China will release this year’s seventh batch of frozen pork from state reserves in the near term, and will guide local governments to step up local pork reserve release in order to ensure market supply and push live hog prices back to a reasonable range as soon as possible, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planner, said on Tuesday.
In the week of Oct 24 – 28, China’s average live hog to grain ratio, a key measures for hog farming’s profitability, stood at 9.66 : 1, still higher than the 9:1 upper limit for a reasonable range, it said. Based on the current core price of 2.9 yuan per kg, the upper limit of the reasonable range for live hog prices is 26 yuan per kg, it said.
Pork prices are still more than 40% higher than the levels seen a year earlier and remain in the top level-one warning zone for excessive price rises, it added.