On march 27, #national pig prices have fallen by $5. 00, which seems to be a flat financial story with the dark shadow of millions of farmers behind it。
According to the daily first book, the price of raw pigs fell to 4-5 yuan per pound, while the cost of farming was as high as 7. 5 yuan per pound, with a direct loss of more than $500 per pig. It's not a local dilemma, it's a collective fall of the whole industry. – the north-east pierced 4. 4 yuan per pound, the north and centre of china hovered at 4. 6-4. 75 yuan per pound, and 17 provinces were completely plunged into the “four-dollar era” and reached a new low of nearly seven years。
At 3 a. M., lights were also lit in the pantry of the river south-south sun. The 52-year-old zhang jianxian was crouched in the corner of the pig's ring, and the fingertips were filled with ashtrays. He raised 200 pigs, which were scheduled to be out by the end of march, and now the purchase price of the three foreign pigs has dropped to $4. 8 per pound, counting feed, labour, water and electricity, at a cost of $280 each. “to sell, to sell, to sell, to feed for one price a day, and to feed one more day is to pay.” his voice was dumb, he looked at the pigs in the circle, and his eyes were covered in blood。
Like zhang jianjiang and the king of hebei. She had 50 pigs, and the first thing she did was to open her eyes every day: a ton of beans had gone up by over 300, corn was expensive, and a pig needed 15 bucks a day for bare feed. “last year, a pig made four and a half hundred, and now two and three hundred. After the sale, i paid for my year's hard work." sister wang is laughing, the pigs in the pigs' rings are screaming, but she's losing her strength to feed。
This is not the plight of individual farmers, but a deep industry-wide loss. According to data from dreteau, the deficit in the industry has increased to 92. 7 per cent, and more than 90 per cent of farmers are in cash for every pig they sell. There is a loss of 280-500 dollars in the self-care model and even more so for the purchase of pigs and pigs, and a loss of 150 dollars in the head, which is the best cost-controlled enterprise. Even more deadly is the fact that the loss has lasted 29 weeks, with only a brief loss in the spring season since august 2025, while the rest of the time has been struggling with the loss。
To make matters worse, the cost side continues to increase. The increase in maize during the year was over 8 per cent and the soybeans surged by 11 per cent, and the price increase in 150 feed enterprises since march has generally increased by $50 per ton. The combined cost of the farmer rose to 7. 5-8. 0 yuan per pound at a price of just over $4, and “the more it sells, the less it loses” became an industry spell. The tightening of international shipping and abnormally high food prices in south american-producing areas are seemingly remote factors that ultimately become burdens on the shoulders of pig breeders。
Why is the price of pigs so bad? It is not a single cause at all, but rather the death of both supply and demand。
On the supply side, excess capacity has long been mined. At the end of 2025, there were 3,961 female pigs in the country, well above the normal level of holdings of 39 million, and further away from the demand-supply balance of 36. 5 million. Worse still, an increase in the size of the industry has led to an increase in production capacity — with the upgrading of farming technology, the annual number of pigs and pigs per mother has risen from 18 to more than 26, and under the same column, the actual output has increased implicitly by almost 30 per cent, creating a “double-heavy” supply flood. Added to the pressure-coated concentration of pigs, the average output weight was more than 125 kg and the number of pigs on the market was too high to be stacked。
Demand-side, low-season confidence collapses. In march, the traditional consumption season, after the spring season, the population's stocks of meat and frozen meat were not digested, demand for fresh meat was weak, and the slaughtering enterprise started at a chronic low of 23. 87 per cent. Worse still, the ageing of the population, the fertilization of children and the diversification of livestock consumption continue to reduce overall demand for pork. Market confidence has fallen to the point of ice, the price of pigs has hovered at a low level, the farmers are willing to freeze, and everyone is panicking about selling, creating a vicious circle of falling and falling。
Isn't it a good thing that people buy cheap meat when pigs fall
It's not that simple. Although the supermarket pork fell from a dozen to 89, the farmers lost their share of the business, eventually reversing the entire chain. A large number of small and medium-sized households are no longer able to sustain themselves, and large-scale elimination of the sows and scaling down of farming has begun. If this situation continues, there may be a shortage of supplies in six months' time, and the price of pigs will rebound in retaliation and ultimately the consumer will pay。
It is all the more distressing that the crisis is destroying the livelihoods of countless families. In hubei huanggang, a farmer who had spent six months selling a pig at a low price had been sitting on the side of the road crying all afternoon; in sichuanda county, a couple had had a pig for 10 years and had closed the farm this year to pay off their debts. Behind millions of farmers is the livelihood of millions of families and the economic lifeblood of countless villages。
Fortunately, the policy has begun. The country has launched its first central frozen pork collection in 2026, with 10,000 tons of registered pork and over 35,000 tons of accumulated central and local reserves, creating regulatory synergies. The ministry of agriculture and rural development and the commission for development and development have convened a meeting of heads of pigs, which is proposed to reduce the normal stock of able-bodied pigs from 39 million to approximately 36. 5 million, a reduction of 7. 8 per cent, with a clear push towards denuclearization. At the same time, the regulatory authorities have explicitly banned secondary fertility and heavily controlled weights and have contained excess capacity from sources。
But the rescue didn't happen overnight. In industry, it is expected that the price of pigs will remain low in the short term, with gradual stabilization in the second half of the year or as a result of decomposition and consumption recovery. For farmers, it is time to spend the winter, to control the costs, to be reasonable, and not to be blind; for consumers, to cherish the time of “freedom of pork” and not to forget the difficulties of the farmers behind it。
The cold winter of pig prices will end, but those who struggle in the winter are worth seeing. Every hard work must not be let down. We look forward to a policy that works, to a return to a balance between supply and demand, and to a return to a happy harvest for pig breeders。
The price of pigs is down by five dollars
