Looking for Statistical Fakery in Agriculture Ministry

China's agriculture ministry statisticians are under scrutiny from an inspection team looking for fraudulent and exaggerated numbers, according to the Ministry's web site. The National Bureau of Statistics team led by Deputy Director General Sheng Laiyun is investigating the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs statistical work from August 21 through September 2, 2020. The check-up is part of a wider crackdown to prevent and penalize fake and falsified statistics ordered by a circular issued in 2019.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Han Changfu said this is a one-time check-up of the Ministry's statistical work to carry out General Secretary Xi Jinping's directive to raise the political standing of statistical investigations, regard statistics as part of comprehensive work, and ensure that statistics truthfully reflect the actual situation so economic interventions can be made based on the data. Mr. Han pledged to continually raise the quality of statistics reported by the Ministry.

Statistical audits in other departments identified examples of false reporting by obscure companies and low-level officials. The audits never acknowledge any systemic problems that might undermine the veracity of national data, although the inflation of GDP statistics through exaggeration of data reported by local officials was one of the motivations for the statistical check-ups. 

No particular problems have been identified at the the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. The Ministry has reporting systems for items that include livestock numbers, slaughterhouses, feed mills, and monitoring of socioeconomic data in a national sample of villages. This year, officials have especially strong incentive to exaggerate or falsify these statistics to show progress on two major priorities: recovery of the swine farming industry and poverty alleviation. 

Cartoon accompanying 2019 article shows a local official inflating fake pigs to populate a pig farm in order to apply for subsidy funds.

A news media report last year revealed how statistics are exaggerated or falsified to collect subsidies at the local level. A news article reported that 71 local officials in eight counties of Guangdong's Meizhou Prefecture were under investigation for faking pig farm statistics to collect subsidies for constructing scaled-up pig farms. The 2019 report was probably issued to warn local officials against faking data or reporting false information as officials prepared a new round of subsidies to build swine farms in the wake of the 2018-19 African swine fever epidemic. 

According to the Meizhou Prefecture prosecutor, officials submitted false application materials for a 35-mu pig farm, then duped auditors by taking them to a different pig farm. In another case, the journalist visited a farm that was built with 500,000 yuan in subsidies and found no pigs there. The reporter tried to verify the existence of another pig farm listed on a subsidy application but no one in the village had heard of it. In another case, the livestock bureau official was a shareholder in the "above scale" farm but it did not actually meet the requirements for the subsidy. In many instances, directors of county livestock bureaus allegedly received bribes from subsidy recipients to report the false information. 

The Meizhou subsidies were given as part of a program to build scaled-up livestock farms that began in 2007 and is still in operation with funds issued once a year. In 2019, a new campaign to build pig farms nationwide was launched to restore swine production capacity to normal by the end of 2020. Local officials were given quotas of new pig farms to build and subsidies were issued. Local officials are under pressure to show progress, and indeed they have been reporting breathtaking increases in swine numbers. It's very likely these statistics are exaggerated. Piglet prices remain in the stratosphere and hog prices remain near record levels despite big increases in sow numbers reported in 2020. 

The statistics bureau investigators announced a hot line phone number and an email address for whistle blowers to report statistical abuses at the agriculture ministry.

China food panic focused on early rice crop

Nervous Chinese officials reversed course in 2020 by encouraging production of the "early" rice crop that is shunned by consumers due to its poor taste and is grown mainly to pad production statistics. After jettisoning its massive overstocks of cotton and corn, China's next target was to dump massive stocks of rice. Officials had been easing up on policies supporting production of the early rice crop for several years to alleviate the surplus, but food security hysteria somewhere in Beijing's inner sanctum and panic over the novel coronavirus pandemic prompted a reversal of policy in 2020.

"Early" rice is planted in early spring and harvested in summer, followed by a "late" rice crop harvested in late fall--two crops a year on the same field. Most farmers prefer to grow a single rice crop that allows them to maximize their time working in cities, returning only for planting and harvest. Double-cropping rice is labor intensive and unprofitable for farmers who can earn money working off-farm.

