Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

China's hog price has dipped below its chicken price--an unusual phenomenon that indicates the seriousness of China's pork glut in 2026. The industry is producing more pigs than the market can absorb, and in doing so it is consuming vast amounts of feed grain and soybean meal. China's poultry industry is expanding rapidly, but the extra poultry supplies are substituting for imports and pouring into the export market.  Over the past 2 decades Chinese pork prices rose and fell in a familiar cyclical pattern. During downturns, pork prices approached chicken prices briefly every 3 years or so before turning back upward. Since 2021, though, gyrations in pork prices have become more pronounced and parity between pork and chicken prices has become more frequent. The latest 2-year slide in pork prices has resulted in the pork price being less than the chicken price for four months and counting in 2026. The price of live hogs was stuck at about RMB 10 per kg from April to June--clos...

Hog production was impacted by devastating typhoons that hit China's Guangxi Province a week ago. Dead pigs pose a disease risk and a pork deficit in a region that accounts for more than 1 in 20 pigs raised in the country. Torrential rains from super-typhoon Maysak inundated the region on July 6. Entire villages were flooded or swept away after the release of water from reservoirs and the breaching of at least one major dam. Images from the most seriously affected areas, including Hengzhou, Guigang, and Binyang, look like war zones. Officially only 39 people were killed and 9 were missing, but the real death toll had to be much larger. Chinese news propaganda has quickly shifted to venomous snakes on the loose, light-hearted coverage of rescue teams, company donations, and fun ways to cope with flooding. The death toll for pigs is visibly higher. The Youtube video below shows thousands of dead pig carcasses, dozens of surviving pigs stuck on the roofs of their barns, swimming in fl...

China's new strategy is for giant pig farms to sell carbon credits to finance their waste treatment facilities. Western environmental groups have questioned whether a surge of Chinese pig farms offering to sell carbon credits to foreign buyers really needed the credits to build biogas facilities, so China has created its own carbon-trading mechanism for pig farms with relaxed standards. Since the Chinese carbon market is only for large scale CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), Chinese news media are assuring the public that industrialized farms are "green" too. A pig farm operated by Muyuan Foods. The dark rectangle in the back is the manure collection lagoon. Source: Xinhua News Agency. In December 2025 China's Ministries of Environment and Agriculture jointly issued a methodology for China's Certified Voluntary Emission Reduction (CCER) covering utilization of biogas from livestock manure at large-scale pig farms . According to the document large-sca...

China's GDP grew 5% year over year in Q1 2026, according to a National Bureau of Statistics report that provided its invariably upbeat rundown of first quarter economic data. Primary sector GDP--which includes agriculture--grew 3.8%. In March 2026 the urban unemployment rate was reported to be 5.4% while the rate for rural migrants was 5.7%.  The Bureau's Q1 2026 report focusing on the agricultural economy led off with a claim that the winter wheat crop has overcome the impacts of last Fall's heavy rains that seriously impeded planting of the crop. The Bureau's agricultural statistician claimed that the area planted in winter wheat is stable and the crop's condition has improved due to warm weather, adequate rainfall and soil moisture this Spring. The Bureau claimed that the crop has been bolstered by measures orders issued to local officials to fertilize wheat seedlings and farmers were encouraged by an increase in the minimum price for wheat (in fact, the minimu...

Five months ago, one of China's leading pork analysts vociferously denied making a dire prediction that Chinese hog prices would crash during 2026. Prices are now tumbling to levels unseen in decades, and the bearish prediction he had disavowed now appears to have been more or less accurate. Why did he disown a bearish forecast? What does this incident say about the China dream of AI-driven agriculture?  On November 24, 2025, long-time Chinese hog analyst Feng Yonghui posted an article on his soozhu.com web site denying that he had predicted that hog prices would fall below RMB 10-to-11 per kg and stay there during 2026. Mr. Feng disavowed the bearish forecast, calling it a "malicious spreading of rumors."  He blamed an artificial intelligence algorithm for splicing together comments he had made out of context and constructing a misleading assessment that tarnished his reputation.  Five months later, on March 23, Mr. Feng's site reported that hog prices h...

China's transition to a more protein-rich diet is evident in food consumption data from its official national household survey. Pork continues to rule the roost despite growth in egg and poultry consumption, and more Chinese consumers now know where to find the beef. Since the 1950s China's National Bureau of Statistics has conducted a household survey of income and expenditure that included per capita consumption/purchases of foods. The household survey historically had some flaws in the sampling (some were corrected in the 2013 overhaul) and it excludes food consumed in restaurants, cafeterias, and banquets, but we'll set those aside for now. The data reflect the key trend driving Chinese food markets: consumption of animal protein is growing while consumption of carbohydrates like rice, flour, buns and noodles is dropping. The changes from 2013 to 2024 indicate a neat symmetry between the two:  Per capita purchases of cereal grains shrank from 138.9 kg to 110.6 kg (-28.3...

