Steady development of the livestock industry needs government-guided prices as a safeguard

In recent times, pork prices have continued to rise while egg prices have kept falling. Pig farmers who had been gloomy for a long time are finally happy, while chicken farmers have begun to feel sad on their own. This kind of erratic price fluctuation not only leaves livestock owners at a loss and livestock dealers unable to figure it out, but also makes competent departments and consumers deeply worried.

The current “alternating hot and cold” of livestock product prices not only makes it difficult to reflect the inherent laws of the market economy, but also turns the entire livestock industry into a gratuitous “sacrifice” under the dominance of prices, which is extremely unfavorable to the steady development of the livestock industry. Many breeders hope that prices can be positioned over the long term at a level acceptable to both practitioners and consumers. It is precisely the disorderly rise and fall of product prices that has kept the livestock industry wandering in the break-even critical zone of “insufficient industry investment, weakened scale effects, and lagging endogenous development.”

A person who gives no thought to the future is bound to have worries near at hand. To achieve steady and orderly development of the livestock industry, the author believes it is necessary to give play to the government's role in price guidance, establish a price transmission mechanism through price reform, and ensure that the livestock industry becomes a sound investment field with moderate profits, a reasonable scale, and ample staying power.

First, take the national macroeconomic regulation as an opportunity to establish and improve the price transmission mechanism. Nothing can be accomplished without norms or standards. Relevant departments need to strengthen macro guidance and management, formulate government-guided prices and minimum procurement and storage prices, issue livestock product price guidance catalogs according to the actual regional economic development situation, give play to the leading role of price transmission, make prices form a positive linkage with production costs, and help the livestock industry emerge from “the embarrassment of losses.”

Second, use online platforms as the carrier to establish and improve a multi-channel, multi-path, and multi-method price information release mechanism. A reality that cannot be ignored is that in our country, even among different counties, townships, and even villages in the same city, the prices of livestock products differ greatly. Livestock production necessities sold to rural areas are often expensive because of layer upon layer of “checkpoints,” and those who suffer losses are often livestock breeders. This requires relevant departments to release product guidance price information through networks, bulletin boards, telecommunications, and other forms, and to reasonably guide and regulate market prices.

Third, take regular and irregular price supervision as the core to establish and improve a reasonable and orderly price safeguard mechanism. The current abnormal fluctuations in livestock product prices reflect from one side the absence of orderly price management and control. Competent price departments and competent livestock departments should pay attention to this and, starting from the perspective of safeguarding the rights and interests of livestock owners and consumers, introduce a price supervision mechanism, implement moderate price intervention according to government-published guidance prices, and establish a scientific and standardized price supervision and safeguard mechanism just as the state implements anti-monopoly measures. This will avoid disorderly rises and falls in livestock product prices and excessive market reactions, eliminate from the source the unreasonable phenomenon of “low prices hurting farmers and high prices hurting the people,” and safeguard the sustained and steady development of the livestock industry.