Projecting China's Ag Imports: Differing Opinions

China projected that its imports of farm commodities will decline over the next decade, the mirror image of USDA predictions that China's imports will keep growing. 

China's Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) and USDA both release 10-year projections of Chinese agricultural supply and demand at their outlook conferences each year. USDA released its projections to 2033/34 for China (and for all other countries) at the USDA Agricultural Outlook Forum in February. USDA projections are available online. CAAS released its projections this week at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs China Agricultural Outlook meeting in Beijing.

CAAS's projections were predictably bullish on China's grain production outlook. CAAS predicts that grain output will rise from 695 million metric tons last year to 704 million metric tons in 2024 and to 766 million metric tons in the 2033/34 marketing year. The 71-million-ton increase would easily meet China's target of increasing grain production capacity by 50 million metric tons.  

China's projections imply steady area planted in grain, so gains in grain output will be achieved by raising yields. CAAS expects growth in grain yields to accelerate. CAAS projects that grain yields will grow 585 kg per hectare (10 percent) over the next 10 years, faster than the cumulative 469-kg growth over the last decade. This projection goes against the general pattern of decelerating growth of crop yields around the world.

Projected by Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, April 2024.

CAAS said the "tight balance between supply and demand" in grain will continue, but "pressure will ease." Imports will fall and China will attain 91.5 percent self-sufficiency in grain by 2033.

CAAS is confident that policies designed to reduce reliance on imported soybeans will work. CAAS expects soybean output to increase at a blistering annual rate of 6.4 percent over the next decade as both area and soybean yields grow at a robust pace. CAAS expects soybean use in China to barely change over the next 10 years. CAAS projects a decrease in soybean imports from near 100 million metric tons in 2023/24 to just 78.7 million metric tons in 2033/34--reverting to the volume imported in 2014. In contrast, USDA projected that China's soybean imports will grow to 138.3 million metric tons in 2033/34.

Projected by USDA and Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 2024.

China and U.S. projections of China's corn imports also diverge. CAAS projected that China's corn imports will drop dramatically in the next 2 years and eventually fall to 6.8 million metric tons in 2033/34. USDA projected a gradual increase in corn imports to 26 million metric tons in 2033/34.

Projected by USDA and Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 2024.

CAAS projects that wheat imports will fall to 4.85 million metric tons in 2033/34, while USDA projects 9.67 million metric tons. CAAS projects rice imports of 3 million metric tons in 2033/34, while USDA projects 4.4 million metric tons. 

CAAS expects pork production to remain steady at a "reasonable level" while poultry output grows 1.7 percent annually, beef output grows 1 percent annually, and sheep meat grows 1.2 percent. Milk output is projected to grow at a rapid 4.1 percent annual rate, and aquaculture output will grow just 0.9 percent. 

According to CAAS, China will succeed in diversifying the sources of its agricultural imports and will progress in "high-level" opening of its economy with continued growth in agricultural trade. 

CAAS expects agricultural prices to be on a rising trend. This point seems meant to reassure Chinese producers with rising production costs that they will be able to maintain their profit margins. CAAS asserted that the linkage between Chinese and international agricultural commodity prices will weaken as China expands its domestic output. This is wishful thinking intended to assert China's independence from American commodity markets and to assert China's role as an "agricultural power"--a theme of last year's China outlook conference. 

In fact, the linkage between Chinese and international prices seems to be strengthening. Weak corn, wheat and soybean prices due to diminishing impacts of the 2022 Ukraine invasion spike and Brazil's exporting of commodity price deflation are being felt in Chinese markets. Conversely, strong Chinese rice prices reflect a tighter international rice market after India's restraint of exports last year.

Disease is China's Hog Industry's No. 1 Problem

Disease is the biggest of 10 problems facing China's pig farms according to a 2023 article in the Chinese industry periodical Pigs Today (今日养猪业). The author, a member of a swine industry commission, identified a cocktail of viruses and bacterial infections that keep nearly all swine herds unhealthy. Another article in the same issue focused on disease problems listed the same diseases, warned that diseases are becoming more common, new virus strains are appearing, and pigs are periodically poisoned by mycotoxins in feed. 

Moreover, disease contributes to other problems identified by the Pigs Today author. Diseases undermine productivity, raise production costs, reduce the Chinese industry's international competitiveness, contribute to overuse of antibiotics, and epidemics are usually the cause of cyclical gyrations in the industry.

The pig-problem author pointed to African swine fever (ASF) as the most harmful disease and described the ASF situation as severe--even though China has not officially reported any cases since a handful in early 2022. ASF no longer kills pigs en masse as it did 5 years ago, but the virus spread widely in northern provinces each of the last two winters and moved southward before warming weather brought relief. 

A year ago there was controversy about a warning of widespread ASF infections issued by a Chinese futures analysis firm. Another surge of ASF infections during the past winter remained largely covered up. 

A securities company's February 2024 field trip report on the aftermath of severe disease outbreaks in Shandong Province during October-December 2023 found that severe epidemics each winter have driven many swine producers out of the market in Shandong. The province has many slaughterhouses but relatively few pigs, so Shandong imports a growing number of animals from other regions. The survey team visited a facility that specializes in butchering sows that have produced only one litter of piglets. Sows were said to be cheap (just over 6 yuan per kg) due to disease, and the enterprise's largest supplier of culled sows is China's largest hog producing company. (According to the report, sows having produced just 1 litter have a strong flavor preferred by older consumers; older sows have tougher meat).

Sichuan Province's animal husbandry association issued a document in December warning of the risk of the ASF epidemic spreading from Shandong to Sichuan and demanded that the Sichuan Province agriculture department restrict shipments from the affected region. A recent field trip report to Sichuan and Guizhou found those areas are protected from the spread of disease due to their isolated geographic location, but they also suffered severe disease outbreaks during 2023.