After reducing the support price for early rice from 2015 to 2019, the National Development and Reform Commission announced an increase in 2020. In May, China Central Television proclaimed that restoring early rice production was a "key move" for national food security. In Hunan Province's Xiangtan City, communist leaders issued an "emergency notice" in April ordering local officials to elevate the political standing of early rice production. Official news media featured multiple subsidies. Officials issued production "tasks" (targets) to provinces, counties, townships and villages. Local leaders scouted villages for delinquent farmers, forcing them to hand over idle land to "moderate scale" farmers or "land trusts."

CCTV graphic shows the plan to reverse decline in early rice output by increasing support for early rice production by 3.67 billion yuan and utilizing funds from other agricultural programs such as grain payments, machinery subsidies, seed subsidies, county transfer payments, and "new-type farm business" subsidies.

Last week, China's National Bureau of Statistics dutifully announced that early rice output was up 3.9 percent from last year, reaching 27.293 million metric tons in 2020. The increase was announced despite catastrophic flooding that hit provinces along the Yangtze River that are the main producers of early rice. Yield was estimated at 5645 kg/ha, down 2.7 percent and the lowest since 2012. The increase in output was achieved by a 6.8-percent increase in area planted to 4.751 million hectares that was engineered by this year's aggressive policy push to expand the crop. 

Historical data shows that China has gone through early rice policy cycles since the 1950s: officials boost production when they get nervous about food supplies and let go when there are surpluses. This year's upturn in early rice area is modest in view of the long-run decline. This year's 4.75 million hectares planted is down 60 percent from the peak of 13 million ha in the 1970s. Early rice production is roughly half its peak in the early 1980s. The early rice crop constitutes about 13 percent of China's rice output. 

A Statistics Bureau statistician's explanation of the early rice data emphasized that a 7-year decline in early rice planting was reversed by multiple policy measures that motivated farmers to plant more early rice. The statistician used the same phrases used in the May CCTV report. According to the statistician, each level of government bore its "responsibility for food security" by issuing grain subsidies, carrying out the minimum price procurement program, organizing delivery of farm inputs, "going door to door" to guide planting of idle land, expanding use of machinery for ploughing and transplanting, scouting with drones, encouraging coordinated production among farmers, land trusts and other methods for consolidating fields, and disease and pest prevention services. The statistician also cited favorable weather during the early spring when seedlings are grown and transplanted to fields. 

Machinery for transplanting early rice seedlings, probably subsidized.

According to the May CCTV report, the central government increased its support for early rice by 3.67 billion yuan (about $524 million) this year. Dividing the increase in expenditure by the 300,700-ha increase in early rice output implies that the central government spent 12,200 yuan ($1,744) for every additional hectare of early rice achieved this year.

Provinces and localities were assigned targets for early rice production, and they added their own subsidies. Hunan Province officials received a "clear policy signal," adopted a policy of leaving no idle land unplanted, and increased early rice subsidies by 200 million yuan. Jiangxi Province allocated 1.56 billion yuan for its early rice production (1217 yuan or $183 per hectare) and surpassed its assigned target of 18 million mu (1.2 million hectares). 

A greenhouse for growing early rice seedlings.

Chinese officials proudly proclaim that their subsidies succeeded in spurring their farmers to plant more early rice.

• In many rice-growing areas, the land capability protection payment serves as a rice producer subsidy. In Hunan's Jiujiang County, farmers who planted a single rice crop received 105 yuan per mu for this payment, but those who planted two rice crops received 175 yuan per mu. In Jiangxi Province, authorities denied the subsidy to farmers who had not planted rice for the last two years.
• Some provinces have a "target price" subsidy for rice producers. In Hunan, the target price subsidy is 28 yuan/mu for common rice and 34 yuan for high quality rice. In Guangxi Province, this subsidy equals about 10 percent of the sale price for common early rice and 13 percent of the sale price for high quality early rice. 
• Jiangxi Province counties earmarked 20 percent of a transfer payment to grain-producing counties for support of early rice production. 
• The machinery purchase subsidy is earmarked for rice transplanting, harvesting and cultivation machinery in rice-growing areas. 
• Several regions report that farmers are given free seed for early rice or a per-mu subsidy to cover purchase costs. Those who already bought their seed were given subsidies of 40 or 50 yuan per mu. 

Chinese officials plead that their subsidies support poor peasants, but many of the subsidies for early rice are aimed at creating larger-scale commercial farming operations.

