INTERVIEW ▶▶▶ Dr Wolfgang Peralta, Agrosuper
Replacing fishmeal is not an easy challenge
One of South America’s largest swine producers is Agrosuper, based in Chile. The company recently started to replace as much fishmeal as they can from post-weaning diets. Dr Wolfgang Peralta, head of swine feeding and nutrition, describes the solutions they found.
BY VINCENT TER BEEK, EDITOR, PIG PROGRESS E
very year, when the global pork mega producers are an- nounced, the southernmost spot on the map is taken by Agrosuper, in Chile. Since the integrator company em- barked on swine production in 1983, it has grown to in-
clude 135,000 sows, slaughtering 3,750,000 pigs per year. To feed all these pigs, in 2019 alone Agrosuper’s own feed mills produced 1,236,000 metric tonnes of pig feed – an amount that will only rise in the years to come. With these dazzling numbers, one little adjustment in feed rations can make a huge impact. Dr Wolfgang Peralta has been working for 35 years with Agrosuper and, apart from overseeing the devel- opment of the pig genetic programme, he is responsible for feed- ing and nutrition within the company’s swine business. He says, “It is very important for us to use pig space in a more efficient man- ner today, because with the same buildings we can produce more kilogrammes of pork meat per year.”
In a nutshell – how have these 35 years at Agrosuper been for you? “I have been working there almost my entire professional life. It has been an interesting time and a continuous learning process. I was raised in the countryside in Chile and I studied veterinary sci- ence at the University of Chile. After I finished my degree, I began working at Agrosuper in 1985 as a veterinarian. I worked on health issues between 1985 and 1988, and then I was promoted and put in charge of a third of the sows. “In the meantime, the company had decided to move from natural mating to artificial insemination (AI) and gave me the responsibility of introducing AI in our company. For that, I received training in Brazil and Spain. I started in 1987 and I need-
ed to move the whole company from natural mating to AI in ten years. It was not easy, because most of the people were working in natural mating, but we successfully finished in 1997. “In 1992 Agrosuper made me responsible for developing R&D in the company, and I worked in that area from 1992 until 2018, two years ago. Now I am responsible for nutrition and swine genetics. I am also still involved in all of the issues in reproduction and in the post-weaning area, because I need to advise those people.”
How has Agrosuper changed in these 30 years in your view? “Since I started, pig production has become a specialised science, because we export and are dealing with a lot of requirements. The production process has been significantly improved from the nu- tritional, genetic, managerial and sanitary control points of view. For us it is very important to guarantee food safety, which is why we maintain strict biosecurity measures and we raise animals with a high health status.”
How important are concepts such as sustainability and welfare for Agrosuper? “For us they are big concerns, and they form the pillars of our pro- duction, because today this is demanded by the market. We are testing the effect of classical music on pregnant sows, we are supplying toys to the animals, we are investing in automatic cli- mate control, we developed heat pads for piglets, we incorporate three-deck trucks during transport, we have an elevator to lift the pigs so that we reduce injury to the animals, and we improve the ventilation system inside the trucks to ensure the well-being of those animals. “We have also developed a digital biosecurity system. This in- cludes a software that requires the prior registration of everyone
▶PIG PROGRESS | Volume 36, No. 9, 2020 15
PHOTOS: AGROSUPER
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