How are fox farming prospects? Market and profitability analysis
At present, fox farms in China are mainly distributed in Shandong, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Beijing, the three northeastern provinces, northern Shaanxi and other places. The main output value of fox farming comes from fox fur, which together with mink fur and Persian lamb fur forms the three pillars of the international fur industry. Fox farming has also helped many people get rich, but competition in fox farming is also fierce. Let us take a look at fox farming prospects below!
Fox farming prospects
Fox fur prices are greatly affected by feed costs. At present, fox feed costs remain stable, which will lay the foundation for stable fox fur prices. As leather enterprises resume exports to Russia and the garment industry's use of fox fur remains stable, fox fur prices are expected to remain balanced overall. Therefore, although the current prospects for fox farming are not very optimistic, the market rule is that there are lows and highs. As long as farmers persist in pursuing development paths of high quality, high efficiency, high technological content, high added value, scientific management, standardization and industrialization, strengthen international exchange and cooperation in line with China's national conditions, develop processing industries according to local conditions, and raise excellent varieties from a high starting point, it is still possible to obtain good returns.
Fox market conditions
In the early 1990s, domestic Arctic fox consumption began to become popular. Demand was huge, which stimulated development. There were more and more farmers, all female animals were kept for breeding, and only culled ones were sold on the market. Few were sold, supply was small, prices climbed, and supply and demand were seriously disconnected. Especially for good-quality blue fox fur, the price once reached 800 yuan per piece. However, in recent years, because expansion was too fast, quality failed to meet standards, quality declined, and prices began to keep falling. Recently, blue fox sales in the Liusi, Suning and Shangcun markets of Li County, Hebei, have been stable. In particular, strip-type skins over 90 cm with high fur density and hair length over 4 cm are relatively fast-moving, with prices around 450 yuan per piece; in addition, collar-type blue fox skins with strong fur and neat guard hair are also relatively fast-moving, but the price is relatively lower, with 85 cm at around 280 yuan per piece, and strip-type at 420 yuan per piece. This requires farms to raise blue foxes intensively.
Current status of fox farming
1. Poor fox fur quality: Fox fur quality has a very large impact on price, and the quality of foxes farmed in China is generally poor. At present, the varieties with better farming returns in China are mainly silver fox and blue fox breeds imported from Norway and other countries. Because China's farming technology is relatively backward, fox fur is generally only 0.7 to 0.8 m, but internationally excellent non-degenerating fox fur can reach 1.1 m. The quality of native Chinese foxes is even worse. Fox fur is only 0.5 to 0.6 m, and fur quality is also poor. The price is only equivalent to half that of silver fox and blue fox breeds.
2. Inventory is too large: Because fox fur prices remained high in previous years, and breeding stock speculation was rampant at the time, many farmers kept investing in fox farming, and farming scale kept expanding. At present, China's fox inventory has surged to 1.5 million, while China only needs about one million fox skins each year, and half of those are imported fox skins, while exports are only 30,000 to 40,000 pieces at most each year. The market is clearly already oversupplied.
3. Technology is relatively backward: In contrast to China's large-scale fox farming, there are pitifully few fox fur processing enterprises, processing technology cannot keep up, and there are even fewer well-known brands, which is very different from developed countries. Farmers can only earn relatively low profits, which is also one of the reasons why fox farming returns in China have been poor in recent years.