• In Jiangxi and Hunan, officials say they visited villages to persuade farmers with idle land to transfer it to other rice farmers or to "land trusts" that consolidate land into larger farms.
• A decade-old campaign subsidizes creation of companies that grow early rice seedlings under plastic hoop houses or in greenhouses and use machines to transplant the seedlings in fields. These "concentrated transplanting" operations address the problem of labor shortages for transplanting, standardize seedlings, and shorten the transplanting time. Hunan claims to have concentrated rice seedling farms covering 3 million mu (200,000 ha). Hunan gives these operations get a subsidy of 60 yuan per mu to grow the seedlings and 50 yuan per mu to offer mechanized transplanting services, but there are reports of much larger subsidies. In Hukou County, demonstration plots of 5 mu or larger for growing rice seedlings receive 100 yuan per mu, and in Xiushui county the subsidy is 800 yuan per mu. 
• There is a conscious effort to expand the scale of rice farms. In Hunan, farmers who grow rice on at least 30 mu (2 hectares) get an award of 40 yuan per mu. Xiangtan City designated 50 advanced villages where moderate-scale farmers contributed to expanded early rice output. In Duixiang county, farmers cultivating at least 100 mu of rice get an award of 10,000 yuan, and those cultivating 300 mu get 50,000 yuan and the title of "grain planting model." In Pengze County newly-transferred farmland gets a subsidy of 50 yuan per mu. 

The Bureau's statistician blamed this year's decrease in yield on torrential rains that began ahead of the harvest. The Bureau estimates yields based on cuttings taken from sample plots a week or two before harvest. It's possible some plots were flooded when the surveys were scheduled. The statistician said the yield decreased due to the relatively large number of areas where yield was reduced or where no harvest occurred. This ambiguous statement suggests that the rice area lost to flooding was incorporated in its yield calculation instead of reporting a harvested area statistic that is less than its "sown area" statistic. (Once upon a time, the Bureau used to inflate its yield statistics to compensate for underestimated crop area statistics.) 

According to China Grain Net, torrential rains during May-June were 50 percent more than usual, and resumption of rains just before the July harvest had a clear impact on the early rice crop. Surveys and investigations indicated that yields were down 10-20 percent in some regions and 30 percent in others. Much grain is unable to meet purchase requirements and the price of early rice is rising, according to China Grain Net. The organization claims to have performed analysis by combining satellite imagery, agricultural weather models, and historical data, but does not report the results. Similarly, China Science and Technology News reports in effusive detail about the combination of satellite imagery, drones and cloud computing to fight the "flood monster" in major rice-growing regions but reveals nothing about flood impacts. 

One must keep in mind that the job of Chinese statisticians is to prove the correctness of government policies; measuring what really happened is trumped by this priority. Given the political priority put on increasing rice-planting, the statisticians could not have reported anything other than an increase output. The statistician's explanation of the early rice data concludes that the increase in production lays a foundation for a larger grain harvest and provides a solid guarantee that Xi Jinping's "six stabilizations" will be achieved.

Expediency Overrules Regulation in China's Countryside

A Consumer Daily reporter investigating meat markets in China's hinterland found that the strict food safety regulatory apparatus was just an empty shell in towns and villages. 

The reporter visited meat markets in several small towns in Xichuan County in Henan Province's southwest corner. Towns and villages in this area line the rivers flowing through mountain valleys into the Dujiangyan Reservoir, starting point of one of China's routes south-north water transfer to the parched northern regions. The reporter found that large villages usually had a couple of families engaged in pork trade, and most pigs were butchered by farmers and vendors.

Examining freshly-slaughtered swine carcasses for sale in village markets, the Consumer Daily reporter found that expedience and tradition overrules regulatory requirements in the countryside. The reporter did not see the blue ink stamps required to prove the animals passed disease and sanitary inspections at an officially-sanctioned slaughterhouse. 

When queried about the lack of official stamps, a vendor explained that consumers judge the safety of pork based on its appearance: white and shiny meat is safe to eat while dark, while red meat is likely diseased. The vendor explained further that pork sold in this village comes from local farmers, so there is no need to worry that it comes from diseased animals. Each meat counter had a line of buyers at 8am, apparently undeterred by the lack of official stamps.

