In the next ten years, the supply of pork is tight in China.

The first outbreak of swine plague in China in August，2018 has a great impact on the whole pig industry and market in China. China's Agricultural Outlook Report (2019 - 2028) predicts that pork supply will be tight in the next decade and imports will remain at a high level. 

The report quotes data from the National Bureau of Statistics that 694 million pigs were sold in 2018, down 1.2% from the previous year, and pork production was 54.04 million tons, down 0.9% from the previous year. Zhu Zengyong, associate researcher of the Institute of Agricultural Information, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences*(This year) In March, our entire stockpile of fertile sows dropped 21% year-on-year, which indicates a significant decline in the supply of live pigs in 2019. We expect the overall pig production to drop by 6.7% in 2019 if we are optimistic. According to analysis, pork prices started to pick up in the domestic market after March 2019. It is estimated that in May, the whole price of pork will rise rapidly. Especially in the second half of the year, due to the shortage of sows, the market pork supply will be tight. Zhu Zengyong, associate researcher of the Institute of Agricultural Information of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said:

So we expect that the whole price peak in 2019 will be from New Year's Day to the Spring Festival in 2020. In order to make up for this, our domestic production has fallen to a tight supply. So it is expected that pork imports will increase significantly in 2019. In 2018, China's pork import volume was 11.928 million tons, the report predicted; in 2019 and 2020, the pork import volume was 1.7 million tons and 2 million tons, respectively. By 2020, pork imports may continue to increase if domestic supply falls further. If the level of epidemic control is improved and production capacity is restored in the later period, pork imports may gradually decrease.

Can we stabilize the price of pork by importing? Is that true? Pan Xiangdong, chief economist of galaxy securities, Mr. Pan Xiangdong: we know that the world's total pork consumption and supply is about 1.1 billion tons, of which China's production is about 52 million tons and its consumption is about 54 million tons, so we have to rely on imports to stabilize the balance between consumption and supply. Pork consumption and supply in China accounted for 50% of the world's total. When talking about pork, many people will say that if prices rise, we can calm them down by importing from the United States, is that true? The production of the United States is about 11 million tons, and its consumption accounts for more than 8% of the world's total, or about 9 million tons, and it can export 2 million tons.

If a market that accounts for 50% of the world is hit by the same impact as the usual pig cycle in the past, this impact is not large and can be partially stabilized by increasing imports. But if the production market is strongly impacted, it may affect not only domestic food prices, but also global food prices. We imported about 142,800 tons of pork in the United States in the first quarter, and the price of pork futures in the United States has risen by 50% since the beginning of the year.