Since the beginning of this year, chicken prices have fallen sharply. With the effective prevention and control of the domestic new crown epidemic, various economic indicators in our country have steadily improved. Can chicken prices show a rebound trend?

Zhang Li, a researcher at the Institute of Agricultural Information of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said that the price of broiler chicks nationwide has continued to fall since August. The average price of broiler chicks in September was 3.02 yuan per bird, and the monthly average price in October was 2.85 yuan per bird. , a month-on-month decrease of 5.7, and a drop of 57.3 compared with 6.67 yuan per stock in the same period last year. According to monitoring by the China Animal Husbandry Association, the price of commercial white-feather broiler chicks is currently at the lowest level in the same period in the past three years.

Chicken prices have also been declining this year. The price per ton from January to April is 11,000 yuan to 12,000 yuan, and the price per ton from April to July is 10,000 yuan to 11,000 yuan. After August, although schools reopened and group and catering consumption picked up, chicken prices fell instead of rising, falling to more than 9,000 yuan per ton. As of October 18, the national average price of chicken products was approximately 9,200 yuan per ton, 30.5 yuan lower than the same period last year.

Due to falling prices, losses in domestic broiler chicken farming have gradually expanded. In September, the purchase price of white-feather broiler chickens in front of the shed dropped significantly, reaching about 5 yuan per kilogram. Since October, the price has rebounded slightly, but has basically stabilized at around 5.8 yuan per kilogram. As feed costs continue to rise, broiler farms are experiencing increasing losses. According to estimates, farms lose an average of 3 to 4 yuan for every broiler chicken sold.

As the market continues to be sluggish, the industry has been looking forward to a price rebound. So, what will be the trend in the future? ?Taken together, the signs of recovery in the meat and poultry industry chain are not obvious, and the industry is still facing difficulties. ?Zhang Li said that due to the downturn in market conditions, although the industry continues to reduce production capacity, the extent of the reduction is limited.

According to the monitoring of the China Animal Husbandry Association, the stock of white-feather broiler ancestors is still at a high level, and the stock of reserve ancestor breeders has begun to decline, and is lower than the level of the same period in 2019. Volume remains at a high level. Since production capacity reduction is a slow process, the oversupply pattern of poultry meat market cannot be fundamentally changed in the short term, and market prices will remain low for some time.

From the production side, in the context of production capacity reduction, because the industrial chain of poultry meat production is relatively long, the production of breeding chicks, commercial breeding, slaughtering and processing are all linked one by one, and there are no intermediate links. The chain may be broken, and it will take some time for the overall supply to decrease. At present, the sales of white-feathered broiler parent chicks and commercial chicks are still at a high level, which means that the reduction in the number of pen replacements is limited.

From the consumer side, there has been a lack of favorable factors to drive consumption growth recently, and market consumption is still weak. At the same time, as winter approaches, dealers are taking a wait-and-see attitude towards future consumer demand and are more cautious in purchasing chicken products, resulting in a relatively stable delivery of products from slaughterhouses. It is expected that consumption will increase to a certain extent at the end of the year due to the festive effects of New Year's Day and Spring Festival, which may drive up prices in the short term.

As for the future trend of chicken, industry insiders believe that driven by the good chicken market last year, the number of broiler chicken stocks increased significantly due to the significant increase in farmers, so it is difficult for chicken prices to rebound in the short term.

In general, due to factors such as the COVID-19 epidemic, the overall poultry market, including broiler chickens, has been tepid this year. Coupled with the recovery of pig production capacity next year, pork prices may return to normal prices, which will have a certain impact on the broiler industry.