The Pigs Today article on swine disease said ASF and PRRS (aka "blue ear disease") are the two most complex and difficult diseases to deal with on pig farms and cause the greatest losses. PRRS has been in China since the 1990s and caused havoc during 2007 but has rarely been mentioned by authorities since then. The disease article also called out other decades-old diseases: porcine epidemic diarrhea (PEDv), classical swine fever, pseudorabies, foot and mouth disease, and swine influenza. 

Many problems contribute to the growing disease problem: import of infected breeding stock, the proliferation of vaccinations--including use of unapproved vaccines containing live viruses--and indiscriminate use of antibiotics contribute to destruction of immunity, mutation and recombination of viral strains. The disease article's author warned that excessive disinfection destroys beneficial flora, damages pigs' mucosal barrier and stresses pigs.

The shift to large-scale company-owned farms was supposed to improve biosecurity, but the author pointed out that the technology and skills of workers and managers have not kept pace. Construction and management of pigs in such facilities is not based on behavioral features of pigs, he said, and there is a lack of individualized disease prevention that leads to frequent emergencies and safety accidents. Total enclosed, high-density, and lack of natural light lead to reduced resistance to infection. He said procedures for feeding, management and environmental control are not always followed on such farms. The author observes that PRRS is often spread when swine are moved between farms owned by the same enterprise. Large farms and high-rise "cluster" farms have higher incidence of PRRS, the Pigs Today author said.

The number-2 problem is cost, but this is also related to disease. The author said high cost of feed--attributed to the excessive cost of corn, soybean meal, and wheat bran in China--is one of the factors that pushes production costs one-third higher than those in North America. He also pointed to costs of disease prevention and veterinary treatment. The author said hog production costs for the two largest producers rose about.4 yuan per kilogram after ASF arrived. The pig disease expert pointed out that poor quality feed can damage animals' physiological function. Adequate protein in feed promotes healthy internal organs, reducing the ASF infection rate. China's pigs suffer when authorities restrict imports of feed grains and oilseeds to promote so-called "food security."

Chinese Crackdown on Meat Crimes: Rinse, Repeat

China launched a crackdown on illegal practices in livestock production last week. The 8-month campaign will address problems that have persisted for decades: 

• Illegal use of muscle-promoting chemicals like clenbuterol
• Trading in meat from animals that died of disease
• Operation of illegal slaughter facilities 
• Injection of water, medications or other substances into animals before slaughter
• Production and sale of counterfeit beef, mutton, and donkey meat products
• Use or sale of livestock and poultry products of unknown origin lacking inspection certificates

According to the April 4, 2024 announcement on China Central TV (CCTV), the State Council's Food Safety Office, the Public Security Bureau, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and State Administration of Market Supervision issued a circular ordering local officials to carry out an 8-month "special rectification" targeting illegal behavior in meat production. 

Comments posted on "The Paper's" announcement of the crackdown observed that:

• "We hear this all the time, repeated bans, endless!"
• "Bans are not enough; punishment is not enough; publicity is not enough; problems must be traced to the roots"
• "Violations will continue as long as rewards are too big and punishments too light"
• "Why not check the factories producing the [banned chemicals]?"
• "You should check the school cafeterias"

Three years ago, a March 15, 2021 CCTV exposed widespread use of clenbuterol and other substances in sheep farming. CCTV asked ""Why is it repeatedly banned?" noting China's agriculture ministry had launched a major crackdown a year earlier. CCTV revealed that farmers received warnings from village officials of impending inspections. More crackdowns were announced by provincial authorities in Hebei, Henan, Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai the day after the 2021 CCTV expose was aired.

In 2011 CCTV exposed collusion between farmers, slaughterhouse officials and pig traders to hide use of clenbuterol in muscular "body builder pigs" supplied to prominent meat company Shuanghui. The CEO of Shuanghui issued public apologies and promised to transition from being a "killer of pigs" to a "raiser of pigs." In 2013 Shuanghui's CEO got the green light to buy U.S. company Smithfield Foods. 

Crackdowns on illegal slaughter facilities and sale of meat from diseased animals date back at least to the 1990s.

China Dream: Farms Without Farmers

Chinese propagandists breathlessly describe "unmanned farms" (无人农场) as "the new model for future agriculture," "the path to smart agriculture," and a solution to the problem of who will plant the crops in the future. They envision "farming without going to the fields" via an interconnected web of driverless tractors, seeding, planting and spraying equipment guided by satellites, drones, sensors, and irrigation pumps. China's ideal is to remove human decisions from the farming process by using sensors, big data, artificial intelligence, and other "smart" farming operations.

Chinese planners love schematics and fanciful engineering
drawings showing complex, colorful layouts.

China has been excited about "smart" farming for a while, but the unmanned farm idea seems to be new. A "Rural Revitalization Plan 2018-22"and a May 2019 "digital rural development strategic outline" called for development of smart agriculture, and the 2021 14th 5-year plan called for a digitized overhaul of agricultural production business and management using smart agricultural methods. In May 2022, China released a smart agricultural machinery technology road map. The 2020 plan for digital countryside included lots of plans for information technology and big data in farming, but the only reference to "unmanned farms" was a description of such farms in Europe, North America, Australia, Japan and South Korea. 

The first automated farms in China were built in 2018 in Shandong and Jiangsu Provinces. By the end of 2022 there were over 100 unmanned farm projects in 22 provinces covering 300,000 mu (20,000 hectares). The number doubled between 2020 and 2022. According to an "Unmanned Farm Development Report" issued in 2023 China's unmanned farming is in its initial stages of development in which government demonstration projects are set up on state-run farms to inspire wider adoption. The 5-year plan aims to "fully popularize" intelligent agricultural machinery and equipment for production of the main food crops in large contiguous fields in plains regions (that is, in flat places...presumably it's much more difficult if not impossible to implement full automation in hilly areas).

