Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

China's agriculture ministry pronounced  the country's restocking of swine farms is proceeding "faster than expected", based on Q3 2020 numbers released by the statistical bureau last week. With local officials under orders to show results in this "major task", there is strong incentive to inflate the numbers. Swine prices have climbed back to near-record levels despite the frantic rebuild...and peak pork consumption season is just a couple months away. The National Bureau of Statistics reported that China's swine inventory had risen for the last three quarters to reach 340 million head at the end of June. The inventory had been 310 million at the beginning of the year--the lowest swine herd number reported by the bureau since 1984. Pork output in Q2 2020 was 9.6 million metric tons (mmt), down from 10.4 mmt in Q1. However, pork production in Q2 was just 6 percent less than a year earlier, a much narrower shortfall than the 29 percent shortfall in Q...

Chinese officials found no Covid-19 virus during several days of nationwide testing of food markets in mid-June. Despite the absence of virus contamination, Chinese customs authorities stepped up monitoring of imported fish and meat, and Chinese importers began requesting overseas suppliers to certify that shipments bound for China were virus-free. Chinese disease control officials ordered nationwide testing in food markets last month after a new outbreak of Covid-19 was linked to Beijing's Xinfadi wholesale market, one of the largest food markets in the country. On June 13, the chairman of Xinfadi market announced that the virus had been found the previous day on a board used to slice imported salmon that had come from the Jing-Zhen seafood market. The chairman said that no Covid-19 virus had been detected in seafood or meat products tested in the market, and nine people who worked with the salmon also tested negative. Nevertheless, the market was closed and disinfected. On the...

Celebrating the results of China's second pollution census in early June, an agricultural official bragged that the agricultural sector produced more grain and meat while simultaneously reducing its discharge of pollution, a sign of progress in the greening of the country's farms, so he said. An environmental official also lauded the progress, but acknowledged that "green agricultural development" is still in its infancy. Data showing a boom in fertilizer application during the years when runoff supposedly fell 55 percent cast doubt on the pollution census data. A communique announcing results of China's second pollution census was issued June 8, 2020. The census estimated discharges of pollutants of water, air, and soil as of December 2017, ten years after the first pollution census revealed that agriculture was a major source of pollution. A 2014 survey of soil found that 19 percent of cultivated land was contaminated with heavy metals and other pollutan...