On December 3, 2019, the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs released data one after another showing that the price of pork across the country fell for four consecutive weeks. The Ministry of Commerce monitoring data show that last week (November 25 to December 1) the wholesale price of pork was 42.35 yuan per kilogram, down 3% from a year earlier, realizing four consecutive weeks of decline.

On the same day, data released by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development showed that national pork prices fell for four consecutive weeks, with the price of pork at 41.48 yuan per kilogram on Dec. 1, down 10.92 yuan, or 20.84 percent, from the Nov. 1 price peak of 52.40 yuan per kilogram.

Extended information:

Pig stocks have been declining rapidly since December 2018 in 400 counties across the country under key monitoring, according to data supervised by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. It fell 5.4 percent in February 2019 from a year earlier and 16.6 percent year-on-year. Zhu Zengyong, an associate researcher at the Institute of Agricultural Information of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, estimated that the number of hogs slaughtered in the second quarter will continue to fall, and domestic pork production is expected to drop 6.7 percent to 10.6 percent in 2019.

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