The reporter asked the vendor why the pigs are not slaughtered in a centralized facility. The vendor said that local consumers like their pork freshly slaughtered, so farmers and dealers kill and butcher the pigs themselves. Hauling them to the central slaughterhouse would take more than half a day--including the required 12 hours for pigs to wait for slaughter at the facility without eating or drinking--plus another half day to transport the pork to the village market. Local people prefer hot meat that has just been slaughtered, not chilled meat. The vendor said he would have to raise prices and would lose money if he incurred the extra costs of trucking pigs to the county town.

The Consumer Daily reporter learned that individuals slaughtering a few hogs for their own consumption need not obtain the inspection stamps, but the inspections are required for those who routinely sell pork in the market. The village pork vendor assured the reporter that the county bureau sends inspectors, but they agreed not to stamp the meat because consumers complain that the ink doesn't wash off. 

Official stamps on a pork carcass. Source: Consumer Daily.

 

The villages are not self-contained markets. The region is prosperous, and the county town is just a 20-minute motorbike ride away from the villages the reporter visited. The reporter learned that the number of families raising pigs has been shrinking rapidly, and the villages have considerable demand for pork from outside their community. 

The reporter claimed that trade in diseased pigs is rampant in the county town of Xichuan. Regulation is stricter in adjoining areas, so many dealers bring diseased or dead animals to Xichuan to be surreptitiously butchered. They arrive at 4 am under cover of darkness to sell diseased animals at a discount price to vendors they know well. Supposedly this trade has been reported by the public. A local document issued last December ordered a crackdown, published a hot line to call, and set penalties for illegal slaughter, but the trade is difficult to regulate. No vendors could recall anyone being fined for illegal slaughter.

Killing a pig. Source: Consumer Daily.

The reporter visited one of the two mechanized "designated slaughterhouses" in the county town and found it was barely operational. Only one employee was sweeping the floor and there were no pigs in sight. The facility reportedly processes 200 animals daily during the peak spring festival season, but was processing no more than 10 per day in August--"barely enough to pay the electric bill." No "backyard" farmers send their pigs to be slaughtered here. 

Meat regulation is split among three departments. The agriculture and rural department is responsible for farming and slaughter, the market supervision bureau is responsible for meat in markets, and only the police have authority to make arrests. 

Strict food safety regulation has been slowly filtering down from ports and "demonstration areas," to big cities and processing plants, to medium cities, and gradually to the countryside. Rural food safety was one of nine prongs of a state council food safety campaign launched in 2014, and a 3-month campaign focusing specifically on rural food fraud was launched in December 2018. The appearance of this article in communist party-run news media shows that this remains a concern for Chinese leaders. The Consumer Daily article also points out that lax regulation is a threat in the spread of animal diseases that can infect humans.

China's chicken market easily saturated

The rise and fall of Chinese poultry prices over the past year reveals that chicken is still a second-class meat in the Middle Kingdom. Chinese poultry meat prices surged about 35 percent from April to November 2019, according to wholesale price data issued weekly by China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. But all the price gains were erased by steady decline in 2020. 

The spurt in poultry prices was driven by a meat shortage following the disappearance of at least 40 percent of China's pigs last year due to the African swine fever epidemic. The rise in chicken prices coincided with an even bigger surge in pork prices. The poultry meat price peaked in November 2019, the same month as the peak in pork prices. 

Weekly wholesale prices from China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

What's surprising is that poultry prices declined as fast as they had risen. After reaching a November peak near 27 yuan/kg, wholesale poultry prices erased nearly all their 2019 gains and returned to 21.1 yuan/kg in June 2020, just slightly above their year-earlier level. Pork prices remained in the stratosphere, indicating that pork is still in short supply. The latest MARA release shows that July 2020 slaughter was down 32 percent from a year ago.

Historically, China's pork prices have been more volatile than poultry prices. Pork prices occasionally rise 20-30 percent above the poultry price before the two prices converge. The poultry price serves as a floor for the pork price. The pork price has approached the poultry price during downturns. 

The two meats are substitutes to some extent, so their prices don't diverge from each other for more than a year or two. The lower level of poultry prices compared with pork prices reflects more efficient feed conversion, and chicken's role as a cheap meat. The lower volatility of poultry price reflects the shorter grow-out period for birds versus pigs, and thus faster adjustment of production volume in response to changing market conditions. Last year's surge in pork prices to more than double the poultry price is clearly an historical anomaly. The size of the spike in poultry prices in 2019 is also unprecedented.

