Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

China released a sprawling program to boost sales of its agricultural products. The plan calls for special promotions for soy products, milk, beef, but it is more than a short-term consumption stimulus. It has much broader goals of revamping agricultural marketing to improve product quality, offer premium attributes, build consumer confidence in products and earn more income for producers. Officials say they are pondering how to incorporate the program into the next 5-year plan. The plan released July 27, 2025 (10 days after it went into effect) is called " implementation program for promoting consumption of agricultural products " (促进农产品消费实施方案), but it is mainly a marketing program to promote premium-priced specialty products, enforce standards, create brands, engage in various promotions, and carry out campaigns for dietary change such as "reduce oil, increase soy, and add milk," "increase vegetables, fruit, whole grain and aquatic products," and a plan ...

China projected its world leadership in agriculture at the 10th agricultural ministers meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) held in Kunming July 30, 2025.  Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Han Jun bragged about China's "historic achievements" in feeding its population, building itself into an "agricultural power," and victory in the "largest poverty alleviation battle in human history." Minister Han added prestige to the normally obscure annual meeting by citing Xi Jinping's endorsement of two SCO projects--an agricultural training demonstration base and a forum on poverty reduction. Several ministers attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's meeting of agriculture ministers. Source: China Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs . In addition to the usual focus on training and poverty alleviation at these meetings, Minister Han highlighted China's efforts to play an influential role in agricultural trade...

Chinese officials are ordering hog companies to put the brakes on their expansion plans to prevent a new round of depressed prices in early 2026. Company officials assert that they have dutifully complied with the orders. But with profitable hogs and a vicious race for market share, there is still strong incentive to quietly ignore the government's orders...as they did over the past year. Earlier this month China's planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, issued "window guidance" ordering big companies to stop expanding their sow inventories, pare back slaughter weights to 120 kg (265 lb), and to halt "secondary fattening" (when farmers buy hogs weighing 100-to-120 kg and fatten them to 130-to-150 kg).  Last week a  China's agriculture ministry convened a meeting of government officials and hog companies  to put the brakes on growth in hog supplies. China's agriculture minister warned that China's hog industry still faces ...

In the first half of 2025 China increased its meat and egg production by a combined 1.58 million metric tons (mmt) from a year earlier, a moderate increase of 2.5%. Meanwhile, animal feed output during H1 2025 compiled from feed industry association reports increased by 14.5 mmt (+10 percent) from a year ago. China's 14.5-mmt increase feed output growth outpaced the 1.58-mmt growth in meat production by a ratio of 9:1. It's hard to make sense of these inconsistent figures.  [note: The June 2025 feed industry association report has a 7.7% yoy growth rate for feed output which is inconsistent with the 10.1% growth shown here calculated by comparing data from monthly reports issued last year. Growth rates for complete feed were 8.1%, concentrates -1.5%; additives 6.9%. These inconsistencies are common in the feed industry association reports, a reason for doubting the accuracy of this data.] There is no boom in demand for feed ingredients to fuel a huge increase in feed production...

The U.S. has high egg prices in the shadow of last year's avian influenza, but China has a surplus of laying hens attracted by strong profits that have now turned into losses.  U.S. egg prices are at less than half their March 2025 peak, but they are still at an historically high level. A USDA analysis shows that the spike in U.S. egg prices coincided with an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza. The loss of over 50 million laying hens coincided with the peak holiday demand season, sending prices skyrocketing. The price spike in 2022 followed an earlier HPAI outbreak.  Egg prices in the U.S. and China have been diverging. Egg prices in China and the U.S. were roughly equal until 2021 when an earlier HPAI outbreak led to a spike in U.S. prices. After the impacts of that outbreak dissipated, China and U.S. prices were briefly at parity again in 2023. Prices diverged again as the HPAI outbreak began driving U.S. egg prices skyward and Chinese egg prices tumbled. The ave...

