Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

China and Cuba have been conducting low-key agricultural exchanges. China has stepped up food aid to Cuba with modest amounts of rice shipped during 2026. On May 25, Chinese Vice Minister of Agriculture Zhang Zhili met with his Cuban counterpart Terce González in Beijing to discuss agricultural assistance projects in rice cultivation, swine and poultry farming, corn production and "juncao" (a tall grass used for ecological control). The discussion highlighted a rice breeding project that is said to be helping Cuba in its food security capabilities.  The Cuban vice minister praised China's agricultural and rural achievements, pledged his support for Chinese technical assistance projects in Cuba, and expressed hope that more Chinese companies would invest in Cuba.  Several days earlier China's ambassador to Cuba attended a ceremony  in Havana celebrating the arrival in Cuba of 15,000 tons of rice granted by China as food aid. China's ambassador explained that the f...

Chinese corn prices have shown renewed weakness this month, while weakness in wheat prices has dissipated. A deluge of rainfall during the first weeks of the wheat harvest has created a new supply of feed-quality wheat that ties the two markets together. China's corn futures price peaked at CNY 2431 per metric ton (about $9.08 per bushel) on April 29, 2026 and fell 4.7% to CNY 2316 ($8.65/bu) on May 27. The drop during May reversed gains since early October when the price had dropped as low as CNY 2210 per metric ton ($8.26/bu). China Dalian Commodity Exchange. An early May commentary in China Feed magazine remarked that the corn market was witnessing a tension between bullish pressure from rising international fertilizer prices and bearish forces from weakening domestic feed demand. Traders were holding on to inventory awaiting another price rally, while feed manufacturers facing losses in the livestock sector were pivoting toward alternative raw materials. In particular, China ...

Chinese leaders have been celebrating drones this year as a transformative agricultural technology, but a growing number of disputes over drones show that farmers who use them face substantial risks of civil or criminal liability.  Drones spraying crops are becoming more and more common in China's countryside. Source: The Paper . China has nearly 3.3 million drones, of which 320,000 are agricultural drones that have created a so-called "low altitude economy," spraying pesticides and spreading fertilizer from the air. This year's "No. 1 Document" on rural policy promoted drones and robots as a way of cutting costs and doing more field work as the rural labor force shrinks. Technicians are working on ways to make drones recognize ripe fruit and pick it. However, these gadgets are creating new conflicts, literally colliding with China's changing economic structure, and posing a new threat to the Chinese regime's obsession with secrecy and control of in...

U.S. and Chinese readouts on the May 14-15 Trump-Xi summit in Beijing agree that agricultural trade between the two countries is important and should be revived, but their descriptions differ on what was agreed at the meeting.  On May 17, The White House released a fact sheet  that featured a commitment by China to purchase $17 billion worth of U.S. agricultural products annually through 2028 in addition to the soybean purchase commitment made in October 2025. The fact sheet also said China agreed to renew expired listings of U.S. beef exporters and pledged to resume imports of U.S. poultry products from U.S. States free of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said soybeans "are all taken care of" by the October purchase agreement, although China has never acknowledged it, China's first round of 12 million tons of soybean purchases was not completed by December 2025 as originally promised, and Successful Farming said "markets ...

Self-sufficiency in wheat and rice is a pillar of China's food security policy, but officials revealed last week that the country produces 140 million metric tons of wheat and only consumes 65% of it as food. Much of China's wheat is fed to animals or stored in warehouses for as long as 9 years. With surpluses even in years of poor yields, authorities are propping up prices to convince farmers to keep growing surplus wheat. Last week Chinese propaganda outlets assured farmers that they will get a good price for their wheat as the harvest kicks into gear this month. Official news sites and TV broadcasts reported variations of the same upbeat prediction of a good wheat harvest, stable prices, and ample reserves given at a National Administration of Food and Commodity Reserves news conference on May 14, 2026. Such announcements are common ahead of the grain harvest, but the amount of detail offered and the dozens of outlets broadcasting the "news" suggests that the regim...

China committed to buy $17 billion of non-soybean U.S. agricultural products over the next 3 years according to a Fact Sheet released by the White House  summarizing commitments made during Trumps visit to Beijing last week. These purchases are in addition to China's soybean purchase commitments made in October 2025 to buy 12 million metric tons (mmt) of soybeans in 2025 and 25 mmt annually during 2026-28. China renewed expired approvals for 400 U.S. beef exporting facilities and agreed to resume imports of poultry from U.S. States free of highly pathogenic avian influenza.  The recent history of U.S. agricultural exports to China shows that the $17 billion value of non-soybean exports was exceeded during 2021 and 2022, when the "Phase One" agreement was in force and high commodity prices inflated the value of farm trade (but China did not meet the Phase One targets). Non-soy ag exports have fallen short of $17 billion since 2023. Last year, during the 2025 trad...

