Falling to nearly an 8-year low, why do pig prices continue to "hit the bottom"?

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“Supermarket pork as low as 5 yuan per jin,” “Will pork prices fall further?” … Over this period, topics about pork prices have frequently topped trending search lists. In some local farmers’ markets, “pork is cheaper than vegetables” has also been a genuine consumer experience.

Since the beginning of 2026, hog prices have continued to trend downward. According to monitoring data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, in the 4th week of March, the national average hog price had already fallen to 10.68 yuan per kilogram, down 3.3% month-on-month and down 29.8% year-on-year, hitting the lowest level in nearly eight years.

A marketable piglet photographed at a hog breeding company in Siping County of Tonghua City, Jilin Province. Xinhua News Agency file photo

Why is pork pricing continuing to “bottom out”? What supply-and-demand relationship is at work behind it? How can the industry be promoted to develop in a healthy and sustainable manner?

Pork sold at “ginger-garlic prices”

With hog prices “falling nonstop,” it has become a change that many residents across multiple regions in China can visibly see.

At the end of March, at Guangzhou’s Liwan Agricultural & Non-staple Products Comprehensive Wholesale Market, the wholesale price of lean meat was 28 yuan per jin. On April 1 on the Hema platform, pork spare ribs were 23.5 yuan per box (400g); on the Meituan platform, pork lean meat was even lower at 8.59 yuan per box (300g).

Faced with such low pork prices, many residents directly call it the “meat-eating dividend period.” At the same time, this phenomenon puts obvious operating pressure on the breeding side.

Industry insiders point out that the decline in hog prices is much larger than the decline in market pork prices. This is because hog prices are the live-hog procurement prices, while terminal meat prices include costs from slaughtering, processing, transportation, and other stages.

Residents in Shijiale City, Hebei Province selecting pork at a local supermarket. Xinhua News Agency file photo

In the 4th week of March, the national average hog price fell to 10.68 yuan per kilogram. Particularly to note: on March 29, the average in Hainan fell below the 4 yuan mark, dropping to 3.95 yuan per jin, becoming the only province in the country that entered the “3-yuan range.”

Let’s run the numbers for the breeding side—based on current costs, the industry’s fully self-breeding-and-self-raising cost is about 11.5-12.5 yuan per kilogram, while cost control for leading companies such as Muyuan, Wen’s, and DeKang Animal Husbandry is around 12 yuan per kilogram. If calculated using the national average hog price, a 125-kilogram standard pig would lose about 280-300 yuan per head; in the piglet fattening model, where piglet costs are higher, the loss per head exceeds 415 yuan. This does not even include labor costs.

Muyuan Foods, the industry leader, had 11.61M hogs ready for market over the first two months, with sales revenue down 11.93% and 23.98% year-on-year, respectively; Wen’s Co. had 5.66 million hogs ready for market, with revenue down more than 15% year-on-year; and New Hope had 2.61 million hogs ready for market, with revenue down 7.42%.

For a long time, the hog-to-corn ratio (the ratio between the ex-farm hog price and the wholesale corn price) has been the industry’s “barometer” of profit and loss. According to data from the National Development and Reform Commission’s Price Monitoring Center, in the 3rd week of March, the national hog-to-corn ratio had already fallen to 4.40:1, the lowest level since 2019 and far below the primary alert line of 5:1.

In addition, influenced by the situation in the Middle East, feed prices have been rising, further squeezing breeding profits.

On the one hand, pork is selling at “ginger-garlic prices”; on the other hand, breeding costs remain high. “Every time you sell a pig, you’re losing money; quitting is also not something you’re willing to do; staying on is unbearable.” When some media conducted research, that was what they heard most often.

The national pork price chart for March 31 released by New Mu.com (part of it).

Where does the “price competition” problem in hog prices come from?

Why is pork pricing continuing to “bottom out”? Industry participants believe this is a normal phenomenon during the cyclical adjustment of the hog market, and the core contradiction is a supply-demand mismatch caused by excess capacity.