State farms in Heilongjiang and Ningxia Provinces are the featured models. Eight unmanned farms with nearly 20,000 pieces of smart farming equipment are operated by parts of the sprawling Beidahuang Group--the commercial arm of Heilongjiang's State Farm system along the Russian border. The project is supported by a collection of agricultural universities, the national meteorological satellite center, state-owned phone company China Mobile, real estate giant Country Garden (now in financial straits), several laboratories and an industrial park. 

The Ningxia Province State Farm group began its unmanned farm project in 2022 using 30,000 mu (2000 hectares) of farmland. In Hebei Province's Handan City they claim to have 25,000 mu operated as unmanned farms. Unmanned farming projects are also being set up by provincial and municipal agricultural officials in wealthy coastal regions of Zhejiang Province and Shanghai.

A model "unmanned" rice farm where no peasants work,
but lots of visiting rural officials stand around watching and taking photos. 

Liberation Daily said last month that the Shanghai government work report's plan to "build 30,000 mu of grain-producing unmanned farms" got a lot of attention. A Shanghai municipal plan for "high quality agricultural development 2021-25" aimed to set up digitized machinery management organizations and create 100,000 mu of unmanned grain farms. 

China is not a leader in smart farming; they are trying to keep up with developed countries. Liberation Daily said the project is inspired by a "new industrial revolution" involving big data, internet of things, and artificial intelligence propelling the "smart agriculture" era in Europe, America, Japan and South Korea. Foreign equipment will likely be excluded from China's smart farms, and the data collected will be walled off from foreign companies. China's national Beidou satellite navigation is mentioned as a core part of each unmanned farming project. Photos show Chinese-brand equipment. Liberation Daily emphasized that the value of the data collected by smart farming equipment may be even greater than the value of the farm products they produce. 

The unmanned farm project continues the century-old fascination of Chinese communists and their Soviet forebears with tractors, giant farms, and untested theories such as Trofim Lysenko's weird approach to breeding. The excitement over unmanned farms reflects a parallel contempt for troublesome peasant farmers who can now be replaced by young men with college degrees wielding tablet computers. The idea of eliminating labor from farming is appealing as China's population has tipped into decline and as its peasants age and lose interest in farming.

The unmanned farm concept also fits neatly into a new Xi Jinping-inspired "Thousand Village Demonstration and Ten Thousand Village Rectification" to overhaul the countryside by drawing up planned villages surrounded by vast fields, irrigation canals, electric lines and greenhouses.

Descriptions of the unmanned farm projects rattle off huge percentages of water, fertilizer, and pesticide that will be saved. They claim to be able to raise production by 10%. No one mentioned what might happen if the electricity fails, if the internet goes down, or if the system is hacked. There is no mention of the cost of purchasing, installing, maintaining the equipment, nor the cost of hiring operators.

The unmanned farms promise to increase farmers' income despite the prospect that none of them will be working on the farms anymore. 

China's ideal: a guy in spectacles running an unmanned tractor
from a cell phone.

China's rural bank problem

China's rural banks are a source of potential instability worrying leaders at this year's "two sessions" legislative conclave...and possibly a canary in the coal mine of a financial meltdown. 

Beijing Shangbao reported last week that finding an "orderly solution for risks in medium and small financial organizations is of the utmost importance in current financial work." Premier Li Qiang's government work report identified resolution of risks related to small and medium financial institutions alongside real estate and local government debt as keys to maintaining economic and social stability. Among small and medium financial institutions, rural banks have the most prominent problems.

China Banking and Insurance News reported that rural banks had nonperforming loans totaling 754.6 billion yuan at the end of 2022 and a nonperforming loan rate of 3.22%--more than double the rate for larger Chinese banks. Some rural banks have already refused to pay depositors, leading to protests. Authorities already undertook a huge consolidation of rural banks earlier this year. 

Two groups of rural banking institutions were set up in reforms 2 decades ago meant to clean up an earlier financial mess and to address the lack of lending for rural small businesses and farmers. A sprawling system of "rural credit cooperatives"--largely insolvent in the early 2000s--received injections of state capital and were merged into provincial or regional "rural commercial banks" and "rural cooperative banks." A network of village and town banks were set up by urban banks and foreign banks.

The fundamental problems of a small, fragmented rural customer base with few liquid assets persisted, and the countryside is riddled with debt.  Financial experts say rural Chinese banks would be unviable without subsidies. Many are plagued by mismanagement and economic slowdown in rural regions; the pandemic tipped many into crisis. With paper-thin margins, rural banks were tempted to offer high-yield financial products outside their rural mandate. Some went bust; some managers fled the country with bank funds in their suitcases.

There are likely a lot more problems lurking in rural China's finances. A hot topic at last year's "two sessions" was a report revealing that Chinese villages were in debt to the tune of 900 billion yuan (about $125 billion). Based on a 2019 Ministry of Agriculture survey, news outlet Yicai called the debts "heavy baggage" for village collectives and a potential "stumbling block to rural revitalization." Another outlet confirmed that its investigations found debts were common in villages all over the country, in both rich and poor areas. A Sichuan Daily article 4 months ago reported that a survey of 48 villages showed persistent problems with village debt despite a 12-year campaign by provincial authorities to resolve the debts. A local official in Shandong Province wrote that "village debt is a microcosm of rural social conflicts and problems." Debts arise from failed village-operated pig farms and other business ventures, road-building projects, covid control, poverty alleviation projects, and decades-old obligations for unpaid taxes.

