While the United States faces a nationwide egg shortage amid rising inflation, poultry farmers in China are struggling with the opposite problem: plunging prices amid chronic domestic overproduction.
Average transaction prices in China’s main regional broiler markets fell over 12 per cent in the first week after the Lunar New Year holiday, according to commodity market information provider Sublime China Information (SCI).
In eastern China’s Shandong province, the price of live broiler chickens has dropped to its lowest level since 2018, at about 5 yuan (US$0.68) per kilogram, Shanghai-based media outlet Cailian Press reported.
Sun Yanan, a senior poultry industry analyst at SCI, attributed the price falls to weak consumer demand and excess capacity in China’s meat industry, adding that a rapid market rebound was unlikely given the scale of oversupply.
“Farmers can’t bear it any more!” a poultry farmer in Shandong lamented in a video posted to Douyin, the Chinese sister app of TikTok.
“In just one week, live chicken prices dropped from 3.4 yuan to 2.5 yuan [per 500 grams] … Prices fell further last week than they did in the whole of last year.”
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