Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

"Large pig farmers are no different from small and medium investors...they chase the huge fluctuation in pork prices up and down." So observed a commentary on China's feedtrade.com.cn web site  earlier this month.  China's agricultural leaders have long blamed "blind" expansion by small "backyard" farmers for the constant gyrations in China's pork industry, but the country's new gang of big hog producers are adding production capacity with little regard for the depressed state of the market, driving the price further below the breakeven point. Annual reports by seventeen hog-producing companies indicate they sold a combined 100 million hogs in 2021. That's 15 percent of national output.  Daily Economic News reckoned that last year's  combined losses incurred by these companies totaled 50 billion yuan  ($7.9 billion). Nearly all of the hog companies lost money--"shocking" losses according to the Feedtrade commentary.  Chin...

China's feed output rose 10.4 percent in 2021 to reach 293 million metric tons (mmt), according to data released by the country's feed industry association .  That was the second year of increased feed output, corresponding to the rebuilding of China's swine herd from the African swine fever (ASF) epidemic that wiped out millions of pigs during 2018-19.  Source: China Feed Industry Association and China National Bureau of Statistics. The 40.68-mmt increase in feed production during 2021 was, by far, the largest single-year increase in output reported by the association since it began counting feed output in the 1980s. The 2020 increase of 23.9 mmt had previously been the largest-ever increase in feed output. The largest-ever decrease in feed output of -8.78 mmt came during the worst year of the ASF crisis in 2019. Swine feed accounted for all the increase in manufactured feed output in 2021. Feed for poultry meat went down slightly last year. The feed data indicate a brief ...