China fine-tunes pork reserve system as panic selling and sluggish demand send prices tumbling
- Pork prices have fallen more than 50 per cent since mid-January amid sluggish demand and panic selling due to new African swine fever outbreaks
- To combat the price volatility and stabilise production, Beijing announced it would improve its monitoring of the market and tap strategic pork reserves
Plummeting prices for China’s favourite meat mean a lot of the pigs that trader Zhang Yu is seeing in the market these days are supersized, or at least a little overweight.
“If they sell at the current price, they will certainly lose money,” said Zhang, who lives in a small town in the northeastern province of Liaoning.
“Many pigs weigh more than 150kg now,” he said. “If you sell one below 150kg, the money you get can’t even cover the expense of buying a piglet.”
The price of pork in China, the world’s leading consumer, has plunged more than 54 per cent since mid-January, touching 21.5 yuan (US$3.4) per kilogram as of last Friday, according to data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
To combat the price volatility and stabilise production, the government announced this week it would improve its monitoring of the market and tap its pork reserves.
The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Wednesday it would start keeping track of the number of breeding sows in a herd and the average retail price of pork in major cities.