The Agricultural Development Bank of China (ADBC)--a government-run rural policy bank--likely has a higher nonperforming loan rate than it claims. ADBC has participated in 3 rounds of the China banking regulator's pilot program that moves bad loans to take them off the books. ADBC was created 30 years ago to finance procurement and storage of grain, oilseed and cotton and has broadened its portfolio to include rural development and industrial parks. ADBC's soaring loan balance seems worrying. The ADBC loan book reached 8.79 trillion yuan ($1.23 trillion) in 2023, up 1 trillion yuan each of the last two years and triple the balance 9 years ago. ADBC lending has grown much faster than the agricultural sector. The ADBC loan balance is now 93% of the annual value of agricultural GDP, up from 46% in 2013 and 33% in 2004.

Source: annual reports of Agricultural Development Bank.

In 2022 ADBC lent 407.8 billion yuan to finance procurement of grain, cotton and oilseed purchases and 94.6 billion yuan to finance 23 million metric tons of imports. ADBC said it financed 64 percent of China's grain purchases in 2022. Interest on ADBC's loans is largely paid by government subsidies for holding reserves, but recent loans are probably underwater due to falling grain and oilseed prices. The value of grain purchased at high prices in 2022 has shrunk with grain prices falling, so it will be impossible to repay the principle on the loans by selling the grain. Income from giant grain logistics projects, poverty alleviation and construction of apartment buildings to resettle displaced rural people is unlikely to be sufficient to repay the interest or principle. 

More People Are Dying in China, Stats Bureau Says

We know Chinese folks don't want to have babies, but it turns out Chinese people are dying in unprecedented numbers as well. An extra 11.3 million people died in 2023. Males and rural people are disappearing at the fastest rates. 

China's birth rate was record-low in 2023 but its death rate was also record-high as its population plunged by 1.48%, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. This is the second year China has reported a drop in population (last year it dropped 0.06%). The plunging birth rate is the main factor pushing China's population over the cliff's edge, but China's people are also dying faster. 

China's birth rate fell to 6.4% in 2023 as the country recorded 9.02 million births. That was down more than half from the rate in 2016 and almost 17 percentage points less than the 1987 peak of 23.3%.

China's death rate has been more stable than its birth rate, but there's a clear upswing in deaths over the last 3 years.  

Source: Data from China's National Bureau of Statistics and 2023 Statistical Communique.

The death rate was steady before suddenly creeping up to 7.18% in 2021, 7.37% in 2022, and 7.87% in 2023. These are all record highs. China's death rate was 6.4%-6.6% during 1980-2005 and bumped to the previous record of 7.14% in 2011 before reaching an average of 7.07% during 2015-20.

For some reason Chinese people have been dying in greater numbers over the last 3 years. We can calculate the "excess deaths" by comparing the actual number of deaths with the number that would have occurred if Chinese people had continued dying at 7.07% per year as they had done during 2015-2020. China's statistics bureau reported 111 million deaths in 2023, but only 99.8 million would have died at the rate recorded during 2015-20. That's 11.3 million "excess deaths" in 2023. The calculations show "excess deaths" increased year by year, from 1.6 million in 2021, to 4.3 million in 2022, and 11.3 million in 2023. The 65-and-over folks comprised 14.2% of the population in 2023.

The aging of China's population does not explain the surge in the death rate. The proportion of people aged 65 and older was already rising (from 10% to 12.6% during 2015-20) without causing an increase in the overall death rate.  

China's population decline is hitting men more than women. In 2023 China's male population declined 1.74 million but its female population declined by only 340,000. The same disparity between male and female population change occurred in 2022 and 2021. The statistic bureau's data indicate that China lost 3 million males between 2020 and 2023 and gained 910,000 females over those 3 years. (The 2020 data look implausible, probably because that year's census provided some surprises that were massaged by the statisticians.)

China appears to be losing people mainly in the countryside. The population in cities and towns went up 12 million in 2023, but the rural population went down by 14 million. This is the first year that losses in the countryside exceeded gains in urban population. 

So it looks like there has been a rural disease epidemic striking mainly rural men, unreported civil war in the countryside, or a wave of executions of rural men. Or maybe the migrants who fled to the U.S. border were counted as dead. What's happening China?

China Massaged Soybean Data to Hide Policy Failure

China has been massaging data on soybean imports and consumption of soybean meal to hide the failure of its policies aimed at reducing reliance on imported soybeans.

Last month China's customs data reported that 99.41 million metric tons (mmt) of soybeans were imported during the 2023 calendar year, an 11.41% increase from 89.218 mmt imported during 2022.

However, adding up the monthly soybean import totals reported by customs over the last 12 months gives me a bigger total of 101.71 mmt for 2023. That would have been a record amount, exceeding the previous record of 100.3 mmt imported during calendar year 2020. What happened?

The 99.41 mmt total appears to have been doctored to whittle down the annual total and keep it under the symbolic 100-mmt barrier. A record soybean import total would have drawn attention to the failure of highly publicized and costly Chinese policies to reduce reliance on imported soybeans. The revisions also foil a prediction that China's soybean imports would exceed 100 mmt made in December by the head of the U.S. Soybean Export Council office in Beijing in an interview with a Chinese news outlet.

The 2022 import total also appears to have been doctored. Last month's customs report said 89.218 mmt had been imported during 2022, but a year ago customs reported that 91.08 mmt of soybeans had been imported during 2022. 

