China’s pork crisis creates bumper payday for small-time farmers willing to take a risk

While African swine fever has devastated China’s pig farming industry, some fortunate farmers have capitalised on the catastrophe

Analysts said that despite the worst of the epidemic likely to be behind China, prices of pork will continue to surge in 2020, largely due to Lunar New Year demand

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China’s African swine fever crisis has led to the death of millions of pigs, but some small farmers have been capitalising on soaring pork prices. Photo: Reuters

Published: 12:15pm, 6 Dec 2019Updated: 9:27pm, 6 Dec 2019

Fujianese farmer Mr Wang started raising pigs in August 2018, the same month an outbreak of African swine fever was reported in the northeastern city of Shenyang.

The disease subsequently ripped through China, wiping out millions of livestock through culling or disease and sending pork prices soaring in a country where the meat is a staple part of the daily diet. By some estimates, swine fever will kill one quarter of all the world’s pigs.

Wang, however, was one of the lucky ones: 99 per cent of his pigs survived. He now has more than 20 breeding sows in Quanzhou, a port city that lies across the strait from Taiwan in Fujian province, and is banking on a bumper payday just in time for January’s Lunar New Year holiday.

With some of the sows expected to farrow soon, Wang plans to sell 15 finishing pigs before the holiday, when the pig price is expected to peak due to the demand among Chinese people to serve pork as part of their family banquets.

I have about 20 pigs, and none of them have died so far, because I have chosen a remote site for the farm, so that my pigs have less chance of getting infected

Xu Chaochao

“I used Chinese medicine to feed and prevent the fever. Our local government is very interested in my formula,” Wang said proudly, adding that local authorities want to set up a breeding base for up to 100,000 pigs and has asked him to draft a feeding plan.