Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

China's 2025 Central Document No. 1 appears on the surface to be a bold technocratic plan to reshape and modernize the countryside and forge links with the urban economy. A closer inspection indicates insecurity about depressed prices, peasants falling back into poverty, and farming sectors in need of protection and aid.  The document--a blueprint for this year's rural policies--rehashes ideas that have been put forth in these documents for years. For example, this year's call for a severe crackdown on smuggling of agricultural products has appeared in 12 of 16 "No. 1" documents issued since 2010.  Likewise, nearly every document orders officials to prevent loss of arable land to nonfarm uses, but this year's document adds instructions to stop specific activities--hiding rural vacation homes in faux greenhouses, digging lakes and building houses on farmland--suggesting that these activities have become rampant. It bans urban people and retired cadres from buyi...

A Chinese pig farmer's million-dollar lawsuit against a pork conglomerate with a $28-billion market cap is attracting an inordinate amount of attention in Chinese financial news media. The agriculture ministry has pledged to investigate. It is not clear why this dispute has attracted so much attention, but it shines a light on the dramatic change in China's hog industry over the past 5 years. According to Cailianshe and National Business Daily Chang Xianyun, general manager of Hongfu Farming Company, signed a contract in March 2024 to purchase 152 breeding sows from Nanyang City Wolong Muyuan Farming LLC, a subsidiary of Muyuan Foodstuff which claims to sell more than 60 million swine annually and currently has a market cap of 203 billion yuan (about $28 billion). Both companies are located near Muyuan's headquarters in Henan Province's Neixiang County. Ms. Chang has reportedly purchased pigs from Muyuan for 16 years. Ms. Chang, the farmer, told news media that one pi...

China's farm subsidies need to have stronger production incentives--that was the argument made in an Economic Daily commentary earlier this month. WTO rules, bureaucracy, and dual roles as rural entitlement vs. production incentive have kept China's subsidies surprisingly ineffectual despite their massive size--China reported about 1.4 trillion yuan (roughly $200 billion) in farm support in its most recent notification to the WTO filed last September.  The Economic Daily commentator criticized China's practice of announcing and distributing crop subsidies with a long lag, usually months or even a year or more after the crop has been planted. The commentator lamented that some farmers call the subsidies "blind boxes," like receiving a gift-wrapped box with little idea of what's inside.  The commentator asserts that subsidies are an important tool for the State's mobilization of agricultural production and its preservation of national food security. The c...

China's production of livestock feed totaled 315 million metric tons (MMT) in 2024, down 6.6 MMT (-2.1%) from the previous year, according to a report from China's feed industry association . The 2024 output was still the second-largest output level on record. This was the first decline in China's feed output since it tumbled 8.8-MMT in 2019 during China's African Swine Fever epidemic.  According to the report, the value of feed industry output declined 10% and operating income fell 11.9%.  By comparison, official data released by China's National Bureau of Statistics show production of meat and eggs (consumers of most of the feed) increased marginally, by 356,000 metric tons, in 2024. Feed output was 2.38 times the output of meat and eggs. Source: compiled from China Feed Industry Association reports . Feed for hogs comprised 45.7% of the output, followed by meat poultry (31%), aquaculture (7.2%), ruminant feed (4.6%), pet food (0.5%), and feed for other animals (0...

China, a country that claims to love science and does everything fast , has spent 3 decades feuding over genetically modified crops. Scientists and farmers saw benefits of pest-resistance and reduced spraying of chemicals, but industry leaders envisioned building a non-GMO wall to shield China from imports and gain an advantage in the soybean market. The story illustrates that China is not as monolithic as most people think. The tangle of conflicting interests and industry protection undermines China's progress more often than outsiders realize. Last year  S&P Global  proclaimed  that, "The Chinese government has recently taken steps to establish a clear path for the approval and commercialization of [genetically modified] GM crops"--about 40 years after GM varieties were widely adopted in the U.S. and more than 30 years after GM soybeans were adopted in Brazil and Argentina.  Chinese leaders and consumers had been enthusiastic supporters of genetically modified ...

Rejections of imported meat by China's customs authority more than tripled in 2024. It is unclear whether problems in meat shipments suddenly increased last year or whether the spike in rejections reflects an effort to bring relief to struggling Chinese meat producers by rejecting imports.  A compilation of monthly reports of rejected food imports from the Chinese customs web site showed that 778 shipments of beef, pork, chicken, lamb, and deer meat were rejected at China's border last year. The spike in rejections was unusual: China's number of meat rejections had never even reached 300 in previous years (the customs administration took over inspection in a 2018 revamp of border authorities).  Source: Compilation of monthly reports of rejected food shipments posted on China Customs website. Rejections increased for each kind of meat, but beef and pork accounted for most of the increase in rejected shipments. China rejected 435 beef shipments, up from 60-to-80 rejections in...