During 2019 there were many anecdotal reports of farmers who cleared out their pig pens after losing their animals or selling them off during the African swine fever epidemic and replacing them with ducks or chickens. The increase in poultry output was in part motivated by the fear of losing pigs, but plummeting pig production also looked like a great opportunity for poultry sales. Several poultry companies also launched aggressive expansion plans in 2019.

China has had a big hole in its pork supply since 2019. According to official data, China's pork production was down nearly 12 mmt in 2019 from the previous year. Poultry meat output was up nearly 2 mmt and egg output was up about 1.7 mmt last year. According to National Bureau of Statistics data released in July, pork output for the first half of 2020 was down 19 percent from a year earlier, while poultry output was up 6.8 percent and egg output was up 7.1 percent. 

These figures suggest price-inelastic demand and low receptiveness of Chinese consumers to poultry as a substitute for pork. A 19-percent decline in pork supply lead to a more-than-doubling of pork price. A 7-percent increase in poultry output was apparently enough to saturate the market and drive poultry prices down 35 percent.

Data from China's National Bureau of Statistics, revised in 2016.

An early August report by Central China TV found that chicken dealers and farmers in Anhui Province's Xuancheng Prefecture have struggled with falling prices this year. The report attributed the decline in price since January to excess supply resulting from increased slaughter and disruptions in markets during the peak covid-19 months in China. A processing plant in Xuancheng cut back daily processing to 60,000-65,000 birds, about 10,000 less than a year ago. The report remarked that prices fall when everyone piles into the industry, increasing supply. 

Interesting perspective on the role of broiler chickens in China was provided by an interview with an Asian representative of chicken-breeding giant Aviagen that appeared last year in "International Poultry" magazine. Introduction of broiler chickens to China is a relatively recent event and their role is closely tied to the fast food industry. The Aviagen official recalls that initial efforts to develop broiler production in China were focused on export to Japan and other foreign markets. Domestic consumption was spurred by the opening of the first Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in 1987 when there were lines out the door for meals that cost about 10 percent of a monthly government salary. Since then, KFC has expanded to 5000 outlets in China and purchases over 400,000 metric tons of chicken annually. McDonalds is another driving force in chicken consumption.

Chicken consumption is still predominantly in fast food chains, school cafeterias, and factory canteens where the low price is an attraction. This year's closure of food service and institutional cafeterias hurt consumption of chicken disproportionately. The Aviagen official observes that many Chinese families are hesitant to cook chicken at home because it is troublesome to prepare and they don't know which foods to pair with chicken meat. 

Sterilizing corn surplus: room for imports

A recent article from Heilongjiang Province argued that China's tightening corn S&D balance can be traced to growth in industrial processing of corn in Heilongjiang Province--China's top grain-surplus region. With more corn used to produce alcohol, starch, and sweeteners in Heilongjiang, less corn is available to transport to corn-deficit regions in eastern and southern China.

The analysis pointed to a large national deficit between domestic corn production and use that peaked at -40 mmt in 2017/18 and was projected at -25 mmt in 2020/21. The huge temporary reserve of corn filled this deficit in the last few years, but that stockpile may be fully depleted by September. The balance sheet presented in the article projected 6 mmt of corn imports in 2019/20 and 7 mmt in 2020/21.

Looking backward by adding the balance sheets from a decade-old National Grain and Oils Information Center (NGOIC) report shows that China has flipped from a peak corn surplus of 19.5 mmt during the recession year of 2008/09 and 9.8 mmt during 2009/10 to the current deficit of -25 mmt. This flip in S&D occurred despite a 95-mmt increase in corn output from 2009/10 to 2019/20. According to these balance sheet figures, feed use increased by about 100 mmt over the past decade and industrial use by about 40 mmt. 
 

