Pork prices fell 27.6% year-on-year in the third week of April

  Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs: The most tight period of pork supply has passed

  According to our newspaper (reporter Zhang Qin), pork prices, which have been consistently high before, have dropped significantly since this year.

Up to now, domestic pork prices have fallen to their lowest point since the recovery of pig production capacity in this round.

According to monitoring, in the third week of April (12th-18th), the price of pork in the national bazaar was 38.96 yuan per kilogram, a year-on-year decrease of 27.6%. It was 15.26 yuan lower than the highest price in the third week of January and last year. The highest price (the 3rd week of February 2020) dropped by RMB 20.68.

  In this regard, Chen Guanghua, deputy director of the Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, analyzed that the main reason for the recent sharp drop in pig prices was the significant increase in slaughter and the decline in pork consumption after the Spring Festival. "One increase and one decrease" contributed to the decline of pork prices.

According to the current production recovery momentum, in June and July this year, the pig stock is expected to return to the level of normal years.

After another 4 months or so, the monthly output will gradually return to the normal level.

  “The price of pigs has indeed fallen a bit fast in recent months,” Chen Guanghua also said. According to the trend of pig prices throughout the year, around the Dragon Boat Festival, as pork consumption increases, pig prices may rise.

But extrapolating from the number of newborn piglets in the previous period, it is expected that in the second quarter, the year-on-year increase of fat pigs from large-scale pig farms across the country will reach 50%. The market supply is generally abundant, and the price is unlikely to exceed the previous high.

  He also specifically mentioned that the most tight period of pork supply has passed, and the supply will become more and more loose in the later period.

However, some farmers' panic selling has also formed a "stomping effect."

  According to a reporter from Beijing Youth Daily, in response to the issue of pig prices, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs is currently working with the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Commerce, the General Administration of Customs and the National Bureau of Statistics to establish an authoritative release system for information on the entire pig industry chain.

In the future, a unified and authoritative release window will be used to centrally release information on the entire pig industry chain, guide production entities to adjust production capacity rationally, effectively guide market expectations, and stabilize market price fluctuations.

It is reported that the information will be released for the first time in the near future, and the data will be released at a fixed time every month in the future.

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  The drop in meat prices is due to the drop in pig prices.

Nowadays, pork consumption is in the off-season. With the continuous recovery of pig production capacity across the country and the concentration of farmers for slaughter, the price of pigs in many places has continued to fall. The pigs that have "rised to heaven" in the past two years have recently shown a tendency of "falling".

  Large numbers and low consumption industries are expected to become cautious

  There is no doubt that one of the most important reasons for the decline in pig prices is the continuous recovery and gradual release of live pig production capacity.

In addition, the traditional low season for consumption and the concentration of some breeding entities at this stage are also factors contributing to the decline in pig prices.

  "In one sentence, there are more live pigs for slaughter." said Wu Shenshu, director of the Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Department of the Hunan Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. Taking Hunan as an example, since September 2019, there have been 9.26 million newly expanded breeding pigs. In the field, 482 have been put into operation.

As of the end of March, a total of 15.29 million live pigs have been slaughtered in the province this year, which not only increased by 29.6% year-on-year, but has also increased for 18 consecutive months.

Xiong Lianqiu, chairman of Xiangtan Kexing Ecological Agriculture Co., Ltd., introduced that his old farm with 1,900 sows will be put into production in May this year, and the new farm with 3,900 sows started production last year.

  Hunan Weihong Food Co., Ltd. is a slaughter company. Liu Dongming, the company’s deputy general manager, told reporters, “March to April are always the low season for pork consumption, because every family’s pickled meat is still consumed during the Spring Festival. Now in the farmers’ market. A stall can still sell more than 100 catties of meat a day, and more than 200 catties during the Spring Festival."

  Nowadays, every farmer has several WeChat groups on his mobile phone to exchange information about pigs from all over the country.

According to a number of farmers interviewed by the reporter, on the one hand, due to the complexity of the epidemic in some areas, some breeding entities lack sufficient confidence and measures to deal with them. They are worried that the extension of the breeding cycle will increase the risk of prevention and control, so they choose to concentrate on listing.

On the other hand, there are some breeding entities who judge that the recovery of live pig production capacity will lead to lower prices in the later stage, and they also choose to concentrate on slaughter.

  To prevent rising and falling, pork cannot always ride the "roller coaster"

  With the continuous recovery of production capacity, relative to the high prices of the previous two years, the decline in pig prices is the overall trend, but due to the bottom of the breeding cost, it is difficult to drop to the level before 2017.

The industry believes that pig prices affect the profit and loss of the breeding entities while affecting the pockets of the people. It should be kept within a reasonable range as much as possible to reduce the "roller coaster" effect of the sharp rise and fall of pork prices.

  "The more production capacity is restored, the more we must prevent the epidemic from rebounding." He Zhiping, vice president of the Sichuan Academy of Animal Science, believes that the ability to prevent and control the epidemic is the key to affecting the later trend of live pig and pork prices.

"If the epidemic prevention does not cause major problems, the price will rebound, but it is impossible to reach the previous price of 40 yuan per kilogram. About 30 yuan is a more reasonable range."

  Wu Shenshu pointed out that we must avoid recurring the vicious circle of "increased numbers of environmental protection pressures, and environmental pressures lead to reductions in numbers". "In the long run, we should promote the construction of a whole industry system with simultaneous development of breeding, slaughter and cold chain transportation, balance the comprehensive benefits of each link, and break the tradition of'raising pigs is worse than killing pigs, and killing pigs is worse than selling meat'. The model truly realizes a win-win situation for pig practitioners and consumers," he said.