ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

From Mixed Grain to Compound Feed: The Making of Modern Animal Production in Reform-era China

• In Event: Attuning to Multispecies Worlds: Farmed Animals, One Health, and Shifting Scientific Practices in Modern China

English Abstract

By the late twentieth century, Chinese poultry farming was undergoing a profound transformation from backyard farming to integrated production. Feed technologies, rather than breeding science alone, were central to enabling faster growth cycles and the standardisation of broiler breeds. This paper examines how the shift from household mixed-grain to compound feed reshaped poultry farming and contributed to the emergence of industrial agriculture in reform-era China.

Drawing on archival materials and empirical studies, I investigate how transnational economic collaborations and opening-up policies introduced commercial feed formulas, machinery, and technical expertise into rural markets. I further show how antibiotics entered broiler production through premix additives, becoming routine components of feed-based management rather than stand-alone pharmaceuticals. This incorporation transformed multispecies relations on the farm while farmers’ practical knowledge increasingly integrated with technical manuals, international feed-company expertise, and emerging biosecurity protocols. I argue that these shifts positioned farms within emerging One Health regimes, in which human, animal, crop, and veterinary expertise were managed as interconnected agencies. I further discuss how feed innovation brings into focus multispecies governance as a new set of challenges in the modern animal food industry.

Author

• Yixuan Li, University of Manchester