Is China's Hog Rebuilding Complete? Reconciling Inventory and Price Data

Xi He, Dermot Hayes and Wendong Zhang ()

Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Publications from Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University

Abstract: The African swine fever outbreak that started in August 2018 wiped out 40% of China's sow inventory. China has been making substantial efforts, including subsidizing large hog producers and encouraging industrialization and modernization of hog production, to rebuild and expand its pork production. While China's governmental inventory data as of December 2020 show sow and hog inventory were 92.1% and 93.1% of their respective 2017 levels, recent record-high piglet, sow, hog, and pork prices suggest a large persistent supply shortage. China's record pork and live swine imports in 2020 suggest that China's hog rebuilding might be fast but of low genetic quality. Specifically, it seems likely that the retention of low-quality commercial generation gilts helped rebuild the herd but set back the national breeding system by abandoning purebred grandparents and parent generation propagation.

Date: 2021-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-cna
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