Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

You probably never thought about how China uses horse piss to keep its Central Asian colonies under control and to compete with giant multinational pharmaceutical companies. A Kazak man collects horse urine. Source: Tianshan Net (Xinjiang Daily) Suppose you're an insecure East Asian country whose population mostly lives within 500 miles of the Pacific Ocean. To your west there's a big, mostly empty territory populated by nomadic ethnic groups. You're worried that powerful neighbors will gain control over this territory and end up right outside your back door. Plus the territory has land where you can grow crops, launch rockets, and extract minerals and petroleum.  So you move into this area, subjugate it, and claim it as part of your country. You unimaginatively name it "New Territory" while claiming it has always been part of your country. You set up an archipelago of military farming and industrial settlements populated by your ethnic group. You don't want e...

Chinese data show a decline in chemical fertilizer that purportedly demonstrates their farmers are reversing their notoriously excessive fertilizer use. But what if the decline in fertilizer use actually reflects a decline in China's agricultural production? China reported another record grain harvest last week for 2023, Many observers in China were skeptical about the data since the farmland base has been shrinking, there were floods and drought this year, and grain imports are up 7 percent so far in 2023. State media issued a rebuttal to these suspicions , insisting the data are correct. Chinese statistics show a 17-percent decrease in use of chemical fertilizer use from 2015 to 2022, yet grain output has increased in all but one year during that time--more grain with less fertilizer. Hmm... 2015 was the year Chinese officials launched an action plan to cut annual growth in fertilizer use to zero by 2021. The statistics immediately began showing a decrease in fertilizer use! ...

Falling agricultural prices suggest something happened to let the air out of China's economy in October.  Weekly farm commodity procurement prices reported by the State Commodity Reserves Administration showed steep declines in corn and soybean prices during October; they seemed to stabilize in November. Rice prices increased and wheat prices were relatively steady. Calculated from weekly procurement prices reported by State Administration of Grain and Commodity Reserves  Most agricultural raw material prices paid by enterprises peaked in September and fell at varying paces during October and November.  Calculated from prices reported three times per month by China National Bureau of Statistics. The two data sources agree that corn and soybean prices went down over the last three months and rice prices went up. Soybean meal had the steepest decline (-17.5%), followed by peanuts (-15.7%) and hogs (-13.2%). Calculated from price indices shown above. Monthly CPI reports indi...