Tag: Pigs

What Plunging Pork Prices Say About China’s Economy

Media Library

Sun Haoyu, a hog farmer in Dalian, in northern China’s Liaoning Province, first noticed pork prices beginning to tumble late last year. With 3,000 hogs to care for, Mr. Sun said, he had “no choice but to tough it out,” relying entirely on loans and borrowed money to keep his operation afloat. But prices kept plummeting, and last month they hit a 16-year low. Now, across his region, many small farms are on the brink of collapse. “Many hog farmers can no longer hold out,” Mr. Sun said in an…

China’s Bid to Improve Food Production? Giant Towers of Pigs.

Chin@Strategy

The first sows arrived in late September at the hulking, 26-story high-rise towering above a rural village in central China. The female pigs were whisked away dozens at a time in industrial elevators to the higher floors where the hogs would reside from insemination to maturity. This is pig farming in China, where agricultural land is scarce, food production is lagging and pork supply is a strategic imperative. Inside the hulking edifice, which resembles the monolithic housing blocks seen across China and stands as tall as the London tower that…