Customs officials appear to have made retrospective revisions that cut the 2023 total by 2.31 mmt and the 2022 total by 1.86 mmt. They probably reduced both years' numbers to keep the year-to-year change realistic. A comparison of monthly totals from previously published monthly reports with monthly totals currently in the customs database indicates that small downward revisions were made in monthly totals for January-June 2023 with no changes for July-December. Small changes were also made for 8 of the 12 months of 2022.

The 10.2-million-tonne increase in soybean imports during 2023 reported by official data far outstrips the 0.6-million-tonne increase in domestic soybean production achieved last year at great expense through multiple subsidies, earmarked bank loans, and "instructions" issued to farming enterprises.

A second questionable claim comes from China's Feed Industry Association which reported that use of soybean meal in manufactured animal feed dropped 11.8% in 2023 and the percentage of soybean meal in feed dropped 2.6 percentage points. These numbers appear to show that the industry achieved a directive issued in the communist party's 2023 Document No. 1 to "deepen implementation of the action plan to reduce and replace soybean meal used in animal feed." The Feed Industry Association's web site features a large banner promoting the soymeal reduction program and a November 2022 article on the association's site calling for faster reduction of soymeal use in poultry and aquaculture said the soymeal reduction program was of the utmost importance. 

However, the reported 11.8% decrease in soymeal use doesn't seem to square with the 11.4% increase in soybean imports. The November 2022 Feed Industry Association article said 85% of soybean meal in China is produced by crushing imported soybeans, so the increased volume of imported soybeans implies an increased supply of soybean meal. 

The CASDE soybean balance sheet issued by China's agriculture ministry shows increasing volumes of soybeans crushed during each market year: from 90.5 mmt in market year 2021/22 to 95.9 mmt in 2022/23, and 97.8 mmt in 2023/24, which also implies a growing supply of soybean meal. 

If the precipitous 11.8% drop in soybean meal use is true, what's happening to the increased supplies of soybean meal? 

There doesn't seem to be any indication that soybeans or soybean meal are being stockpiled. Instead, a report from China Grain Net (an organization affiliated with the government's grain reserve company) says the government has accumulated stockpiles of domestic soybeans and soybean oil. 

The import data was accepted at face value in China Grain Net's review of the 2023 soybean market. The report praised a series of policies that boosted domestic soybean output to over 20 mmt in 2022 and 2023, then listed a series of soybean procurements by Sinograin and local governments that removed about 2.7 mmt of 2022/23 domestic soybeans from the market to prevent prices from crashing. Sinograin also purchased an undisclosed amount of 2023/24 domestic soybeans last October. Sinograin also cut back on its auctions of soybean reserves to ease downward pressure on prices. 

The China Grain Net report did not mention any stockpiling of imported soybeans. 

The report revealed that reserves of soybean oil were bloated in 2023 due to import stockpiling during the 2022 lockdown year that wasn't needed because recovery of demand after the lifting of covid lockdowns was much weaker than expected.

China's usual tactic is to blame "subsidized" and "genetically modified" American crops for its problems, but it is Brazil's soybean supply boom that kept soybeans cheap. Low prices induced Chinese buyers to import record volumes, undercutting China's grand plan to reduce reliance on imported soybeans. The China Grain Net report cited a record crop in Brazil and low prices for the surge in soybean imports. The report noted that Brazil accounted for 70% of China's soybean imports during 2023. The U.S. share was 24%.

China's Insane Agricultural Policy Directives

It's said that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. By that definition China's agricultural policy is insane. 

This month China released the latest in a string of "No. 1 Documents" on rural priorities issued each year since 2004. (An earlier set was issued from 1982-86.) The same programs keep coming up, often with the exact same language. Some long-forgotten programs are intermittently resurrected despite having failed in the past. 

This year's document has several failed programs resurrected from the dead.

The document directs provinces to experiment with a "dynamic mechanism" linking farm input subsidies to rises in input prices. This apparently is institutionalizing the so-called "one-time subsidies" given to compensate farmers for high input prices each of the last 3 years. The subsidies were given out in 2-to-4-billion-yuan tranches in an ad hoc manner, multiple times in 2021 and 2022. Last year's document instructed officials to "perfect the mechanism for offsetting increases in farm input prices." This year it has become a new subsidy program. 

The "dynamic input subsidy" echoes a similar "comprehensive input subsidy" that began in 2006 to help farmers cope with rising costs of fuel and fertilizer. That subsidy also began in an ad hoc manner, given out as an emergency during the farming season, then institutionalized. Authorities then announced a dynamic mechanism to link the subsidy to increases in fertilizer and fuel prices--exactly the same as the instructions in this year's document. The earlier subsidy ballooned from 12 billion yuan to 107 billion yuan between 2006 and 2012. It proved ineffectual and was folded into a single "land fertility" subsidy along with seed subsidies and a grain producer payment. 

This year's document also includes an instruction to continue the land fertility subsidy, but there is no instruction to ensure that the subsidy funds are actually used to improve fertility.

This year's instruction to raise the minimum price for wheat previously appeared in documents for 2009-2013. Then it switched to "continue implementing the minimum price policy for wheat and rice." The increase in minimum prices prompted a WTO challenge from the U.S. initiated in 2016 (which China lost). The 2017 document's instruction to "rationally adjust the minimum price" reappeared in the 2023 and this year's document.

A proposal in this year's document to explore a mechanism for rich grain-consuming provinces to financially compensate poor grain-surplus provinces has been around for at least 15 years.

Another blast from the past is the instruction in this year's document to pursue a 3-year action plan to develop tea oil and oilseeds grown on trees to reduce reliance on imported oilseeds. The tea oil strategy was pursued in the 1980s, failed and disappeared down the memory hole. Another big initiative during the mid-2000s was to grow jatropha trees to produce nuts that would be used to produce oil for biodiesel fuel. Jatropha trees were planted all over the mountains of western China but the plan soon collapsed. 