China corn balance sheet (million metric tons)
Year	2008/09	2009/10	...	2016/17	2017/18	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21
Production	165.9	164.0	...	263.6	259.1	257.2	260.8	261.0
Imports	0.1	1.0	...	2.5	3.5	4.5	6.0	7.0
Food use	13.9	14.2	...	18.3	18.6	18.7	18.7	18.8
Feed and waste	92.8	97.0	...	180.0	210.0	200.0	196.0	192.0
Industrial use	38.3	42.5	...	68.0	73.0	79.0	78.0	81.0
Seed use	1.3	1.3	...	1.3	1.3	1.3	1.2	1.2
Exports	0.2	0.2	...	0.1	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Net surplus	19.5	9.8	...	-1.6	-40.4	-37.3	-27.2	-25.0
Source: CNGOIC report and https://www.niumoney.com/news/notice_144780.html

China's JCI consultancy estimates the country's national corn use will be 303 mmt and corn inventory will drop by 44 mmt during 2020/21. JCI thinks industrial use of corn exceeds 100 mmt. The more conservative Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) estimates corn consumption at 288 mmt and a 16-mmt deficit for 2020/21. JCI forecasts China's corn imports will reach 7 mmt in 2019/20 and 12 mmt in 2020/21. MARA--typically conservative in its import forecast--estimates corn imports at 6 mmt in 2019/20 and 5 mmt in 2020/21. 

The Heilongjiang report emphasized the declining volume of Heilongjiang corn available to other provinces: from 33.3 mmt in 2016/17 to 13.2 mmt in 2019/20. This results from a decline in output due to weaker subsidies for corn and a big increase in Heilongjiang's industrial processing of corn. The provincial balance sheets estimate that the four northeastern provinces (Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia, and Liaoning) have a surplus of 50.8 mmt. Heilongjiang has always been a top surplus-corn province, but its surplus was just 12 mmt in 2009/10, according to NGOIC estimates from a decade ago. The balance is tight now because other provinces have bigger deficits. For example, Shandong Province had a deficit of -4 mmt in 2009/10 and -15.3 mmt in 2019/20. Shandong--the largest user of corn for industrial processing--previously flipped from corn-surplus to corn-deficit in the early 2000s.

Most of the increase in Heilongjiang's industrial processing in 2020 reflects a surge in alcohol production--probably due to demand for disinfectant during this year's pandemic. Heilongjiang's corn use for alcohol increased by 10.7 mmt to reach 17 mmt in 2019/20, according to the Heilongjiang estimates. The province's starch production used 8.8 mmt of corn, sweeteners used 4 mmt, amino acids 4.2 mmt, and monosodium glutamate 320,000 mt. Feed use of corn in Heilongjiang has been relatively stagnant despite a much-ballyhooed plan to relocate pig production to the corn-rich northeast that was quickly forgotten during the African swine fever epidemic (which began in the northeastern provinces).

The chart above does not take account of the massive volume of Heilongjiang corn that has been disgorged from reserves. Prior to 2016/17, much of Heilongjiang's corn surplus had been sucked up by the "temporary reserve" price support program and stored away in warehouses. At the beginning of 2020, Heilongjiang had over half of the remaining 57 mmt "temporary reserve" stockpile in its warehouses, and the province's corn accounted for 26 of the 48 mmt auctioned from May 28 to August 13. By my calculations, Heilongjiang has 5 of the 9 mmt remaining in the reserve which may be fully depleted by early September if the current 4-mmt-per-week auction pace keeps up. 

While much attention is on corn imports filling or even exceeding the country's 7.2-mmt tariff rate quota, imports of corn substitutes play an important role in balancing China's corn S&D. The Heilongjiang article estimates that imports of corn, sorghum, barley, cassava, and DDGS combined will total 17 mmt in 2019/20 and 20 mmt in 2020/21. Total imports of feed and starch raw materials will still be less than half the 40-mmt peak reached in 2014/15 and just short of the 23-mmt import total in 2017/18. The flow of corn substitute imports was choked off starting in 2016/17 by antidumping and trade war duties that made room for offloading the Heilongjiang corn stockpile

A Futures Daily article this week warned readers that the easing of corn prices in August auctions is a short-term phenomenon that does not change the corn market's supply-demand deficit, estimated at 40-to-60 mmt by this article. Futures Daily anticipated that Chinese corn prices would rise back to levels of 2300 yuan and higher last seen when the temporary reserve put a floor under prices in 2014 and 2015. Futures Daily said the main reason would be the Chinese government's import policy of limiting corn imports to 7.2 mmt, a policy which Futures Daily said shows no sign of change.