Qin Yinglin Net Worth: Pig Farmer Is World's Fastest Earner, Gained $14B In 2019

Qin Yinglin’s net worth is $18.5 billion. How did the Chinese entrepreneur rise through the ranks of the world’s richest in so little time?

For Qin, it could be a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Unbeknown to many, the multibillionaire is the chairman of Muyuan Foodstuff, one of China’s biggest food producing companies. Aside from breeding and distributing pigs, Muyuan Foodstuff also deals with feed processing and research.

When the African swine flu effectively reduced the supply of pigs in the market, Muyuan Foods capitalized on the opportunity and its shares skyrocketed, enabling Qin’s net worth to reach $18.5 billion compared to about just $4 billion in the previous year. This resulted in an almost unheard of $14 billion increment in earnings. Per Forbes, the unforeseen jump made Qin the world’s fastest earner among its billionaires list.

The 55-year-old Henan, China native started modestly in the agribusiness. After getting a degree at the Henan Agricultural University, he started his venture with just 22 pigs almost three decades ago. The family business in which his wife Qian Ying also acts as one of the board went on to become China’s largest pig breeder. The country is both the world’s biggest consumer and producer of pork, a situation where any shortage of supply could mean a disaster to the local producers and breeders.

His rise through the money rankings may not be the usual route of other billionaires who invested in the tech, retail and fashion industry. Moreover, it was not only Qin Yinglin who earned big during the swine flu situation in 2019. According to Business Insider, another pork magnate, Liu Yonghao of the New HopeGroup ,saw his net worth surge by almost 200 percent in the past year.

China is facing backlash after other countries accused the nation of being responsible for the spread of COVID-19. The economies of global nations are suffering from the pandemic, with the lockdown in most areas effectively paralyzing trade, logistics and tourism, among others. While other nations have lifted their lockdowns, other countries are torn between allowing people to go out to resurrect the economy and extending quarantine periods and let the markets suffer.

While the pandemic caused a great loss of money to some billionaires in the world, the richest on top of the money rankings appear to remain untouched by the troubles. Jeff Bezos’s net worth in March 2020 was $113 billion but a month later, it stood at $142.7 billion, as stated in a report.

This just proves that businessmen, whose investments are classified as essential during a pandemic, have been able to weather the challenges because they focused on what’s needed during the uncertain times.