For farmers Zhang Shiping and Bai Fuqin in north east China, there is little to celebrate this Lunar New Year.
Since African swine fever struck a farm in nearby Shenyang city last August, the couple has racked up about $44 712.72 in debt, 10 times what they make in a good year raising pigs.
The incurable disease has since travelled thousands of kilometres, striking mainly small farms in the world’s biggest pork-producing country and triggering unprecedented upheaval in China’s $1 trillion hog sector.
Though Zhang’s farm was not infected, measures to halt its spread have effectively killed his family’s livelihood.
Beijing banned the transport of live pigs from infected provinces in September, part of its “protracted war” on a disease that typically takes years to eradicate.
The restrictions crippled trade, particularly in northeast Liaoning province, which produces about a third more pigs than it consumes and relies heavily on exporting.
Prices in the province dropped this month – the lowest price in a decade – just weeks away from the Lunar New Year holiday, normally a time of peak pork demand.
Zhang and Bai got rid of about 30 pigs this month, losing about 800 yuan on each, after feeding them months after they should have been slaughtered while waiting for prices to pickup.
They still have almost 50 left, now so overweight and fatty that no processors want them.
“We can barely survive,” Bai said during an interview at her modest farmhouse in Changtu county, a two-and-a-half-hour drive north of Shenyang, capital of Liaoning.
Bai and three other farmers in Changtu said they would not continue raising pigs, even though they have few other options in the region, one of China’s slowest growing.
Tens of thousands like them are expected to abandon pig farming after months of weak prices and restrictions on moving pigs to market. That will reduce production in the country by one-fifth this year, according to some estimates, and boost prices and demand for cheaper imports.
“I have experienced all kinds of ups and downs in the pig industry. But nothing has been as hard and bitter as this year,”said Sun Hongbo, another Changtu farmer.
He will quit pig farming for good, he added, seeking manual work after the holiday.