The new document's instruction to support development of high-oil soybean varieties is also familiar. There have been a series of soybean revitalization programs since the early 2000s that called for efforts to develop and disseminate high-oil soybean seed varieties to make domestic soybeans more attractive to crushers. Most Chinese soybeans are rich in protein but low in oil content, making them only profitable for use in tofu and other food products.

Other language that keeps reappearing includes orders to crack down on smuggling of agricultural products, protection of "black soil," and to increase use of organic fertilizer. 

Why do Chinese officials keep regurgitating the same policies? Copy-paste is a much easier and less risky approach than thinking up and debating new policies. Communists have a deep memory hole, and all history must validate the success of the State's policies. Policy failures are never discussed in Chinese books. Moreover, China's agricultural cadres all yearn to be promoted to escape backwater agricultural assignments, so the cadres who saw the policy fail 10 years ago are no longer around when the policy is reintroduced. 

China Relied on Brazil for 27% of Ag Imports

When China says it is "diversifying" its sources of agricultural imports, it really means they are shifting purchases from the United States to Brazil. During calendar year 2023 Brazil had a 27-percent share of China's agricultural imports while the United States had a 15-percent share. This reversed the two countries' positions back in 2014 when the U.S. share was 24 percent and Brazil's was 19 percent. 

Source: Analysis of China customs data

Brazil had a 69-percent share of China's soybean imports in 2023, up from 62 percent the previous year. Brazil's share of corn imports went from 0 to 47 percent in one year after China approved Brazil as a corn supplier in late 2022. Brazil's share of China's sugar imports was 50 percent, and Brazil's shares were 46 percent for poultry, 41 percent for beef, 28 percent for pork, and 28 percent for cotton. 

Other countries that were leading suppliers of China's agricultural imports included Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Indonesia with shares of 4-to-6 percent during 2023--still way behind the U.S. and Brazil. Russia, Argentina, and Chile each supplied 2-to-3 percent. The entire Southeast Asian region had a 15.6-percent share, similar to the U.S. share. The European Union had a 10-percent share. All of Africa supplied a combined 2.4 percent and South Asia supplied 1.4 percent.

Chinese Minister Restarts U.S. Cooperation

China's Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Tang Renjian met U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in Washington January 18 to resume the Joint Committee on Cooperation in Agriculture (JCCA), a forum for discussing exchanges between the United States and China that had been dormant since 2015. During the same trip Tang also visited Mexico and the Dominican Republic to discuss closer agricultural exchanges with developing countries on the U.S. doorstep.

Chinese Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Tang Renjian
met U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack January 18. Source: China MARA.

In the official USDA news release about his meeting with Minister Tang, Secretary Vilsack emphasized China's role as an export market, noting that he discussed market access issues with Minister Tang and expressed hope that the bilateral relationship will expand and improve market access opportunities for U.S. farmers and ranchers in China. The USDA statement also said discussion included "tackling climate and food security challenges" and sustainable agricultural systems. 

China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs' Chinese language web site features an article about the Washington meeting with more detail and a more positive spin than the USDA statement. According to the Chinese article, Minister Tang endorsed the JCCA as a channel for promoting bilateral exchange and promised to "cherish, care for, and operate this mechanism in a stable manner." The description of Tang's comments was more expansive than the USDA statement, calling the restarting of the JCCA "after a 9-year hiatus" as a "landmark event in the history of Sino-US agricultural relations." The Chinese statement pledged that China was willing to work with the U.S. to "pragmatically promote China-U.S. cooperation to take new steps and work together to stabilize food and agricultural development."

The Chinese article mentioned that Minister Tang brought up "climate smart agriculture," food security, and "people to people exchanges" (all favorite topics of Xi Jinping) in the discussion, while Secretary Vilsack brought up trade facilitation. According to the Chinese account the two sides agreed to establish working groups on food security, nutrition and health. 

The Chinese account also reveals that Chinese Ambassador Xie Feng attended the meeting, Tang held afternoon meetings with U.S. commercial groups, and Tang requested a meeting with the U.S. Trade Representative's chief agriculture negotiator.  

The Washington meeting was out of step with China's agricultural diplomacy since last year which has featured a stream of meetings with developing countries where Chinese officials pledged aid and cooperation as a fellow "developing country" to build relations based on a shared importance of agriculture and rural poverty alleviation. It's also unusual for the Chinese agriculture minister to travel abroad. 

Before arriving in Washington Minister Tang made visits to Mexico and the Dominican Republic that were squarely in line with China's agricultural diplomacy strategy. On January 11, Minister Tang met his Mexican counterpart for the 7th meeting of an agricultural working group under a China-Mexico Intergovernmental Standing committee where they discussed climate smart agriculture, food security and promoting rural prosperity. Tang praised growth in China-Mexico trade of agricultural commodities. The article twice mentioned another Xi Jinping favorite, "Agricultural Cultural Heritage." Reflecting China's S&T interests, Tang pointed to exchanges of germplasm and biotechnology research as achievements in China-Mexico cooperation and he visited the International Corn and Maize Improvement Center and the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Research Institute in Mexico. 

Minister Tang met Mexican ag minister January 11 in Mexico City.
Source: MARA web site.

During his January 14-15 visit to the Dominican Republic Tang scored a meeting with the President and held bilateral talks with the Dominican ag minister. Here the Chinese article mentions the "Belt and Road" framework for developing agricultural relations and discussed rice and tropical crops, two favorite crops for China's agricultural diplomacy with developing countries. There were discussions of launching a bilateral agricultural cooperation mechanism between China and the Dominican Republic.

