Pig Number 'Landslide' Reported in Chinese Provinces

Steep declines in China's pig population due to panic-slaughter over fears of African swine fever have been reported by Chinese government officials, industry investigations, and journalists in the first months of 2019. Reported reductions in swine inventories of 20 percent or more in many regions portend tight supplies and rising prices in coming months.

A Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) investigation of the swine situation in seven Chinese provinces during February found "irrational" culling of sows on breeding farms was reducing the core production capacity of the sector. In Henan Province, for example, the inventory of productive sows was down 26 percent year-on-year at the end of January 2019. The team from the Ministry's animal husbandry bureau found big cutbacks in herds by backyard farmers, big commercial companies, and key provincial nucleus breeding herds.

Head of a pig-farming "cooperative" in Jilin Province complains 

that pigs can't be transported across provinces

Farmers and traders in Jilin Province interviewed in a March television report estimated that swine inventories were down by half from a year earlier. One pig broker said she used to buy 200 hogs a day, but after the Lunar New Year holiday she gets only 30-50 per day and she's now giving farmers gifts to drum up more business. The broker pointed to empty barns along the road where she says farmers afraid of the disease have cleared out all their pigs. The MARA team also visited Jilin and said provincial monitoring statistics showed the swine inventory was down 28 percent from a year earlier.

Last week, the veterinary bureau in Shandong Province reported a 41-percent "landslide" decline in sow numbers between July 2018 and February 2019 at 33 "grade 1" breeding farms the bureau monitors. The herds on 1,100 commercial finishing farms were down 18.8 percent from July to February. Activity at Shandong slaughterhouses fell during February and meat inventories accumulated. Only one outbreak of African swine fever has been officially reported by government officials in Shandong.

An industry group's site visits to Guangdong Province pig farms, feed mills, and pork processors during March found that the impacts of the disease were not very serious there until African swine fever began spreading rapidly in the first months of 2019. The investigators estimated that swine inventories in Guangdong were down 20 percent from a year earlier. Some of the reduction was due to direct culling after disease outbreaks, farmers liquidating herds to prevent infection and/or to wait and see how the market develops, and closure of farms due to enforcement of environmental regulations.

National Bureau of Statistics industrial output statistics show production of "fresh and frozen meat" by processing plants during January and February 2019 was down 17.3 percent from a year earlier.

Soozhu.com commentary last month said "scarcity of pigs has become an indisputable fact," and anticipates a 30-percent decline in hog supplies after the second quarter of 2019.

Spokesman for a large pig farm with image of sow barn on TV screen 

says "So we have to rely on ourselves."

In Henan Province, the MARA investigators learned that Xinda Muyuan Company had cut its number of sows from 25,000 in December to 10,000 in February. Another company in Luoyang City said ten farms it monitors had reduced their herds from 47,000 to 4,000 over the same period. One farm in Henan's Xin'an County said they had liquidated all sows that had had three or more litters to avoid ASF. Reports say sows are most susceptible to ASF infection. Many companies stopped breeding their sows. MARA said the sow inventory in Guangdong was down 26 percent from a year earlier. In Guangdong there are farms that want to restock herds to take advantage of high prices in coming months, but piglets are very expensive when they are available at all. In Henan, the inventory of 20-kg piglets is much less than usual and the price doubled after the Lunar new year holiday.

The reports say there was a surge of slaughter starting late in 2018, including many sows and immature animals. Slaughter at 10 key processors in Henan was up 47 percent from a year earlier during the fourth quarter of 2018, the MARA report said. The TV report about Jilin Province said prices fell before the spring festival as large amounts of pigs and cattle came on the market, but now supplies are tight.

Both the MARA report and the industry investigation said environmental restrictions are compounding supply problems in Guangdong and Jiangxi Provinces. According to MARA, one group of Guangdong villagers demanded closure and compensation from farms they blamed for degraded groundwater quality. After third-party testing failed to support their claim, they physically attacked the farms, and officials closed the farms last summer. In another Guangdong village, all but 9 of 227 pig farms were closed after the neighboring river was designated as "black and malodorous." In another Guangdong district tagged for "high quality development" officials aim to close all farms with less than 1,000 head to meet targets for a local plan to clear out dirty pig farms. The district closed 586 swill-feeding farms with 260,000 head.

The industry team estimated that overall feed sales in Guangdong Province were down 10 to 50 percent. Poultry feed sales were up 10 percent, although the team said environmental regulations are also closing chicken and duck farms. Shandong's swine feed production peaked in October and decline accelerated in February. Shandong feed output was down 33 percent from a year earlier.

Another farm in Guangdong wants to restock its pigs but testing to verify animals are free of ASF is a bottleneck since there is only one testing station. Other farms complain that costs were raised 10 percent by purchases of drugs, disinfection equipment and hiring guards.

Several years ago, the Ministry of Agriculture's "action plan" to address environmental pollution called for closing pig farms in southern districts vulnerable to water pollution and moving pigs into the northeast. Those plans are not working out well in Jilin Province where MARA reports dramatic declines in pig numbers in several towns and large farms. MARA reported that Wens Group and Muyuan have both built farms and have infrastructure in place but are unable to move swine from other provinces to stock the farms. Muyuan has two huge breeding farms in Jilin stocked at just 30 percent of  production capacity. A photo of a powerpoint presentation showed the inventory of market hogs and sows and slaughter volume in Jilin Province fell each year from 2015 to 2018.

Tight cash is another problem Chinese pig farmers are encountering. A farm in Jilin Province run by Chuying (Eagle) Group says it was unable to buy feed and had only enough for pigs to eat every few days. The local government gave them 10,000 tons of corn that lasted only 12 days. They say 338,000 pigs starved to death as of January.