Source: The Pig Site, 18 January 2021, photo credit: The Pig site
Chinese pork output posted a sharp recovery in 2020 after the sector faced ongoing challenges from African swine fever in 2019.
Reuters reports that official data shows that China’s pork output fell 3.3 percent from a year earlier to 41.13 million tonnes after plunging 21 percent in 2019.
But some analysts said they had expected a much bigger fall in 2020 after the African swine fever ravaged China’s breeding stock in 2019. China’s stock had fallen by an estimated 60 percent by mid-2019 after the disease hit China in mid-2018.
The reading is “quite high, higher than I expected. In November, we probably expected a 10-15 percent decline,” said Pan Chenjun, senior analyst at Rabobank.
Xiao Lin, analyst at Shenzhen-based Win & Fun Investment also said she had expected a bigger decline of between 5 percent and 10 percent in 2020 output.
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