Last month this blog reported hockey-stick Chinese price increases for certain industrial commodities  since the Iran war began in late February that were as high as 40-to-77% for plastics, fuel, and chemicals. Gasoline and diesel prices eased somewhat during April, but elevated prices for sulphuric acid, liquified natural gas, and lithium persisted into the first 10 days of May. The spike in polyester prices has stimulated a rebound in cotton use, but agricultural prices are mostly insulated from the crisis so far. China's April 2026 PPI  shows a modest trend of rising prices that seems to have turned around the deflationary tendency that plagued the Chinese economy last year. The average price for industrial raw materials rose 1.2% in March 2026 and 2.1% in April. These were the first month-on-month increases exceeding 1% in the past year. A year ago at this time the raw material price index was declining--it was down -0.7% between March and April 2025.  An update of pr...

China has fired two agriculture ministers over the past two years, one of whom got a death sentence. This appears to be the routine discovery of bad apples in the system, but it reflects the desperation of Chinese leaders to restore confidence in the Party's leadership.  Much like a religious revival, new Agriculture Minister Zhang Zhu's first meeting with employees two days after being appointed urged communist party members to "forge their collective will and soul," translate their beliefs into collective actions, promptly correct any deviations, and address malpractices and corruption issues that directly affect the public, demonstrating "unwavering loyalty to the Party." This is the latest in a series of meetings held this year to lecture communist cadres about studying Xi Jinping thought, giving up corruption and lax work attitudes, and pursuing their jobs with sincerity. These meetings reflect the Party's worries that its hold on the countryside i...

China imported 8.5 million metric tons of soybeans during April 2026, more than double the 4 mmt imported during March. The April total was 2.4 mmt ahead of imports in April last year. Detailed April import data have not been released yet. During March 2026 China imported 1.85 mmt from the U.S., 1.4 mmt from Brazil, 400,000 mt from Argentina, and 247,500 mt from Russia. The volume arriving from Brazil is set to balloon in coming months.  China customs administration. Brazil's exports to China have been ramping up as this year's soybean crop--estimated by USDA to be a record-breaking 180 mmt--makes its way to ports. Brazil's soybean exports to China were a record-high 11.58 mmt during April. The April volume was up about 1.6 mmt from March. Some March shipments may have been delayed to April by stringent port inspections that caused a backlog of cargoes--the inspection issue at both Brazilian and Chinese ports apparently has been cleared up. Exports to China for 2026 match l...

China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has massively overstated income growth for years. In 2025, NBS reported that China's GDP and household income both grew 5.0%. Another obscure data item reported by the Bureau showed that the monthly earnings of employed rural people grew just 2.3%, less than half the growth in GDP. This number, buried in an obscure report on rural migrants , is also overstated and ignores unpaid wages, one of the chief drivers of protests and sabotage in China last year. Drilling down into China's household income data report to ensure an apples-to-apples comparison shows an even bigger discrepancy. Rural household income from wages grew 6.1% in 2025. That's more than double the 2.3% growth in earnings by rural migrants. (Urban households' wage income grew 4.1%.) China's National Bureau of Statistics. The history of monthly earnings from the rural migrant survey shows that growth in wages for rural migrants--who staff the construction...

China's beef imports rebounded in Q1 2026 despite a special safeguard duty mechanism that took effect January 2026. Beef prices in China are so high that beef from Brazil--the dominant supplier of imports--might still be competitive in the Chinese market even if extra safeguard duties are applied later this year. According to China's customs administration beef imports for January-March 2026 totaled 870,000 metric tons, up 27.5% from the same period in 2025 (this appears to exclude beef offal--its inclusion would raise the total to 890,000 metric tons).  A tabulation of monthly data shows that January and February 2026 imports were about 35% higher than year-earlier imports, while March imports were up 15% year-over-year. Imports had peaked in September 2025 and dropped during Q4 2025 before rebounding this year. China customs data, HS 0201, 0202, 020620. In January 2026 China announced a safeguard mechanism for 2026-28 that assesses an extra duty of 55% on beef imports from su...

China's new strategy is for giant pig farms to sell carbon credits to finance their waste treatment facilities. Western environmental groups have questioned whether a surge of Chinese pig farms offering to sell carbon credits to foreign buyers really needed the credits to build biogas facilities, so China has created its own carbon-trading mechanism for pig farms with relaxed standards. Since the Chinese carbon market is only for large scale CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), Chinese news media are assuring the public that industrialized farms are "green" too. A pig farm operated by Muyuan Foods. The dark rectangle in the back is the manure collection lagoon. Source: Xinhua News Agency. In December 2025 China's Ministries of Environment and Agriculture jointly issued a methodology for China's Certified Voluntary Emission Reduction (CCER) covering utilization of biogas from livestock manure at large-scale pig farms . According to the document large-sca...