DESPITE the declining trend in the production of hogs in Negros Occidental in the last two years, the province targets to sustain its surplus status in terms of supply of the commodity this year, the top official of the Provincial Veterinary Office (PVO) said.
Provincial Veterinarian Renante Decena said the province has a daily requirement of only 1,000 to 1,500 slaughtered hogs, thus there is a surplus of 500 hogs per day, equivalent to 15,000 hogs per month.
Decena said this is the reason why Negros Occidental is capable of shipping out hog supply to Luzon and other markets in the country where supply is currently deficit mainly due to African Swine Fever (ASF) scare.
Other provinces are currently slowing down their shipment of live pigs to Luzon, some are even planning to temporarily stop, amid apprehensions that local supply may dwindle.
Negros Occidental, in fact, was able to ship at least 708 heads of hogs to Luzon and Visayas from February 1 to 7 only.
Decena said this is on top of the 4,293 heads of slaughtered hogs shipped to Luzon areas from July to December 2020 and another 6, 322 heads in January this year.
In order to maintain the surplus status, the PVO is banking on infusing breeder gilts and piglets plus artificial insemination (AI) breeding so as to attain a growth rate of 15 percent annually.
"Our extraction rate through ship out and slaughtering will not exceed that," he added.
Based on the Livestock and Poultry Situationer report presented by Decena to the members of the Provincial Board on Wednesday, February 10, the PVO noted a drop of 9.44 percent in the province's hog population between 2016 and 2020.
The hog population in the province in 2016 was 520,114 heads, higher than 518,273 in 2017.
The population recovered in 2018, when the province was able to produce 520,737 heads of hogs.
However, it again dropped to 486,129 and 470,979 heads in 2019 and 2020, respectively.
The PVO noted a hog population decrease of 3.12 percent in the last two years.
Decena said some backyard raisers have slowed down because the buying live weight price of P70 to 80 per kilo was lower than the production cost of P85 to P90 per kilo.
"There were heavy losses for the last two years," he said, adding that 85 percent of the overall hog production of the province is comprised of backyard raisers while the remaining 15 percent accounts for commercial raisers.
The provincial veterinarian also reiterated that all necessary measures are in place to protect the P6 billion swine industry of the province from the dreaded ASF.