China Pork Output Down Second Year in a Row

China's pork output is in its second straight year of decline, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The NBS report on GDP for the first half of 2016 estimated that January-to-June pork output was down 3.9 percent from a year earlier. That followed a 3.7 percent decline in pork for 2015 reported by the Bureau earlier. The Statistics Bureau's numbers for hog slaughter and hog inventory show similar declines of 3-to-4 percent in both years.

Change in China's hog production
Item	2015	2016 Jan-June
	Percent change
National Bureau of Statistics:
Pork output	-3.7	-3.9
Hog slaughter	-3.7	-4.4
Hog inventory	-3.2	-3.7
Ministry of Agriculture:
Hog slaughter	-1.1	-6.3
Hog inventory	-9.0	0.0

Ministry of Agriculture numbers, on the other hand, appear to have some inconsistencies.  The number of hogs slaughtered at designated slaughterhouses during January-June 2016 was down 6.3 percent from the same period last year. That was much a much faster decline than the 1.1 percent decline in slaughter reported by MOA numbers for 2015. The MOA slaughter volume of 100 million for January-June 2016 was, as usual, about one-third of the NBS slaughter number of 320 million for the same period. The MOA hog inventory during June 2016 was equal to the inventory a year ago, although monthly gains were tepid (under 1 percent) for March-June. Inventories are still at a low level--the hog inventory fell dramatically during 2014 and 2015, according to the MOA numbers.

The NBS report also estimated that live hog prices climbed 38.1 percent in June 2016 from a year earlier. Overall, agricultural producer prices in China were down 4.5 percent year-on-year, according to the NBS report. Corn prices were down 15.3 percent, wheat prices were down 8.6 percent, and rice prices were down 1.9 percent. However, the consumer price index for food was up 4.5 percent.

"Primary industry" (which includes agriculture) GDP was up 3.1 percent during the first half of 2016, less than half the overall GDP growth rate of 6.7% reported by NBS.

NBS estimated 2016 summer grain output--primarily winter wheat--at 139.26 million metric tons. This is slightly less than last year's record, but still China's second-largest summer grain output ever. A world market already swimming in wheat doesn't need more of it, but here it is.

Per capita rural income grew 6.7 percent after adjusting for inflation. Somehow, rural income grew faster than urban income, even though farm prices fell 4.5 percent, agricultural GDP grew at less than half the rate of other sectors, agriculture received 2.8 percent of fixed asset investment, and the number of rural-urban migrants was nearly stagnant. The average monthly income for the estimated 175 million rural migrants was 3202 yuan, up 6.7 percent from last year. Growth in urban per capita income adjusted for inflation was 5.8 percent.