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

Abstract

The African swine fever (ASF) 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 (Xiong et al. 2020). 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 (MARAC 2021), 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 (Dim Sums 2021).