mid-2017. Within the ban-zones, the number of pig farms and animals contracted sharply and documentably. The policy also produced geographic redistribution: pig production shifted from water-sensitive southern and eastern provinces to northern and interior regions, meaning the national-level pig sector was restructured rather than eliminated. The scale change within the ban-zones is documented and direct; the net effect at national level is a redistribution, with national pig numbers subsequently recovering through industrialisation and ASF-period rebuilding.

Assigned Changes Scale (impact type) because the primary mechanism of the Water Ten Plan’s livestock provisions is the direct closure mandate: orders requiring farms to close or relocate, directly reducing farm counts and animal holdings in designated areas. Restructures Supply Chains is a documented secondary consequence — the geographic shift from south to north and interior altered the spatial structure of China’s pig supply chain — but the closure mandate is the operative direct mechanism.

Assigned Moderate significance because approximately 213,000 farms were closed or relocated across China’s most intensively farmed provinces, representing a major structural intervention in the regional pig sector. National pig numbers recovered through geographic redistribution and industrialisation, meaning the system-level effect is structural reconfiguration rather than net contraction. Relative to China’s national pig sector — the world’s largest — the policy materially restructured spatial and ownership patterns without eliminating or permanently contracting national production.

The scale change is transitional: pig-farming in designated ban-zones contracted sharply between 2015 and 2017, production was partially rebuilt in other regions and under larger-scale operators, and the geographic map of intensive pig farming in China remains reconfigured relative to the pre-2015 baseline.