Relying solely on central government subsidies to support the recovery of pig production is far from enough

Recently, there has been exciting news for Chinese pig farming professionals. On March 19th, at the press conference of the State Council's Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism, the Ministry of Finance made a decision to effectively alleviate the current shortage of funds and loan difficulties for pig farms (households), and help pig farming enterprises overcome difficulties. In accordance with the decisions and arrangements of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, loan interest subsidies will be provided to pig farms and large-scale pig farms.

This policy has released multiple benefits: firstly, the interest subsidy loan period has been extended, and the loan interest subsidy policy has been extended from September 2019 to December 31, 2020, greatly reducing costs for pig farming professionals. For example, now the central government provides a 2% interest subsidy, and if pig farming professionals borrow 1 million yuan with an annual interest rate of 6%, they only need to pay a loan interest rate of 4%, which means that the annual interest rate for a 1 million yuan loan of 60000 yuan is discounted to only 40000 yuan, reducing a huge expense for pig farming professionals. The second is to expand the scope of interest subsidies, which will benefit more pig farming professionals. From providing production working capital loans for pig farming professionals to purchase feed and buy sows, piglets, etc., to construction capital loans for pig farming professionals to build, renovate, and expand pig farms, all are included in the scope of subsidized support. Thirdly, the subsidy amount is large, allowing many pig farming professionals to operate with light equipment. According to relevant information, as of the end of January 2020, the national government at all levels has arranged 444 million yuan in subsidized loans for pig farms and large-scale breeding farms, involving 52.142 billion yuan in loans. This is a rare opportunity for pig farming professionals nationwide to enjoy preferential treatment and accelerate development.

Although the central government has extended the subsidy period, expanded the scope, and increased the subsidy amount for pig farming professionals, which will benefit a large number of pig farming professionals and also play a certain role in stimulating pig farming, relying solely on financial subsidies to promote the recovery of pig production is far from enough. Pig farming professionals still have many expectations or desires.

As we all know, the very swine fever started in 2018 and will still rage in many places in 2019. The number of live pig breeding has sharply decreased in the past two years, leading to the soaring price of pork. Many people expect that after the Spring Festival this year, because the national reserve meat is put on the market, the price of pork may fall, but this desire has been frustrated. Due to the impact of the COVID-19, the price of pork has not only not fallen, but also rose sharply. After the Spring Festival and the first quarter, pork prices have increased by 20% to 30% compared to the end of 2019. Nowadays, pork prices in many local markets have reached around 70 yuan per kilogram, and many urban residents really cannot afford pork anymore.

It can be seen that in order to promote the recovery of pig farming in China and eliminate the worries of pig farming professionals, governments at all levels still need to focus on five aspects: first, to enable farmers to truly eliminate their concerns about the imbalance between market supply and demand, establish an effective market information docking mechanism, so that pig farmers can timely understand the national pig farming information, carry out pig farming in a planned manner, achieve the accuracy of pig farming plans, gradually achieve the basic balance between pig farming and market needs, effectively integrate pig farming resources, eliminate waste and inefficiency of pig farming resources. The second is to streamline the sales channels of live pigs, establish an effective market circulation mechanism, ensure the effective connection between live pig farmers and social consumption needs, make the production and slaughter prices basically compatible with the prices that consumers can bear, establish a mechanism for stabilizing the market prices of live pigs and storing pork, achieve peak shaving and valley filling, prevent price fluctuations, effectively break the vicious cycle of "high meat harms the people" and "low pig harms farmers", solve the stubborn problem of sales in the live pig breeding market, and improve the enthusiasm of large-scale pig breeders. The third is to re-examine some environmental protection measures and requirements for pig farming, eliminate some one-sided and blind pursuit of environmental protection practices, especially eliminate the influence of some experts' unrealistic environmental protection theories, lower the threshold for large-scale pig farming, increase the number of large-scale pig farming, continuously expand the scale of breeding, and create favorable conditions for promoting pig farming.

The fourth is to strengthen the publicity of pig farming, enhance the awareness of farmers' family farming, change the current concept of single large-scale pig farming, encourage farmers' family farming appropriately, and increase the stock of pigs in rural households; And encourage the creation of scientific methods for ecological farming in rural households, improve the quality of pig farming (to compensate for the lack of scale and efficiency in rural household farming), provide diversified and high-quality pork for the market, increase public interest in pork consumption, and provide a huge social consumption push for pig farming. The fifth is to provide excellent guidance and guidance on breeding techniques to prevent possible epidemics and eliminate risks in pig farming. African swine fever has caused many pig farmers to suffer losses, and some professional breeders have even gone bankrupt as a result. This is precisely the biggest concern and weakness of pig farming professionals. Therefore, we hope that the government's animal husbandry department can provide effective professional technical guidance for breeding, especially in terms of preventing swine fever, to ensure breeding safety.