On December 8, 2023, farmers and herdsmen were trading beef cattle at the agricultural and animal husbandry products wholesale market in Ordos City, Inner Mongolia.
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China plans to add to existing rules on pork producers by taking steps to help dairy and beef producers limit output to prevent prices from falling further as meat consumption falls, an agriculture official said on Wednesday.
Prices of pork, beef, dairy and poultry are falling in the world’s largest meat consumer as consumers buy less due to a slowing economy.
The drop in demand is due to increased production from the livestock industry, especially pig farmers.
“Beef and raw milk prices fell by 12.1% and 12.5% respectively in the first half of the year, and beef and dairy cattle farmers suffered losses,” Wang Lejun, director of the Animal Husbandry Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, told reporters.
“In terms of beef and dairy cattle, we need to guide farms to optimize and adjust the herd structure and moderately eliminate older and low-yielding dairy cows to better match production development with market demand,” he said.
Wang said the livestock market is currently well supplied, resulting in lower prices.
In the first half of the year, the total output of pork, beef, mutton, and poultry increased by 0.6% compared with the same period last year, egg output increased by 2.7%, and milk output increased by 3.4%.
The massive expansion of breeding farms in the past two years has triggered a pork supply glut, causing companies to suffer heavy losses. In March this year, Beijing introduced regulations to reduce the number of reproductive sows.
In June, regulations were issued to control beef cattle production.
Although the reduction in the size of the pig herd will help prices recover, beef and dairy prices are expected to remain low in the second half of the year, Wang said.
In June, the number of sows was 40.38 million, and the number of pigs decreased by 6.4% compared with the same period last year.
In the first half of 2024, Chinese meat imports fell by 13.4% compared with the same period last year, with pork and poultry imports being the hardest hit.
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