Xinhua News Agency, Changsha, April 20 Title: How to go after the "landing" of pork prices has been reduced by 30%?
Xinhua News Agency reporters Zhou Mian, Chen Di and Li Song
Pork belly per kilogram dropped from 25 yuan to 19 yuan, ribs dropped from 38 yuan to 28 yuan per kilogram... Speaking of the recent meat price, Lu Fujiao, who works in the pork business at the Liancheng Fresh Market in Xiangtan City, Hunan Province, directly shouted "falling fiercely". At the same time as communicating with reporters, a regular customer bought 2.3 kilograms of front leg meat from her for 43 yuan, and when the meat price was the highest this year, the same weight of meat cost 70 yuan.
The decline in meat prices stems from the fall in pig prices. Nowadays, it is the off-season of pork consumption, with the continuous recovery of pig production capacity in the country, the concentration of farmers and other factors, the price of pigs in many places has fallen continuously, and the pigs that have "risen to the sky" in the past two years have recently shown a "landing" trend.
This is a pig in the Daweizi Pig Resource Farm in Changsha County, Changsha City, Hunan Province. (Courtesy of Hunan Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Affairs Center)
Pig prices have fallen continuously in a large range and wide range
Li Like, a villager in Shishan Village, Xiangshui Township, Yuhu District, Xiangtan City, Hunan Province, is a self-propagating farmer, who told reporters that his own fat pigs are generally raised to about 300 pounds. At the best price in the first two years, a fat pig could earn 3,000 yuan, and by mid-April this year, it dropped to 1,600 yuan.
Dong'an Pig Breeding Professional Cooperative in Yanjiang District, Ziyang City, Sichuan Province, is a medium-sized breeding cooperative, with more than 20,000 pigs produced annually. Li Yunzhen, chairman of the cooperative, said that the price of live pigs has been falling since February this year, from 30 yuan per kilogram to about 20 yuan now. In Rongchang District, Chongqing, although the current local price of 24 yuan per kilogram still has a large profit margin, the price drop of more than 6 yuan per kilogram for more than two months has made Guo Ping, a large farmer, feel that the "decline is large".
According to the monitoring of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, from April 5 to April 11, 2021, the average purchase price of pigs in pig designated slaughtering enterprises above designated size in the country was 24.10 yuan / kg, down 8.4% month-on-month and 29.6% year-on-year. The average ex-factory price of white strip meat was 31.36 yuan / kg, down 7.6% month-on-month and 29.0% year-on-year. The price monitoring of livestock and poultry products in Hunan Province also shows that on January 20, the average price of pigs in the province was 38.63 yuan per kilogram. As of April 12, the price of live pigs fell by 12.91 yuan per kilogram, a cumulative decline of 33.42%.
However, many farmers and enterprises believe that pig prices will show a "bottoming out" trend after entering May, especially in June.
More in number, less consumption The industry is expected to become cautious
Undoubtedly, one of the most important reasons for the decline in pig prices is that pig production capacity continues to recover and gradually release. In addition, the traditional consumption off-season, some breeding entities in the current stage of concentrated out of the barn, etc. are also factors in the decline in pig prices.
"In a word, there are more pigs out of the barn." Wu Shenshu, director of the Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Department of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of Hunan Province, said that taking Hunan as an example, 482 of the 9.26 farms with a scale of more than 10,000 heads newly expanded since September 2019 have been put into operation. As of the end of March, a total of 15.29 million pigs were produced in the province this year, not only up 29.6% year-on-year, but also increased for 18 consecutive months. Xiong Lianqiu, chairman of Xiangtan Kexing Ecological Agriculture Co., Ltd., introduced that the old farm with 1900 sows will be put into production in May this year, and the new farm with 3900 sows has begun production last year.
"We now have more than 10 percent more frozen meat stocks than during the Spring Festival." Hunan Weihong Food Co., Ltd. is a slaughtering enterprise, the company's deputy general manager Liu Dongming told reporters, "Every year from March to April has been the off-season for pork consumption, because during the Spring Festival, every household has a consumption process of pickled wax products." Now a stall in the farmers' market can't sell 100 pounds of meat a day, and more than 200 pounds during the Spring Festival. ”
Today, every farmer has several WeChat groups on their phones to exchange information about pigs across the country. A number of farmers interviewed by the reporter introduced that on the one hand, due to the complexity of the epidemic situation in some areas, some breeding subjects lack sufficient confidence and measures to deal with it, and they are worried that the lengthening of the feeding cycle will increase the risk of prevention and control, so they choose to concentrate on the barn. On the other hand, there are also some breeding entities that judge that the recovery of pig production capacity will lead to lower prices in the later stage, and also choose to concentrate on the barn.
To prevent the rise, but also to prevent the fall, pork can not always take the "roller coaster"
With the continuous recovery of production capacity, compared with the high prices of the previous two years, the decline in pig prices is the overall trend, but due to the bottom of the breeding cost, it is difficult to fall to the level before 2017. Industry insiders believe that pig prices on the one hand affect the profit and loss of breeding subjects, while affecting the people's money bags, should be maintained as far as possible in a reasonable range, reduce the pork price boom and fall of the "roller coaster" effect.
In addition to the high cost of short-term feed and piglets, the long-term cost of breeding is also getting higher and higher. Xiong Lianqiu calculated an account for the reporter: the cost of various hardware, environmental protection, manpower and epidemic prevention shared by each breeding sow has reached 20,000 yuan. The various costs that a fat pig needs to share on average for 1 kilogram of meat produced have also risen from 6.5 yuan in the past to 8.5 yuan. "For example, I invested more than 50 million yuan in renovating the old farm and building a new farm, which was finally calculated into the pig price." Xiong Lianqiu said.
"The more production capacity is restored, the more we must prevent the rebound of the epidemic." He Zhiping, vice president of the Sichuan Academy of Animal Sciences, believes that whether or not to do a good job in epidemic prevention and control is the key to affecting the later trend of pig and pork prices. "If there is no big problem in epidemic prevention, the price will rebound, but the price of more than 40 yuan per kilogram is unlikely, and about 30 yuan is a more reasonable range."
Wu Shenshu pointed out that it is necessary to avoid the vicious circle of "environmental pressure brought about by the increase in quantity, and the pressure on environmental protection leads to a decrease in quantity" in the past. "In the long run, we should promote the construction of a whole-industry system with the synchronous development of breeding, slaughtering and cold chain transportation, balance the comprehensive benefits of all links, break the traditional model of 'pigs are not as good as killing pigs, and killing pigs is not as good as selling meat', and truly achieve a win-win situation for pig practitioners and consumers." He said.