Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

The predicament facing China's dairy and beef industries was featured at an October 25 State Council press conference in Beijing  where a Ministry of Agriculture official said his department is closely watching the "complex and severe" situation facing the beef and dairy industries as prices fall and farms run into financial difficulties.  A Q3 2024 report on livestock production costs in Shandong Province found that dairy producers are losing 15,000 yuan on each cow. Milk is bringing in less income--raw milk prices are down 15.65-percent year-on-year--and plummeting beef prices mean that farmers get 23-to-33-percent less for culled cows compared with last year. ...And last year was also bad. Milk prices remain under pressure with supply exceeding demand and dairy companies looking to offload excess inventory. Fluid milk sales were down 8.6 percent in 2022 and 2.15 percent in 2023. According to the Shandong report, milk consumption is still declining this year and will r...

China's pig companies have been withdrawing from northern China and shifting production to southern provinces, according to a recent feed information net article . Consequently, mature hogs are being shipped from southern farms to northern provinces for slaughter.  The article reported that Tianbang company cleared out some of its farms in the northern province of Shandong and northern parts of Anhui and Jiangsu Provinces due to disease epidemics during 2023 and 2024 that reduced productivity and raised costs. New Hope Group had focused its investment in northern provinces Shandong and Hebei during the 2021 recovery from the major African swine fever epidemic. However, New Hope also began winding down production capacity in the region as they also encountered new ASF outbreaks and faced competition from other companies that invested in northern provinces. Zhengbang Technology--successfully reorganized under bankruptcy protection--also withdrew from the north. Aonong Biological has ...

A Chinese video posted on Youtube in September  voices the frustration of China's underclass with the accumulation of unseen regulations that effectively make every farmer in China a lawbreaker.  Man dressed as a farmer complains that he breaks the law every day just by being a farmer. Video posted on Youtube . Here's a rough translation of the gentleman's 1-minute discourse: "I thought that as long as I didn’t steal, didn’t worship foreigners, and didn’t sell out the country, I was a good citizen. But as a farmer, I break the law every day." "Burning straw--illegal." "If I cut down a tree I planted myself--illegal." "Selling my melons on the roadside--illegal because they haven't been tested." "If I kill a pig and sell some of the meat to relatives and friends--illegal." "Save seed from my harvested grain to plant next year--illegal." "It's illegal to build a pig sty or a toilet." "Get water...

As China's 2024 harvest for soybeans kicks off with prices plummeting it is clear that authorities in China are losing a years-long battle to reduce reliance on imported soybeans.  China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs' 2021-25 five-year plan set a target of boosting soybean production to 23 million metric tons (mmt) by 2025, a feat that officials predicted would raise China's soybean self-sufficiency by 6-to-7 points. However, the Ministry's October CASDE supply & demand estimates  indicate that 2024 production reached only 20.45 mmt, slightly less than last year's output and 2.5 mmt short of the 2025 target. CASDE estimates this year's soybean area at 10.16 million hectares, also short of the 10.667 million hectare target for 2025. CASDE estimates China's soybean imports in the 2024/25 marketing year at 94.6 mmt. Combined with the production estimate this implies a 17.8-percent self-sufficiency rate. That's higher than the 4 years o...