China’s strategic pork reserve

What does China do when pork prices fall too law? Bolster the frozen pork reserve of course!

The porcine price plummet has forced the government to add to its much vaunted frozen pork reserve, a series of icy warehouses around the country it set up a few years ago to stabilize pork prices. One Chinese press report, citing government statistics, says live pig prices have dropped 21% this year. Another report says pork prices have fallen below the lowly lentil. (In Chinese) The hope is that by adding to the frozen pork hoard, the government demand will take enough meat off the market to drive prices back up.

I’m imagining a Goldfinger-type plot in which a mad pig farmer from Hunan province attempts to wipe out the pork reserve…

In any case, the piece from the Wall Street Journal‘s China Realtime Report blog has a lot of intresting info, including the fact that there are over 446 million pigs in China. That’s one for every three people and more than the next 43 pork producing countires combined!