Tang did not visit neighboring Haiti, which is one of a dozen countries that still has diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Tang also bypassed old Chinese friend, Cuba, on his North American journey. 

Tang's visits to Mexico, Dominican Republic and the United States were all described in articles on the Chinese language web site of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. The English version of the site featured only the visit to Mexico with no mention of the trip to the United States. 

China Pork Output Boom Outpaced Demand

China increased its pork output in 2023 to a near-record level. But prices plummeted, indicating the market didn't want that much pork. Analysts say the industry needs to downsize, but companies backed by friendly banks and officials are content to burn through cash until prices pop again.

China's National Bureau of Statistics reported that 726.6 million hogs were slaughtered in China during 2023, a 3.8-percent increase from 2022. The volume of pork produced was 57.94 million metric tons, a 4.6-percent increase from 2022. 

Last year's pork output was the largest reported in the Bureau's statistics since 2014. It exceeded the target of 55 million metric tons for 2025 set by the 5-year plan. Hog slaughter was the third highest ever reported. The only time China slaughtered more hogs was during 2013-14.

The numbers imply 79.7 kg of meat per hog, a 500-gram increase from the previous year and 2-kg more than in 2014. Heavier hogs are consistent with reports of widespread "secondary fattening"--purchasing mature hogs and raising them to even heavier weights--that has become common in China during the 4 years since the African swine fever epidemic. 

The Bureau's index of prices received by farmers showed that hog prices fell 14 percent during 2023. That was the biggest decline of any farm price. Fourth quarter 2023 hog prices were down 31 percent year on year. The drop in prices tells us that Chinese farms produced more hogs than the market wanted.

Tracking raw material purchase prices reported by the Bureau illustrates the long-term problem facing China's hog industry. After 6 years of wild gyrations during the trade war, African swine fever, and COVID-19, Chinese hog prices in December 2023 were almost the same as 6 years earlier in January 2018 (4 percent less to be precise: January 2018, 14.97 yuan per kg; December 2023, 14.3 yuan per kg). Meanwhile, prices of the main feed raw materials--corn and soybean meal--were up 33 percent over that same time period. Costs have risen but the price of hogs hasn't. 

Indexes calculated from average raw material purchase prices reported by China's National Bureau of Statistics.

Earlier this week Jiemian News reported that China's hog industry needs to reduce production capacity as companies incur mounting losses and run into cash flow problems. However, government officials and State banks have been ordered to backstop companies with unlimited credit, so there is little market discipline for overproduction.

With hog prices below the production cost, the more hogs companies produce the more cash they burn. Twenty-two of 32 publicly listed hog companies lost money in the first three quarters last year. Jiemian described reports of 370 million yuan in overdue debt incurred by Fujian hog farming company Aonong as an alarm bell for the industry. Companies are carrying substantial debt loads. Aonong has a debt-asset ratio of 89.4% and Tianbang has a ratio of 87%. Another company, Zhengbang, already went into bankruptcy reorganization.

One industry analyst told Jiemian that the industry needs to shed about 10 percent of its production capacity, but companies are hesitant to scale back because they want to maximize their gains if there is an upturn in prices. The expert estimated that there would be only a 5 percent reduction of capacity. There is little hope of a rebound in prices.

Muyuan inadvertently explained why companies are not being forced to cut capacity. Muyuan said State-run banks regard Muyuan as a "strategic customer", and they are willing to extend nearly bottomless credit at low interest rates. Muyuan obtains 70% of its credit from the Agricultural Bank of China, China Construction Bank, and Bank of China and still has a 30-billion-yuan line of credit. Last year Muyuan paid 4% interest on new bank loans. Muyuan's debt grew from 59.3 billion yuan to 78 billion yuan last year. 

The three top companies--Muyuan, New Hope, and Wens--produced a combined 100 million hogs in 2023, a record volume. Regarding Muyuan, one analyst pronounced, "Even if [the company] does not make money there is still no problem in ensuring that it does not collapse." 

The analyst points out that even if a company goes out of business its assets will likely be taken over by another company--i.e. no reduction in industry capacity. "The local government will provide certain support out of consideration for stabilizing production," the analyst explained. 

Small independent farmers with less access to credit may be forced to downsize. The Statistics Bureau's report said that the national inventory of hogs declined 4.1 percent during 2023.

"Many experts" told Jiemian that this winter's hog disease outbreaks could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. According to New Hope Group, another hog-farming giant, disease outbreaks came earlier than last year, affecting both company-operated farms and smaller independent farm contractors. Disease increases cost by reducing piglet survival rates, reducing success rate of sow breeding, increasing death losses of fattening hogs, and inducing farms to make additional expenditures to prevent and treat disease.

Interestingly, the U.S. pork industry is also in downsizing mode. Articles like the Wall Street Journal's "America Has Too Much Pork" cite plummeting sales to China as one of the reasons for American companies shuttering farms and processing plants. 

China Rural Work Meeting: That 60s Show

Farmland protection and upgrades, food supply diversification, science and technology, disaster prevention and recovery, and preventing poor areas from falling back into poverty were the "clear requirements" ordered by Xi Jinping for 2024 at China's "rural work meeting" for 2024 held last month in Beijing. Xi Jinping's effort to present himself as Mao's successor can be detected in the meeting's revivals of Mao-era approaches to reconfiguring the countryside and keeping it under control.

The meeting celebrated "overcoming" "serious" natural disasters last year, producing another record grain crop, rapid income growth for farmers, and harmonious, stable rural society. That probably means none of those things actually happened and communist leaders are worried that the countryside could spin out of control. 

