China News Service, January 23: The State Council Information Office held a press conference on January 23 to introduce the operation of agriculture and rural economy in 2023.
Lei Liugong, director of the Market and Information Technology Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, introduced at the meeting that the pig market will be well supplied in 2023.
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the annual pork production was 57.94 million tons, an increase of 4.6% over the previous year and the highest level since 2015.
"On the other hand, the price of pigs has been hovering at a low level for a long time. It is difficult for consumers to eat affordable pork, but it is more difficult for farmers." Lei Liugong said that from the perspective of breeding income, the number of pigs raised throughout the year was the highest. The average loss was 76 yuan. This was also the first year since 2014 that the general ledger suffered a full-year loss.
It should also be noted that the level of industrial development has improved in the face of adversity. It is expected that the scale rate of pig breeding will exceed 68% in 2023, an increase of about 3 percentage points from 2022. The production efficiency of fertile sows has also continued to improve, providing continued health for the pig industry. Development has laid a solid foundation.
Lei Liugong introduced that in response to the problem of high pig production capacity and continued losses in breeding, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has guided various localities to strengthen regulation of pig production capacity, maintain the stability of basic policies such as land use, environmental protection, and finance, continuously strengthen information monitoring and early warning, and guide farmers to adapt Production capacity will be adjusted accordingly, and fattened pigs will be released in time to accelerate the return of supply and demand to equilibrium.
According to statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics, the number of reproductive sows in the country at the end of December 2023 was 41.42 million, which was about 2.5 million less than the periodic high at the end of December 2022.
Lei Liugong said that regarding the later trend, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs recently organized experts, industry associations and key enterprises to conduct special discussions.
It is believed that the stock of medium and large pigs in large-scale pig farms will increase by 3.7% year-on-year in December 2023. These pigs will be sold in the next 1-2 months, which indicates that the supply of the pig market is still relatively loose, and pig breeding is likely to continue to suffer losses after the Spring Festival.
At the same time, we should also see that as the number of reproductive sows decreases, the number of newborn piglets also decreases accordingly.
According to our ministry’s monitoring, the number of newborn piglets nationwide has dropped year-on-year since October last year, which also indicates that the production capacity reduction has achieved certain results.
As pig production capacity gradually returns to a reasonable level, the pig market situation in the second quarter is expected to be better than the same period last year.
Lei Liugong emphasized that in the next step, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs will focus on three aspects of work to promote the stable development of pig production.
The first is strong monitoring.
Farmers should be guided to sell fattened pigs according to the trend, so as to avoid blind pressing of pigs, which will affect the return of pig prices to normal in the future.
Keep a close eye on changes in the number of reproductive sows across the country, issue early warnings in a timely manner, and guide reasonable arrangements for production.
The second is excellent production capacity.
Optimize the control measures for pig production capacity, implement local responsibilities for stable pig production and supply, stabilize long-term support policies such as land, environmental protection, and finance, and urge the timely adoption of policies and measures such as subsidies, credit, and interest discounts to keep pig production capacity in a reasonable area.
The third is to prevent epidemic diseases.
Strengthen guidance on spring swine disease prevention and control, do a good job in preventing and controlling major animal epidemics, do a good job in epidemic monitoring and investigation, strengthen supervision of key links such as quarantine, transportation, and slaughter, and promptly verify and deal with epidemics.