Let’s look at a set of numbers: at the end of 2025, China had 39.61 million head of breeding sows in inventory; by January 2026, this number fell to 39.58 million. Although this year’s figure has shown a decline, it is still above the upper limit of 39 million head of normal stock maintained by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

One important reason for excess capacity is the lagged effect of expansion during the previous hog cycle of high profitability. In 2020-2022, when hog prices were running at high levels, leading enterprises expanded on a large scale, and small and medium breeders also rushed in following the trend. The concentration of capacity releases caused an imbalance between market supply and demand.

In addition, many large-scale pig farms and individual smallholders expanded production before the Spring Festival. After the holiday, with demand cooling off and short-term price expectations falling, the breeding side chose to accelerate the timetable for sending hogs to market, further increasing pressure on market supply and intensifying “price competition.”

In a neighborhood center farmers’ market in Tunxi District, Huangshan, a vendor displays pork to customers. Xinhua News Agency file photo

Wu Maisheng, deputy chairman of the National Hog Industry Technology Innovation Strategic Alliance, said that starting in September last year, relevant departments held talks with leading companies across the country and required them to reduce the capacity of breeding sows and to prohibit second-round fattening. But because large enterprises and group companies have relatively high production capacity, with fixed investments and operating costs also higher, cutting capacity faces a certain amount of pressure.

Looking back at cycle lows over the past decade: 10.5 yuan per kilogram in April 2014, 9.9 yuan per kilogram in May 2018, and 10.5 yuan per kilogram in October 2021. Worth noting is that after this round of hog prices bottomed out, the industry did not experience the fast, drastic capacity clearance seen in the past; instead, it fell into a prolonged “grinding bottom” pattern.

Zhu Zengyong, chief analyst for monitoring and early warning across the full pork industry chain at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, said in an interview with the media that based on the 10-month cycle from breeding sow mating to marketing-ready hogs, the effects of destocking have not yet shown a clear appearance.

Looking through the demand side, changes in China’s residents’ meat consumption structure are also affecting hog price trends. Data shows that the share of pork in residents’ consumption of meat has fallen from 62.1% in 2018 to 57.8% in 2025; the proportions of chicken and beef/lamb being served at the table are increasing.

Residents in Beijing purchasing pork at the Xinfadi Agricultural Products Wholesale Market. Xinhua News Agency file photo

How can hog enterprises find a way to break through?

Facing the dilemma of “higher volume but lower price, more revenue but not more profit,” major domestic hog enterprises have taken the initiative, rolling out a combination of “cutting costs and slimming down,” along with “stabilizing cash flow,” to actively respond to this cyclical downturn.

Muyuan Co. accelerated the elimination of 316k inefficient breeding sows, reducing stock to 3.3 million head and lowering marketing weight to 120 kilograms to speed up turnover.

Wen’s Co. stated on its interactive platform that it has confidence and the capability to successfully get through this sluggish cycle and achieve new development. In 2026, the company will operate both hog and chicken businesses, which can better hedge the risks of price volatility of a single line of business.

Wen’s Co.’s fresh milk pig products.

New Hope lowered its breeding sow inventory to below 750k head at the end of 2025 on its own initiative. In 2026, it will continue to reduce its marketing plan, and pause production resumption lines for idle sites.

Analyst of Zhuchuang Information said that it is expected that in the second half of 2026, hog prices will start entering an upward channel. But from a policy perspective, current capacity is still expected to continue being regulated, while the breeding side may also control the number of hogs sent to market by adjusting the breeding rates of breeding sows, thereby reducing corporate losses.

Industry participants including Zhu Zengyong, a researcher at the Beijing Institute of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, expect that as the effects of prior capacity regulation gradually become visible, and as pork consumption steps out of the off-season, the supply-demand relationship in the hog market in the second half has the potential to improve.

In fact, the country has already begun to manage the storage and purchasing of centrally frozen pork reserves, and it is also guiding local areas to simultaneously increase storage efforts to form a joint force for regulation. At the same time, relevant departments have also built a coordinated mechanism between capacity regulation and reserve adjustment.

This round of deep hog price bottoming out is also a necessary stage for the industry to adjust itself and move toward maturity. For people in the industry, what is needed now is to continue to push hard on cost control, herd optimization, and cash flow management to build up strength for the next phase, so that they can smoothly get through this cyclical winter.

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责任编辑：赵思远