Do you still make money raising pigs in 2016? can you continue the Super year of the Golden Pig in 2017?

2016 has been a roller coaster year for the pig market, with pig prices rising sharply in the first half of the year and falling sharply in the second half of the year. Behind the ups and downs, the reasons for changes in pig prices are even more complicated.

Some people say that 2016 is the golden year of pork. So what is the income of pig farmers this year? have they made any money? Can the 2016 year of the Golden Pig be continued in 2017?

Wang Shufen, a big pork seller in Zhangjiagang City, Jiangsu Province, has been busy preparing for pork sales for the New year. At present, pork sales are at the peak of the year, and pork prices have begun to rise again in the past two days. Although she doesn't earn as much as she did when prices were at their highest in June, Wang Shufen is still satisfied.

Wang Shufen: now our price is 15 or 6 yuan, 9 yuan and 8 yuan, of course, much higher than before.

Wang Shufen has more than 3000 pigs in her family, and she and her husband have been working hard in this industry for more than a decade. Like other pig farmers, Wang Shufen's family has survived three years of pork price cuts since 2013 and finally ushered in the spring of the pork market in 2016. She told the reporter that this year's business has earned back all the money lost in the previous three years.

Wang Shufen: I must have made a profit. I lost it in the previous three years, and the market began to rise in the second half of last year. In this way, basically, I will be able to pull back what I lost in the past in almost half a year. If the market is better in the future, we can still earn some more, but we don't earn too much.

Nan Xiaofang, a sow farmer who lives in Ningxia, also made a lot of money in 2016. Her family's 200 piglets produced by sows sold at a good price.

Nan Xiaofang: the situation is relatively good this year. More than a dozen big sows have been sold this year, and more than 200 piglets have been sold this year, with a gross income of 110000 to 120000 yuan. If you throw away the feed and so on, it may be 80, 000 yuan. This year, my piglet is a particularly good year.

2016 can be said to be the golden year for pig farmers, and it can also be said to be the most volatile year for the pig market. Pig prices rose slowly in the first half of 2016. By June 3, it hit an all-time high, followed by a slow decline and an accelerated decline. By mid-October, the lowest point of the year was reached. Then it began to rise slightly. Feng Yonghui, an analyst at Pig early warning Network, said that the rise and fall of pig prices boils down to three reasons: cost, supply and demand.

Feng Yonghui: we come from the three main factors of price this year, that is, cost, supply and demand. In this year, the performance is very volatile, very volatile. Let's start with costs. Before early June, the cost of feed, corn and soybean meal continued to fall and reached the lowest level in nearly six years. Suddenly, there was a sharp rise in early June, and this price increase lasted for about a month or two. Later, after the new corn and new soybeans were received, they fell sharply, so the cost was very volatile.

It can be seen that the volatility of pork prices is proportional to the volatility of feed costs, while on the supply side, it is just the opposite. Sow farmer Nan Xiaofang told reporters that a large part of the reason why her piglets were able to sell at a good price this year was due to severe losses in the previous three years. The sharp drop in pig prices from 2013 to 2015 has dealt a heavy blow to farmers' enthusiasm, and many people have dropped out of the ranks of pig farmers, resulting in a substantial decline in the production capacity of the entire pig industry and a shortage of demand in the market. as a result, pig prices for the whole year of 2016 were running at a very high level.

Nan Xiaofang: the reason for the high price of piglets this year is that the price of pigs has been particularly low in recent years. Many retail investors no longer raise pigs, raising fewer people, and slowly the price of piglets becomes higher.

Feng Yonghui, an analyst, said that in the second half of 2016, as domestic pig prices were getting higher and higher, cheap imported pork from abroad became an ideal substitute, and domestic pig prices fell sharply from June to October. The slow rebound after November is also in line with the changing law of pork market demand.

Feng Yonghui: however, the number of live pigs in China has not increased significantly since June, but at this time our pork imports skyrocketed from June to October, so this also led to four consecutive months of decline in pig prices. Now it is the peak of pork sales throughout the year, with bacon in the south and pigs in the north, so the demand is here, and there is no room for pig prices to fall.

So, after experiencing great ups and downs, what will happen to the price of the pig market in 2017? Pig farmer Wang Shufen told reporters that pig prices will not fall too much in 2017, but they will not rise as they did last year. Therefore, she does not intend to continue to expand the scale of planting. She thinks that next year's task should be to raise pigs well, not to expand production.

Wang Shufen: I don't have any plans now, that is, I don't want to choose a little better variety in the coming year. I don't want to increase too much, and if I leave a little reserve, the quantity won't increase too much, so I will increase a little bit, because if there are too many, if the market comes down, then it's too late for you to reduce it.