Demand for pork picking up despite ASF presence

MANILA, Philippines — The New Year is ushering hope for hog raisers as demand for pork has slowly picked up with increasing farmgate prices despite the ongoing eradication efforts against African swine fever.

The Pork Producers Federation of the Philippines (ProPork) said there was a steady return of consumers buying pork as the year began, a trend expected to continue in the coming months.

“We have lots of supply because in the past months, consumers are buying more chicken but now, we are seeing them slowly returning to buying pork,” ProPork president Edwin Chen said over the weekend.

“Plus we already saw a huge improvement in the last six weeks in terms of farmgate prices,” he added.

Farmgate price of pork almost doubled to P90 to P100 per kilogram. During the peak of ASF late last year, prices plummeted to as low as P55 per kilo.

While there have been improvements, Chen said hog raisers are still at a loss because of the input costs that they need to recover.

“It is going to gradually improve as demand comes back and demand is really coming back,” Chen said.

“During the Christmas season, we still saw people buying lechon and other pork products. And we are very bullish that demand will pick up,” he added.

This year, however, Chen said there is already an expected decline in total hog production following the outbreak of ASF.

“I think it will be very small but certainly there will be dip, but it will be easily covered by commercial farms that are bio-secured,” he added.

Earlier, the United States Department of Agriculture said the Philippines is set to buy more pork and chicken from the global market as ASF would pull down local supply and not meet growing demand of consumers. The Philippines is also seen to import 350,000 metric tons of pork meat this year, 32 percent higher than 2019’s 265,000 MT.

Domestic production, meanwhile, was seen to decline 16 percent to 1.4 million MT from 1.67 million MT in 2019.

Latest data showed that affected areas with ASF totaled to 612 barangays in 73 municipalities in the nine provinces infected: Bulacan, Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Aurora, Tarlac, Rizal, Cavite, Pangasinan and parts of Metro Manila.