BOABC Viewpoint: BOABC’s research shows that China’s inventory of hogs has fallen by nearly 50%.

African swine fever spreads all over the country, from small farmers to large enterprises, having a huge trauma to the upstream and downstream sectors of China’s pig industry. The data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs show that China’s inventory of pigs fell by 25.8% year-on-year in June, and the number of reproductive sows decreased by 26.7%.
BOABC’s livestock team visited Guangdong, Henan, Shandong, Sichuan, and the Northeast in the first half of 2019, and the research results show that China’s inventory of pigs dropped by nearly 50% from the same period last year.
 
The spread of African swine fever is mainly divided into two stages:
The first stage: The North cut down production capacity largely before the Spring Festival. After the first case of African swine fever was confirmed in Shenyang in August, 2018, the disease began to spread in the Northeast, resulting in a reduction of 60%-70% in pig production capacity in this region. In February, 2019, African swine fever spread to Henan, Shanxi, Anhui, and other central areas, and pig farms started to sell hogs in large quantity for fearing of infection. So far, the production capacity in central China has dropped by 50%-60%.
The second stage: due to the outbreaks of African swine fever in the South after the Spring Festival, pig farms in this region started to reduce production capacity. After the Spring Festival, swine disease wildly broke out in Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, and other areas, and the production capacity was cut by about 50% in these areas in March and April. In May and June, African swine fever became severer in Sichuan, Hunan, and Hubei, more and more southern farms sold pigs in large quantity, and pig production capacity began to decrease continuously.
According to the reduction in various provinces, we calculated that up to June, 2019, China’s inventory of pigs had fallen by about 47% from that before the outbreak of African swine fever.
 
The sharp reduction in pig inventory has led to a shortage of pig supply. The national average pig price has rose to RMB18/kg this week, and the price in Guangdong has exceeded RMB20/kg. With the coming of pork consumption peak in the second half of this year, the national pig price break through RMB20/kg with a high probability.