Local Farmers Can’t Compete With Cheap Pork

Cambodians like pork. The average Cambodian consumes almost 9.29 kg of the meat each year, and local farmers supplied about 2 million pigs, more than 90 percent of the domestic demand, in 2008. But the market for small-scale pig farmers has flown. Live pig prices have fallen 53.55 percent to about 7,000 riel, or $1.75,per kg in just one year as cheaper pork imported from Thailand has forced local companies to drop prices to compete. Since last year, 30 percent of all subsistence pig farmers in Cambodia have called it quits in terms of rising swine for sale, and many more farmers will follow if the flood of cheap pork from Thailand continues, said Prathna Preap, a swine market expert at the U.S. government’s development agency, USAID. … Whereas most developed countries have safeguards in place to protect local industries, Cambodia does not. There is a draft law at the Council of Ministers to tackle the issue, but if it ever passes, expert s question whether it would ever be enforced. …