China hog futures fall nearly 30% in two months to record low

The record-low print matters less as a price event than as a signal about small-farm balance sheets: disease-control problems in the north are pushing sow-capacity cuts at the very producers least able to absorb them, so the shakeout is structural rather than seasonal. That distinction feeds directly into feed demand and, by extension, into corn and soymeal import appetite — the channel through which this story reaches global grain markets. Whether the capacity cuts persist once prices stabilize, and whether they spread beyond smaller farms into larger operations, is the open question worth tracking.