Will Chinese pork become the next soybean?

Although the pork category cannot yet be raised to the level of affecting China's food security, this year's Chinese pork import data and the large supplies from source countries still make many Chinese domestic farmers sweat, worrying that once imported pork dominates the market for too long, it will fundamentally take away the market share of Chinese domestic pork, and ultimately even if pork prices rebound, Chinese farmers will not be able to fully return, at which point Chinese pork prices will be controlled by foreign countries and become the "next soybean."

However, in the view of Zhuo Chuang Information animal husbandry analyst Ji Guangxin, this is slightly over-worrying.

First of all, it needs to be made clear that foreign high-subsidy, intensive farming methods, as well as the living habit of not eating pork by-products, lead to pork by-products often being exported together with pork in so-called "giveaways," which indeed makes imported pork, even after adding tariff costs, sometimes lower in price than Chinese domestic pork and quite competitive.

However, due to this objective constraint, foreign pork mostly enters the Chinese market in frozen form, and this limitation determines that it is difficult for it to win the first choice of the Chinese public and thereby affect the performance of China's inflation rate. After all, for most people, fresh pork is the first choice on the dining table, and this is the greatest advantage of domestic pork.

Therefore, there is no need to worry too much about imported pork taking advantage of the gap to occupy the market share of Chinese domestic pork. Even if there is some impact on market share, it is limited to processing enterprises that demand more frozen pork and by-products, and this portion of share was originally mostly in the hands of imported pork, so there is no so-called seizure.

Compared with share encroachment, attention to this incident of large amounts of imported pork entering the Chinese market should be placed on the two angles of the "gap in the Chinese pork market" and "China's farming costs."

Why does the Chinese pork market, whose supply is fully capable of being self-sufficient, give imported pork an opportunity? It is nothing more than the disorderly farming caused by numerous small-scale farmers, which makes China's domestic pork supply unable to achieve scientific adjustment according to changes in supply and demand. Pork prices that break away from the law of supply-demand balance show a state of sharp rises and falls, and fluctuating prices cause small-scale farmers to frequently enter and exit the market, further triggering even greater fluctuations in pork prices. At the same time, the contraction and recovery of production capacity will increase the costs of the farming industry, making domestic pork less competitive than imported pork in price.

Therefore, rather than focusing on the recent increase or decrease in imported pork volume, it would be better to use this "gap" to promote intensive production in China's farming industry, while further reducing costs in circulation links, so as to fundamentally protect the interests of China's domestic farmers.