PORK prices in China, which have helped drive inflation to 12-year peaks, are likely to stay high well into the summer until farmers like Shao Zuohuan can bring new pigs to market.

The pig farmer on a plateau on the border of Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces lost three piglets to an unusually harsh winter that has delayed by about three months the expected recovery in China’s pork supply.

Nationwide, farmers lost more than 4 million piglets.

The government has offered subsidies since last summer to encourage farmers to raise pigs after widespread disease coupled with poor profits the year before caused the pig population to drop by 10 percent and prices to shoot up. Experts had expected pig stocks to recover by the second quarter of 2008.

But snow that blanketed southern China caused sties to cave in and blocked transport of feed, leaving piglets to freeze or starve and ensuring high prices would last longer than expected.

“The cold winter froze many piglets to death and distorted efforts to build up stocks,” said Qi Jingmei, a senior economist at the State Information Center, a top government think tank.

China’s pig stocks rose 1.6 percent in the first three months of 2008 from a year earlier to 415.21 million, the National Bureau of Statistics said last week.

“That was not much,” Qi said.

China National Grain and Oils Information Center, another State-backed think tank, estimates that pig stocks in the first quarter were up by 4.7 percent, adding in a weekly report that feed demand was likely to show signs of recovery soon.

However, an official from the statistics bureau said it was hard to tell whether the stock of pigs would increase substantially by the second quarter because earlier forecasts had not reckoned with the winter storms.

For Shao, that’s good news. He feels “very lucky” to have lost only three piglets and he has about 100 left with 12 sows, he said. He plans to breed and sell about 200 hogs this year, the same as in 2007.

“Pork prices are now very high and market demand exceeds supply. We don’t have to worry about selling them at all,” the farmer said, with a big laugh.

He and his wife earned about 80,000 yuan (US$11,440) last year, four times the income of relatives who migrated to cities to work. Almost all his neighbors are now raising pigs and most of them plan to increase their stock.

“With a dozen sows, couples don’t have to leave the farm to find work,” Shao said.

The government recently raised subsidies to up to 1 million yuan for large pig farms. All farmers now receive 100 yuan for each sow they have, twice as much as last year. (SD-Agencies)