JUST WHAT… IS GOING ON???
China’s pig herd loss is expected to reach 50% for 2019, leading to even lower pork production…
I’m a little reluctant to write this article as it is very much a personal point of view. Maybe it is me…or maybe not! Maybe I’m just a bit sensitive to the news on this as I work in the food processing industry, even if it is in the financial services side. Yet…there seems to be an awful, awful lot of very bad news circulating regarding disease contagion in agriculture. Oddly enough, apart from the occasional article on ASF being picked up by mainstream media and rarely by financial media… there seems very little out there! You can see it in agricultural news pages and commentaries. It just seems there’s not much attention being paid to what seems to be a very serious threat to plant and animal life we all depend upon and the social and society impacts it may have. Maybe it is after all…just me…!
If we’re going to do this then let’s start with the most obvious case – ASF a.k.a. African swine fever. I’m not going to go through the whole history of it but suffice it to say the first recognised outbreak was at the very start of the 20th Century in Central and East Africa, though the current outbreak in Europe dates from about 2007 and was interestingly prevalent in wild boars. The Chinese outbreak, the one you may have seen, only started about a year ago. I seem to recall that an alleged source of infection was imported animal feed into China. A year on and the current situation is described as ‘…critical…’ with a report by Rabobank in some media stating ‘… China’s pig herd loss is expected to reach 50% for 2019, leading to even lower pork production. The report said a 25% drop in pork production is expected in 2019, with a further 10% to 15% drop in 2020.’1
. It also
added ‘We expect large-scale restocking in 2020, as pig population density declines sharply, along with the chance of disease infection…’. A better finish to what is becoming a serious situation. In the meantime, prices have more than doubled with similar rises in competing
1
WATTAgNet.com
substitute animal proteins, notably poultry (more on that later…). There are obvious shortages and some cities, Nanning – capital of Guangxi region have introduced price controls…and rationing2
. It’s difficult
to fathom how important pork is to the Chinese household…but it is very, very key. The return of rationing could bring significant socioeconomic impact as well as highlight the big issues in food security. This is too short an article to fully go into that…just yet!
OK…so pork’s off the menu! What other animal protein can we grow relatively quickly that can fill in at least part of the chasm left by the absence of pork? You could of course import…but there’s a bit of a trade war going on around the world… so what can be grown to maturity in a relatively short amount of time to fill in? Beef takes too long…but I mentioned earlier that poultry was also rising. Perhaps a large scale effort to grow chickens and other poultry could help? This is where I bring in the next piece of salient news. Remember Avian Influenza, more commonly known as Bird Flu? Well HPAI and its H5N6 virus variant have become more widespread. China has it, Taiwan, Vietnam, Nepal, Mexico, South Africa and many other places as well, though all the 24 deaths since 2014 are in China 3
. That’s
not all! The deadly Newcastle Disease and IBV are just a couple of other contagions seemingly moving swiftly and growing more deadly in our world today.
Right…let’s forget about land based animal protein. What about fish? The third most important aquaculture (farmed) fish is Tilapia, especially in the developing world. Data from as far back as 2002 indicated that around 1.5 billion Metric Tonnes was produced for consumption4
. Tilapia Lake
Virus (TiLV) is described as ‘…an emerging infectious agent…’ present in at least three
2 Bloomberg 3
WATTAgNet.com 4 WorldFish
Eddie Tofpik E:
eddie.tofpik@
admisi.com T: +44(0) 20 7716 8201
5 NACA
continents. This one so far is emerging… but it might not take that long to become emerged ‘…the first ever major disease epidemic to emerge in Tilapia aquaculture and puts the global industry at risk… the number of reported TiLV cases is expected to rise5
.’
One final thing (for now) that’s on my radar…something that likely needs an article of its own. This is not an animal protein…no…this is now plant based. Get ready to read more about Fusarium Oxysporum Tropical Race 4. At least this was a known problem that would one day occur. It is a fungus which kills off the current commercially grown banana and plantain plantations. It inhabits the soil and forms structures that can last for 30+ years. The reason it’s so virulent is primarily due to the fact that all commercially grown banana plants are effectively – clones! They’re grown from cuttings and this seems to have made them susceptible to this infection…that’s the short story! The recent big news is the virus, which had been effectively kept out of Latin America is now present in Colombia. The world’s largest exporter is next door – in Ecuador!
I’m not trying to be alarmist, it’s just that in recent times I’ve heard a lot of such stories…almost as if it were deliberate (a really stupid idea if ever there was one!). To me, the sight of empty and deserted pig pens, poultry houses and fish ponds signals more than just a closed or closing business. It may mean forced changes, shortages and perhaps some pretty big upheavals in our food sources and ultimately our societies, IF all these threats and others like it come to fruition. Hence my original heading and question to you all… ’…Just What…is Going ON???’.
4 | ADMISI - The Ghost In The Machine | September/October 2019
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