China reported GDP growth of 5.2 percent for Q2 2025 and 5.3 percent for the first half of 2025, according to a report released by China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) today. Growth in production, however, is outpacing demand, driving prices down and pushing surplus products into the export market. Nominal GDP growth could be much slower than these "real" GDP since the calculation tends to exaggerate the growth rate when prices are falling. While the NBS report insisted that government policies are working, it also acknowledged that "domestic demand is still insufficient."  Many prices declined as industries pumped out products faster than they could be sold, resulting in downward pressure on prices. The June 2025 CPI was down just 0.1% from a year earlier, but the "transportation and communications" component was down 2.8 percent in H1 2025, and it was down 3.7 percent year-on-year in June. A clearer indication of excess production is the produ...

China's agricultural imports during May and June 2025 were nearly identical to year-earlier values. June 2025 agricultural imports totaled $18.5 billion, up 1.9 percent from June of last year, according to data posted on the China Customs Administration web site today. May imports had been up 0.8 percent from a year earlier. The May-June 2025 pace was a reversal of the first four months of 2025 when agricultural imports fell behind last year's values.  Data from China customs administration web site. Data for major commodity categories show that the volume of June fruit and nut imports was up 43 percent, while meat imports were up 5 percent from a year ago. Imports of soybeans and grains continued moving in opposite directions. Soybean imports totaled 12.264 million metric tons in June, up 8 percent from a year ago, but imports of grain totaled 2.1 million metric tons, down from 47 percent June last year. Imports of edible oils were down 14 percent.  China's soybean imports...

Recent announcements seem to point to China becoming a soybean meal importer. Large-scale Chinese imports of soybean meal would be a change from its historical practice of importing soybeans to be processed in one of China's dozens of processing plants with annual capacity of over 150 million metric tons.  On July 7,  Reuters reported that a 30,000-metric-ton soybean meal shipment will leave Argentine for China this month, the first major shipment since China approved Argentina as a soybean meal supplier in 2019. The shipment had been booked in late June by a group of Chinese feed millers.  On July 3, Chinese customs officials approved Ethiopia as a soybean meal supplier to China. On June 6, Chinese customs officials approved Uruguay as a supplier of soybean meal and rapeseed meal . Argentine officials were effusive over this month's shipment and were optimistic that this would be followed by more.  At least one industry analyst  interpreted the Argentine ship...

Another bumper wheat crop of 138.16 million metric tons was proclaimed for 2025 in the "summer grain" report released by the National Bureau of Statistics. A Bureau official said the bumper harvest lays the foundation for stabilizing the year's grain output and will help China cope with the "complex and severe international situation" while promoting recovery of the economy. The Bureau acknowledged that serious drought impacted wheat production in Shaanxi, Henan, and Jiangsu provinces but insisted that irrigation and other mitigation minimized losses. Production increased in Sichuan, Shandong, Hebei, and Hubei Provinces. An adjustment in cropping structure reduced wheat output in Xinjiang. National wheat production was down 167,000 metric tons from the previous year, a decline of less than -0.1%, according to the Bureau.  China's Summer Grain production, 2025 Category Item Unit 2025 Change Summer grains Prod...

The Fufeng Group's acquisition of a 300-acre site in North Dakota to build a corn processing plant is routinely cited as proof that "China" has a plot to buy up American farmland. Fufeng's project was denied approval by Grand Forks officials  based on concerns about spying, but its North Dakota land purchase became part of the narrative has led to growing restrictions on Chinese land ownership in the U.S., including yesterday's announcement of a National Farm Security Initiative at USDA headquarters attended by multiple cabinet secretaries.  Since we're going to create a new national security policy based on our fear of such companies, maybe we should investigate who Fufeng is and what they're up to. You probably have never heard of Fufeng Group (pronounced foo-fung), a company with 17,000 employees headquartered in Qingdao China that manufactures food and agricultural chemical products by fermenting corn. You may have heard of Fufeng's main product, ...