Self-made billionaire Qin Yinglin is the world's richest farmer with a $22bn (£17.82bn) personal fortune.
Chinese pig farmer Qin Yinglin has seen his net worth jump 341% in 2019 so far, making him the fastest-growing fortune on many world's recognized indexes and magazines like Forbes, Bloomberg Billionaires Index, The observer, and more.
Yinglin and his wife Qian Ying started their first pig farm in 1992 with just 22 piglets. By 2019 they had more than 10 million pigs within their Shenzhen-listed company Muyuan Foods. His Chinese pork empire has rocketed in the past year due to shortages and higher prices during the 2019 African swine flu outbreak and the subsequent COVID-19 pandemic.
A global shortage of pork allowed Muyuanto raise both its prices and its profits in the second half of 2019. China is both the world's largest producer and consumer of pork, and the shortage forced the Chinese government to pull the meat out of its stockpiles to meet the demand. The government even resorted to implementing artificial intelligence, facial recognition, and blockchain technologies on some farms to monitor the pig's health to no avail.
Qian Ying is not alone in China who benefitted from the global shortage of pigs due to African swine flu. A general perception can arise that it is a Chinese conspiracy to boost their meat industry but for how long countries like India will support its age-old agricultural policies. While socialism will continue to prevail to a certain extent in the form of subsidies, waivers, MSP procurement, and so forth, it is only the new reforms that can help farmers free themselves from decades of poverty.
