BEIJING, (Reuters) – China’s first quarter pork production jumped 14% to 15.61 Million tonnes from a year ago, according to data on Monday. This was after an increase of China’s hog herd in the last year.

According to calculations using data from National Bureau of Statistics, the volume was at its highest since the fourth quarter of 2018.

China has slaughtered 195.66 Million Hogs in the period January-March, an increase by 14.1% compared to the year before.

From 449.22million heads at December’s close, its pig herd dropped to 422.53 millions at March’s end.

China’s annual pork production was 52.96 millions tonnes in 2017. This is just below 2017’s 53.4 million tonnes, the year that African swine flu began to infect herds.

About half the breeding farms had been destroyed by this disease in 2019. However, production recovered faster than anticipated and this is impacting prices. Lockdowns in China are lowering restaurant demand.

The wholesale prices for pork in April’s first week were about half that of last year at 18.21 yuan per kilogram ($2.86), according to statistics from agriculture ministry.

Even though most top producers have lost money since last summer’s, nearly all of them saw significant increases in their first quarter sales as a result of investments made over the past two years into breeding farms.

Muyuan Foods Co Ltd was the best producer and produced more than 13.8million pigs during its first quarter, according to company data.