Giant Chinese pork producers are expanding aggressively to achieve scale economies and exert control over every link in the supply chain. Wringing every penny (or fen) out of unit cost is viewed as the key in this winner-takes-all competition for a market that is not growing. Government authorities ordered companies to scale back capacity last year, but no one dares to let up on their expansion plans. China's 39 largest hog enterprises (slaughtering 1 million or more hogs) produced 295 million hogs in 2025, accounting for 41% of the national total, according to data from a "high level hog farming forum" released by China Feed Information Net . All but 2 of the 39 largest hog producers increased their output during 2025, many of them by double-digit percentages.  The million-plus-head companies together increased their hog output by 51 million head (up 21%) in 2025, National hog slaughter reported by the National Bureau of Statistics increased by 17 million head (up 2.4%)....

Farms will incur losses of RMB -179 per head from fattening hogs, according to a November 11 report from China's National Development and Reform Commission . The report said farms are reluctant to stock up on pigs or engage in "second fattening." Similarly, a weekly report from Shandong Province  estimated an average loss of RMB -80 from farrow-to-finish and RMB -170 from fattening purchased piglets to market weight. The Shandong report attributed losses to low prices under pressure from strong supplies and weak demand.  A year ago hog prices were high and feed prices were dropping. In October 2024,  the NDRC estimated profits of RMB 322 from fattening hogs. Since then, hog prices have dropped dramatically, and profits have turned to losses.  Data from China Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. Big companies sold large volumes of hogs during October , adding downward pressure on prices. Sales by the top 3 companies during October were their largest of the year...

The food component of China's CPI for September 2025 was down -4.4% from a year ago, while the nonfood component was up 0.7%, according to a report by the National Bureau of Statistics . The overall CPI was down -0.3% from a year ago. Prices were down from a year ago for most food categories. Pork (-17%), vegetables (-13.7%), and eggs (-11.9%) stood out with the largest year-over-year declines in price. Fresh fruit (-4.2%), edible oils and milk (both -1.4%) and grains (-0.7%) were also down year-over-year.  While food prices in September were down from a year ago, prices were up 0.7% from the previous month (August). Vegetables, eggs, and fruit were up from the previous month. The Food CPI is cyclical. This month's year-over-year declines reflect a reversal of increases that occurred a year ago, especially for pork and vegetables. A year ago, China's Food CPI was up +3.3% in September 2024, and it was down -3.2% in September 2023. Pork, in particular, remains highly cyclica...

 China's swine industry is struggling with an epidemic of Getah Virus, also known as GETV (盖塔病毒). One video posted on Chinese social media calls GETV "The biggest crisis since African swine fever."  The mosquito-borne virus can infect entire farms, causing diarrhea, staggering movements, and discoloration of skin. It causes sows to abort and reduces survival rates of weaned piglets. An article appearing in mid-September reported that the virus had been detected on pig farms in Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Henan, and Sichuan Provinces. It has also appeared in Hebei. Most information about the current outbreak comes from farmers posting short videos on Douyin (China's Tick Tock) about GETV outbreaks and sharing guidance for avoiding it. Videos posted as recently as yesterday show barns filled with dead pigs, excavators dumping live pigs into burial pits, sows with blotches on their skin, and pigs staggering around a pen. Thumbnails of v ideos about GETV outbreaks poste...

Chinese authorities met with 25 major hog companies on September 16 in an ongoing effort to eliminate excess capacity that is driving down hog prices. Companies and provincial officials were ordered to reduce productive sow herds by 1 million head by the end of January 2026. Companies were ordered to reduce their hog slaughter by 10 percent during 2026, cut back "secondary fattening" and keep slaughter weights at no more than 120 kg. Central and local officials were ordered to stop subsidies and bankers were ordered to stop giving loans for hog farm expansions. Provincial officials are under pressure to tighten up on enforcement of environmental regulations, a campaign that could shut down large numbers of non-compliant farms.  The agriculture ministry's livestock and veterinary bureau and the National Development and Reform Commission's price bureau gathered representatives from 25 major hog-producing companies at the September 16 meeting in Beijing. This was the l...

China's border inspectors have been discovering a lot more problems with imported pork and poultry. There were few rejections of either type of meat until 2024 when rejections of imported pork spiked during July and October. Rejections of poultry soared during 2025. Rejections of both pork and poultry peaked at their highest ever levels of 2,000 metric tons in June 2025.  Jan 2022-July 2025. Compiled from reports on China customs website . China had never rejected more than a couple of hundred metric tons of pork in a month until July 2024, when inspectors turned away 1,000 metric tons. Rejections of pork rebounded to nearly 900 metric tons in October and remained at a high level in the first 7 months of 2025. China's pork rejections peaked at record-high 2,000 metric tons monthly in June and July 2025.   Jan 2024-July 2025. Compiled from reports on China Customs website . The increase in imported pork problems just happened to begin in July 2024, the month after China an...

Chinese officials are ordering hog companies to put the brakes on their expansion plans to prevent a new round of depressed prices in early 2026. Company officials assert that they have dutifully complied with the orders. But with profitable hogs and a vicious race for market share, there is still strong incentive to quietly ignore the government's orders...as they did over the past year. Earlier this month China's planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, issued "window guidance" ordering big companies to stop expanding their sow inventories, pare back slaughter weights to 120 kg (265 lb), and to halt "secondary fattening" (when farmers buy hogs weighing 100-to-120 kg and fatten them to 130-to-150 kg).  Last week a  China's agriculture ministry convened a meeting of government officials and hog companies  to put the brakes on growth in hog supplies. China's agriculture minister warned that China's hog industry still faces ...