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Swine consultant says China is struggling to rebuild its hog herd

A consultant who works with China’s swine industry says the Chinese are struggling to rebuild their hog herd in the wake of African swine fever.

Todd Thurman, who works for SwineTex Consulting Services, says it will be a very slow process.

“What we’re seeing is a fairly poor success rate in terms of restocking a lot of these farms,” Thurman says. “We’re estimating that restocking efforts are only about 25 percent successful—so most of those efforts that they’ve made, over the past three months or so, have failed.”

Thurman says it may take a decade for China’s swine industry to fully recover.

“Probably 2024 before you start to see things really start to pick up momentum—and it’s probably 2030 before you get back to the ‘new normal’, whatever that ends up being.”

Thurman says China may never get back to its previous level of pork production because of demand destruction and a greater reliance on pork imports.

Thurman spoke with Brownfield at the recent Iowa Pork Congress.