African swine flu, which is fatal for domestic pigs, is spreading there but there also has been cases in Europe.
it seems that this is an old story: the UKEconomist reported it back in September.
Foreign observers are likely to be just as wary (of information released from the Chinese gov't).
The Chinese authorities have a long history of dissembling about diseases that affect both humans and animals, including the SARS crisis of 2003 and an outbreak of another porcine infection, blue-ear pig disease, in 2007. In both cases China played down the severity of the crises and stonewalled inquiries from foreign governments and international agencies.
This year American health officials have accused China of violating agreements and withholding lab samples of another deadly disease, the H7N9 flu virus, which can infect both poultry and humans.but the real danger is to the Chinese economy.
This time the pig fever is stoking fears of inflation. The cost of pork has an inordinate effect on the consumer-price index. With a fifth of the world’s population, China consumes half its pork. The government has set up a strategic pork reserve to keep the price stable. The blue-ear pig-disease episode of 2007 provoked a rise of 87% in pork prices and one of the biggest leaps in inflation for nearly two decades.
And here in the Philippines they are worried.
Sec. Piñol issued a Memorandum Order No. 23 Series of 2018, imposing the “temporary ban on the importation of domestic and wild pigs and their products including pork meat and semen originating from Latvia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, and China” to protect and ensure the health status of swine in the country. He also issued Memorandum Order No. 22 that prohibits the use of catering food wastes/left-overs from international and domestic airports and seaports as swine swill feed throughout the country.
the problem here, of course, is corruption: a small "gift" will allow folks to bring in "double dead" pork and other forbidden products like drugs, and the smuggling in of rice and other products undercuts prices and harms local farmers and industries.
Farms in our area have already been harmed by Ebola reston in Pigs and bird flu in our poultry (chickens, quail and ducks).
The only good news is that most of the rice crop that was planted later in the season was spared from the typhoon has been harvested, and the harvest was good... the rice planted earlier in the season, however, was harmed: a typhoon which hit the almost ripe rice, meaning farmers who harvested it before the typhoon hit got lower prices on the rice, and others lost the rice when the fields flooded and the almost ripe rice plants were blown down by the wind.
unlike the US, farmers start preparing fields and planting during the rainy season. When there is irrigation to soften the soil for tillage, you can plant an earlier crop: if not, you have to wait for the heavy monsoon rains to start. Larger farmers like ourselves plant at different times: So although our earlier crop was harmed, the crop being harvested now was okay and we have a good harvest.
Usually the main crop requires flooding, and the seedlings are planted by hand in the wet soil that has been tilled to destroy weeds and fertilizer is added during tilling.
The "second crop" usually requires irrigation: and farmers just till the field and hand spread the seed.
In places like VietNam, one can get three harvests by planting seedlings as soon as the rice is harvested, but here, we are more traditional and keep to two plantings.
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