Why is the price of beef and mutton falling during the 13-year peak season?

The price of beef and mutton has dropped in some pastoral areas, making it difficult to sell sheep.

Recently, the price of beef and mutton, which has been rising in some areas, has declined instead of rising in the peak consumption season. According to monitoring, in the fourth week of October, the price of mutton in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and other pastoral areas was 57.34 yuan per kilogram, down 6 percent from the same period last year, while the price of mutton in rural areas was 65.68 yuan per kilogram, up 2.2 percent from the same period last year. Among them, the price of mutton in pastoral provinces has declined for 10 consecutive weeks, falling below the level of the same period last year for seven consecutive weeks, which is not common in the peak consumption season in previous years.

Wang Zongli, deputy director of the Animal Husbandry Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, analyzed that the decline in mutton prices in pastoral areas is the result of the superposition of multiple factors. First of all, in recent years, the benefit of mutton sheep is good, the development of large-scale breeding is accelerated, and the supply of mutton market is increased. However, affected by the slowdown in macroeconomic growth, the consumption of mutton market has declined since last winter. Secondly, after the outbreak of small ruminant epidemic in spring, the transfer of live sheep across provinces and within the province was suspended, and the live sheep trading market was closed. After the transportation of live sheep was released, the cattle and sheep under pressure in the early stage were concentrated out of the fence, and some farmers even sold in panic. In addition, since the beginning of this year, the precipitation in Inner Mongolia has dropped by 18% compared with the same period last year, the yield of grassland has been reduced seriously, and herdsmen store less grass. In order to reduce the pressure of forage reserves for winter, farmers and herdsmen choose to speed up the listing of mutton sheep. In addition, the increase in imports also has a certain impact on the domestic beef and mutton market.

Judging from the national situation, since the beginning of this year, the price of beef and mutton has not continued the rising trend of previous years, and the price increase has obviously narrowed compared with the same period last year. According to expert analysis, this situation is due to the increase in production on the one hand and weak consumption on the other. According to monitoring of 17 large wholesale markets, including Xinfadi, beef trading volume in the first 10 months decreased by 11.7% compared with the same period last year, and mutton trading volume dropped by 19.2%.

The supply of beef and mutton is still in tight balance, and prices have risen for 13 years in a row.

In recent years, the production of cattle and sheep in China has increased continuously and steadily. In 2013, the national output of beef and mutton was 6.732 million tons and 4.081 million tons respectively, an increase of 31.2% and 54.5% over 2000, with an average annual increase of 2.1% and 3.4%.

Compared with the development of production, consumption grows faster. In recent years, the proportion of beef and mutton in the meat consumption structure has been maintained at about 13%. In 2013, urban and rural households across the country bought 3.961 million tons of beef and mutton, an average annual increase of 3.9 percent compared with 2.404 million tons in 2000, and prices rose continuously as demand fell short of supply. Since 2001, the price of beef and mutton has risen for 13 consecutive years. Among them, the rising momentum was relatively strong from 2007 to 2013, with beef prices rising at an average annual rate of 17.9% and mutton prices rising at an average annual rate of 18.7%.

Wang Zongli said that although the rising momentum of beef and mutton prices has slowed down since the beginning of this year, and the prices of mutton and live sheep have declined periodically in some areas, with the continuous improvement of residents' living standards and the accelerated adjustment of dietary structure, the increase in beef and mutton consumption is a major trend, and the pattern of tight supply will not be fundamentally changed in a short period of time, and prices will not fluctuate greatly. Developing production and increasing supply is the primary task for the development of cattle and sheep industry at present and in the future.