On May 5, the main contract of hog futures 22 on the Dalian Commodity Exchange fell 2307.2% to close at 6 points, down 15175.4% from the close of 24 points on April 17080.
"Since January this year, the national pig price has shown a volatile bottoming trend. Since early May, hog prices have been lower than in the same period last year. The supply of live pigs and pork is abundant, and consumption in the first half of the year is in the off-season, and oversupply is the main reason for low pig prices. Zhu Zengyong, a researcher at the Beijing Institute of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said.
Monitoring data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs show that since January this year, the national pig and pork prices have shown a low shock trend, pig prices have bottomed out, and pork prices have continued to fall. From the perspective of hog prices, the second week of February, the third week of April and the third week of May all fell to low levels, and since the first week of May, it has been lower than the same period last year; It was 1.2 yuan/kg in the third week of May, slightly higher than 2.4 yuan/kg in the third week of April, down 3.5% year-on-year. From the perspective of pork prices, the overall trend also showed a downward trend, from 3.5 yuan / kg in the first week of January to 1.5 yuan / kg in the third week of May, down 3.14% year-on-year in the third week of May.
From the perspective of pig supply, according to the latest data released by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, as of the end of April, the national breeding sow inventory was 4.4284 million, down 0.5% month-on-month and up 2.6% year-on-year. In April, the national pig slaughter increased by 4.3% month-on-month and 1.6% year-on-year. Since the beginning of this year, the slaughter volume of pig designated slaughtering enterprises has maintained a high level, with month-on-month growth in March and April, and has been higher than the same period last year for five consecutive months since December last year. From the perspective of pork supply, since the beginning of this year, the live weight of pigs slaughtered has been higher than the same period last year, and the amount of slaughter and live weight have increased, further improving the supply of pork. From January to April, China's pork imports were 7,3 tons, a year-on-year increase of 4.12%, and pork supply was abundant. From the perspective of demand, although there has been a short-term boost in post-holiday consumption, it is still in the traditional consumption off-season. From the perspective of policy regulation, frozen pork collection and storage has not landed, and the information about the upcoming storage has a short time to boost the market, which has not changed the trend of pig prices falling.
Last week, the average daily listing of white stripe pigs in Beijing's Xinfadi Agricultural Products Wholesale Market was 1716.29, compared with 1913.14 in the same period last year, a year-on-year decrease of 10.29%. Liu Tong, manager of the statistics department of Beijing Xinfadi agricultural products wholesale market, said that the large year-on-year decline in listing volume was mainly due to the temporary closure of other wholesale markets last year due to epidemic prevention and control, and customers turned to Xinfadi market to purchase, and late last week, a slaughterhouse suspended business for one day due to low price losses. The lowest wholesale price of white stripe pigs fell to 1.5 yuan/kg on May 17, lower than the lowest price of 16.25 yuan/kg on April 4, indicating that meat prices continue to decline. After this lowest price appeared, butchers invariably reduced the number of people on the market. Late last week, the wholesale price of Xinfadi white-striped pigs rebounded. Liu Tong believes that this is not a trend, the situation of pork prices grinding to the bottom has not changed, and it may continue to decline in the later stage.
For the trend of pig prices in the later period, Zhu Zengyong believes that with the decline of the live weight of large pigs out of the pen and the live weight of the pen, the pig price may gradually approach the breeding cost line at the end of June and return to the profit range. As of the end of April, the national breeding sow inventory decreased by 6,1 compared with January, with a defertilization rate of nearly 4%. Considering the improvement in the efficiency of breeding sows since last year, pig production capacity is still at a high level. Zhu Zengyong suggested that farmers appropriately eliminate inefficient sows, avoid blindly mending sows, and do not press the pen and carry out secondary fattening, so as to facilitate the pig price to recover to a better level in the second half of the year.
Huang Junyi (Source: Economic Daily)