Working for food self-sufficiency was a clear theme. The meeting demanded that officials at all levels pledge to prevent farmland from being converted to other uses, called for restoring fertility in the once-rich black soil of the northeast, designing a system to promote agricultural science and technology, building productive and resilient farm fields, and monitoring poor regions to prevent recurrence of poverty. Last year's new ambition of making China an "agricultural powerhouse" was regurgitated. 

Animal husbandry officials study important directives issued by Xi Jinping at the 2023 rural work meeting.
Source: National Animal husbandry station.

Like Mao did during his reign, Xi is pushing fanciful programs to reconfigure China's countryside. 

A "Thousand Village Demonstration and Ten Thousand Village Rectification" (千村示范、万村整治) project to redesign villages and knit them together was prominent in the description of the rural work meeting. This project was promoted in Zhejiang Province when Xi was in charge there. The "thousand-ten thousand" campaign aims to redesign entire villages and to integrate multiple villages in a network of fields, infrastructure, and industry chains. Designs are made by university architects and planners to upgrade and relocate housing, make the village look scenic, concentrate farm fields, install roads/irrigation, include ecological ‘circular agriculture’ features, and integrate agriculture with industry. The project smells like the Mao-era "in agriculture learn from Dazhai" and the disastrous "Great Leap Forward" makeover of multiple villages into giant communes with common fields, dining halls, and industrial facilities. Examples of picturesque villages in Zhejiang--China's richest province--illustrating the project would be impossible to replicate nationally.

The "1000-10,000 project" aims to create picturesque, productive and
environmentally friendly villages designed by smart professors.

The rural work meeting also featured a "Maple Bridge Experience" project--a Mao-era initiative to settle disputes and conflicts at the village and township level. Xi endorsed the "Maple Bridge" approach to governing rural areas--named after a village in Zhejiang where it originated--as a national initiative. According to the description of Xi's endorsement during a visit to the countryside in November 2023, the "Maple Bridge" governance approach demands that conflicts be resolved on the spot in order to reduce the number of arrests and maintain public security. Its goal is to "vigorously promote the socialist rule of law culture", give full play to government legal advisors and public lawyers in drawing up legal documents and resolving administrative disputes. The initiative aims to change rural customs and inculcate respect for social order as a "rule of virtue." In other words, the communist party wants to quash any threats to its dominance of rural governance and smack down any uprisings among unhappy villagers before higher level officials have to deal with them. 

In another hyperlink to the Mao era, Xi Jinping's "New Journey" (新征程) slogan recited at the rural work meeting, is surely meant to evoke Mao's "Long March" (长征程)--the Chinese phrases differ by only one character.

Xi Jinping hopes to emulate Mao and his fanciful "Da Zhai road" for farmers. 

"Modernization" has long been a watchword of Chinese communists, but it has morphed into Chinese-style modernization (中国式现代化) as the objective of rural work. Adding "Chinese-style" evokes Xi's nationalistic outlook and probably reflects China's new efforts to sell its governance style as transferable to other developing countries. 

Mao's "In agriculture learn from Da Zhai" left behind a dilapidated countryside
that had to be rescued by Deng Xiaoping's "reform and opening." Yet there are 
signs Xi Jinping wants to revive the principles of Mao's unrealistic approach.

China's animal protein consumption rising

China's pork consumption is outperforming other types of animal protein, according to the country's household survey--a result that seems inconsistent with depressed prices in the country's pork industry.

The survey data from 2013 to 2022 show a dip in pork consumption during 2020 when China had a severe pork shortage due to an African swine fever outbreak. Then pork consumption snapped back in 2021 as the sector recovered and rose even higher in 2022--a year when much of the country was under lockdown. The recent strong growth contrasts with flat consumption from 2013 to 2018.

Source: China national household survey data compiled from China Statistical Yearbooks.

China's consumption of other animal proteins is generally on the rise too, but quantities are smaller than for pork. 

• Poultry consumption rose by 3.7 kg/person in 2020 as consumers sought out substitutes for expensive pork that year. Since then poultry consumption has dropped by 1 kg but is still higher than any year before 2020.
• Egg consumption also had a strong 3-kg bump during 2018-20 and kept growing during 2021-22. 
• Fish and shellfish consumption increased 2.2 kg in 2020 and has plateaued since then. 
• Dairy consumption doesn't show much of a trend. Dairy spiked in 2021 and dropped in 2022. 
• Per-capita consumption of beef and mutton is still low and on a pretty steady rising trend.

In the overall consumption picture, 

• Consumption of meat/eggs/fish/dairy rose from about 60 kg to 83 kg between 2013 and 2021, then dropped to 82 kg in 2022. 
• Consumption of cereals was 123.7 kg and consumption of vegetables was 108.2 kg in 2022. 
• The declining trend in consumption of cereal grains reversed, rising by 13.5 kg during 2019-21 then dropped by 6.4 kg in 2022. 
• Vegetable consumption rose about 10 kg from 2019 to 2021, then dipped slightly in 2022.

Source: China national household survey data compiled from China Statistical Yearbooks

Rural households appear to have caught up with urban households in consumption of pork, poultry, and eggs during 2021-22. Rural consumption of pork actually outpaced urban consumption in 2022. Rural consumption of fish and beef/mutton is still lower than that of their urban cousins. 

Source: China national household survey data compiled from China Statistical Yearbooks

These numbers should be interpreted with caution since the household survey has historically been inconsistent with aggregate production data. The survey only records purchases for at-home consumption--it excludes consumption in cafeterias and restaurants. Lockdowns during most of 2022, cessation of travel, and closure of cafeterias and restaurants may have boosted at-home consumption, but there were extended times when Chinese residents couldn't even go to markets to buy food either. The survey is based on detailed diaries of all food purchased/consumed by a large sample of households--did they keep up this activity during the months of lockdowns in their homes or quarantine hotels?