BEIJING—China’s priorities in ensuring food supply are
shifting from pork to vegetables after bitter winter storms damaged fragile
plants across the normally temperate south. Sharp rises in the prices of food in
China for more than a year had been originally driven by grains and meat, as a
shortage of pigs caused prices to spike and drove inflation to 4.8 percent in
2007, well above Beijing’s original target of about 3 percent.
Freak cold and snow across south China over the past month
killed 107 people, caused $15.4 billion in direct economic losses, downed power
lines, triggered a series of road accidents and stranded millions headed home
for the Lunar New Year holiday.
It damaged about 40 percent of the planted rapeseed acreage,
30 percent of vegetable fields and hurt the orange crop, said Zhang Yuxiang,
director of market and economic information at the Ministry of Agriculture.
Chicken coops collapsed and chicks and piglets froze, with
animal and poultry deaths totaling 69 million, she said.
The cold is widely expected to have helped drive annual
inflation to over 7 percent in January, after snow and ice disrupted transport,
froze vegetable patches and damaged fruit trees. Food makes up a third of
China’s consumer price index.
"Generally speaking, there is no problem with supply. Prices
have dropped from the early days of the disaster but, due to transport problems
in remote areas, prices of some goods are still high," assistant commerce
minister Huang Hai told a news conference.
He said prices of cereals, rice and flour remained steady,
while the price of pork may rise slightly. Vegetable prices would definitely
fall as temperatures rise, but edible oil prices would go up.
"On the whole, the snow will have some impact on China’s food
prices, but it will not be dramatic", Huang said. "Because of the lower
production of soybeans internationally and the damage to the rapeseed crop,
cooking prices could rise."
Ensuring vegetable supply and restoring production had become a new priority,
the Ministry of Agriculture said. "There were no big fluctuations in the supply
of cereals, cooking oil, eggs, poultry, fish or milk," it said. "But in some
regions there are still shortages of meat and vegetables."
China had built pork reserves after pork prices soared last
summer and had released the meat to tamp down prices ahead of the Lunar New
Year, when prices normally rise as hundreds of millions of Chinese head home to
feast with their families.
Since Feb. 1, China had released 1,250 tonnes of live pigs on
to markets in certain afflicted provinces, the Ministry of Commerce said.
That followed releases of 6,000 tons of live pigs between Jan. 21 and Feb. 5,
and 17,000 tons of frozen pork between Jan. 21 and Feb. 1, it said.
