Study On The Fluctuation Of Hog Production In Hunan

As the saying goes that people get tranquility when pigs and grain are sufficient. Hunan is a province with a long history of pig farming, which developed rather rapidly after the reform and opening-up. The output value of hog cultivation surpassed crop farming even in 1997. It became the largest industry in Hunan’s agriculture, and played a very important role as well. While the pig industry maintains rapid growth, it faces a series of problems and challenges:the uncertainty of price and production; the irregular fluctuations that troubled its healthy development; the low degree of the scale of production; the little effect of industrialization drive; the weak brand awareness, and so on. These problems threaten the long-term stability of its development, which has great significance not only to the national pork supply, the stable prices and farmers’ income, but also to developing the rural economy, stimulating and promoting the related industries such as farming, feed and food industry, leather industry, livestock products and veterinary drugs, and promoting the coordinated development of national economy. This article, focusing on the fluctuations of pig production in Hunan, aims to give a quantitative analysis using empirical model and a normative research combining related economic theories. It tries to reveal the status of pig production and its comparative advantage, the characteristics and causes of the fluctuations, the relation to farmers’ income and influence to Hunan’s economic development and people’s living levels. It is expected to provide certain theoretical basis, some technical parameters and targeted policy recommendations to keep the balance of pig’s supply and demand, and promote the steady and continuous development of Hunan’s economy.Studies show that:①Hunan is a province with a high production of hogs and consumption of pork, whose hog production accounted for about 9% of the whole country, ranking second. The pigs breed improvement, slaughter rates, retail production and small-scale productivity effect has a comparative advantage. The medium-sized and large-scale pig farms have certain basis for development. However, in recent years, there arises varying degrees of slight negative growth in hog production efficiency. Cyclical fluctuations are threatening the healthy development of the pig industry.②There were eight cyclical fluctuations during 1964 to 2009. among which there were three most significant ones. These three were classical fluctuations with vast scale, different cycles, the deep-shallow wave depth, a long period of expansion and a variable-length contraction. It can be seen that vicious ones account for much of all the pig production fluctuations and the production is instable. But at the same time, the production expansion is strong. The ability of anti-declining is gradually increasing. The production develops according to certain trajectory. The overall growth level declines and the production decisions show gradual rationalization.③The fluctuations in pig production in Hunan are caused by both the internal conduction and external shocks. The internal conduction plays a greater role, accounting for 71.56%. The main factors include money put into pig farming, the tradition, technology and scale of farming, the price of hogs, per capita net income and population of farmers, etc. Among these factors, the first two have greater impact, with a related coefficient of 0.6. The external shocks mainly come from natural disasters and major farming epidemic. Policy factors were not obvious.④The pig production is the Granger cause of farmers’ income changes in Hunan. They are long-term equilibrium related to each other, but the short-term impact is greater than the long-term one. The fluctuations in pig production will lead to fluctuations in farmers’income.⑤The fluctuations of pig production in Hunan and in China reinforce each other. The short-term ones in Hunan have obvious effect on the short-term ones in China, with a related coefficient of 0.418. Influenced by the random impact of fluctuations index both in China and Hunan, great degree of short-term fluctuations and certain degree of long-term fluctuations will appear in the pig production both in Hunan and China. Of these two, the short-term effect is positive, while the long-term impact is negative with a weakening effect. As can be seen from the study that fluctuations in Hunan’s pig production has a significant effect on the national pork supply, and directly affect latter.⑥During the years from 2010 to 2019, there will appear an excess deficit of 3400 tons of pork in Hunan. A huge gap will arise between the national pork supply and demand. Pig production in Hunan has a comparative advantage, thus it can help to improve the balance in the market relying on the whole market in China.Policy recommendations for stable development of pig production in Hunan are as below:speed up the changes in producing ways and adjust the scale of production; accelerate technology promotion and improve production efficiency; strengthen disease prevention and control, reducing the impact of disease; timely evaluate policies to increase their impact effect; establish early warning mechanism to guarantee farmers’income and the national supply of pigs; and achieve a balance between supply and demand in Hunan based on the national market.