Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

China's propaganda authorities revealed that data on rice production and other activities is severely inflated by local leaders who are under pressure to create the illusion of prosperity and growth whether it exists or not. Officials in Beijing fault their underlings for failing to "seek truth from facts," but it is Beijing's "food security" measures that are based on "facts" from the last century. China actually produces too much rice, so there is no need to pile unrealistic rice-planting quotas on village leaders and farmers.  A July 14 Central China TV broadcast reported shocking discrepancies between reported rice cultivation and actual figures  in Jianghua County of Hunan Province. While fields along the highway were planted in rice as dictated by quotas handed out to each town and village, a drone flight revealed that fields hidden behind hills were actually planted in cash crops. After checking the ledgers, the reporter found that a village...

China is having terrible floods all over the country. Where are its emergency food reserves? I searched online for news or photos of food distribution in flood areas and found nothing.  On July 19, the director of China's Food and Strategic Commodity Reserves Administration went to Shanghai --hit by serious flooding this week--to inspect emergency reserves. He is shown in a warehouse accompanied by 10 people who are all contemplating a folding emergency table about 2 feet tall for use in disaster areas. No food or other items are visible in the warehouse. Wooden structures in the background are hidden behind a black curtain.  The director issued orders about building up reserves to prepare for disasters, locating them strategically, and replenishing them, but he said nothing about distributing food supplies to areas devastated by floods this month--including Shanghai. Are the food reserves a myth? Are the warehouses flooded? Canned food for emergency use is for sale on the Tao...

China imported 13.55 million metric tons of soybeans in June 2026. It was the second-largest monthly total ever, reflecting the peak shipping month for Brazilian soybeans two months earlier and the arrival of beans that had been delayed by stringent inspections earlier in the year. Imports of U.S. soybeans during June reflect the arrival of beans purchased in fulfillment of China's purchase commitment made at last October's summit. China paid a $20-per-ton premium for U.S. soybeans versus Brazilian beans during June. China customs data. Imports from Brazil totaled 12.08 mmt during June and imports from the U.S. totaled 1.27 mmt, while Canada supplied 33,604 metric tons, Russia supplied 63,734 metric tons, Ukraine supplied 5,357 metric tons, and smaller quantities came from Benin and Ethiopia.  China has imported a cumulative 34.75 mmt of soybeans from Brazil in the first 6 months of 2026, up from 31.86 mmt a year earlier. Cumulative imports from the U.S. are 9.31 mmt versus 16....

China's creation of "high standard farmland" is harder than expected. Users of the land don't have money for improvements and couldn't reap a return on investments if they did. Responsibility for improving and maintaining land falls to an army of bureaucrats who have their own set of interests.  Last week China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) launched a campaign to  root out abuses and dysfunction in the high standard farmland construction program . At a meeting last week officials were ordered to "take decisive action to "address and rectify prominent issues" and "squarely face existing problems" with the massive farmland construction program that is endorsed by Xi Jinping and viewed as essential to national food security.  The first in a series of plans for building high standard farmland was issued in 2013 by China's State Council. The program funds construction projects to level fields, consolidate fragmented...

China's hog price has dipped below its chicken price--an unusual phenomenon that indicates the seriousness of China's pork glut in 2026. The industry is producing more pigs than the market can absorb, and in doing so it is consuming vast amounts of feed grain and soybean meal. China's poultry industry is expanding rapidly, but the extra poultry supplies are substituting for imports and pouring into the export market.  Over the past 2 decades Chinese pork prices rose and fell in a familiar cyclical pattern. During downturns, pork prices approached chicken prices briefly every 3 years or so before turning back upward. Since 2021, though, gyrations in pork prices have become more pronounced and parity between pork and chicken prices has become more frequent. The latest 2-year slide in pork prices has resulted in the pork price being less than the chicken price for four months and counting in 2026. The price of live hogs was stuck at about RMB 10 per kg from April to June--clos...

Hog production was impacted by devastating typhoons that hit China's Guangxi Province a week ago. Dead pigs pose a disease risk and a pork deficit in a region that accounts for more than 1 in 20 pigs raised in the country. Torrential rains from super-typhoon Maysak inundated the region on July 6. Entire villages were flooded or swept away after the release of water from reservoirs and the breaching of at least one major dam. Images from the most seriously affected areas, including Hengzhou, Guigang, and Binyang, look like war zones. Officially only 39 people were killed and 9 were missing, but the real death toll had to be much larger. Chinese news propaganda has quickly shifted to venomous snakes on the loose, light-hearted coverage of rescue teams, company donations, and fun ways to cope with flooding. The death toll for pigs is visibly higher. The Youtube video below shows thousands of dead pig carcasses, dozens of surviving pigs stuck on the roofs of their barns, swimming in fl...

China has launched a 9-month crackdown on illegal pesticides and veterinary drugs after news media exposed illegal production, distribution and use of the substances. The crackdown conducted by seven government departments is being launched this month (July 2026) and will continue through the end of March 2027, according to an official news release . The campaign includes the agriculture ministry, law enforcement and prosecutorial organizations, market regulators, and the quasi-government Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives.  This is the latest of many campaigns in China to address pesticide and veterinary drug residues as food safety problems going back three decades.  Shanghai-based The Paper 's announcement of the latest crackdown was careful to depict illegal drugs and underground workshops as isolated incidents and problems that need to be rooted out before causing bigger problems. The crackdown appears to have been triggered by a May 28 Chinese news media re...

China had a bumper wheat harvest in 2026 according to the National Bureau of Statistics  communique on summer grain output--despite late planting of the crop last Fall and torrential rains and hail that impeded this Summer's harvest and degraded quality. Declining prices after the harvest seem to confirm that supplies are ample. Despite a glutted wheat market, the prospect of farmers abandoning wheat due to lack of profit fuels Chinese authorities' obsession with "food security." Summer-harvested wheat output was 138.95 million metric tons, up 0.6% from last year despite drenching rains that delayed planting in the Fall and additional heavy rainfall during the summer harvest season. Keep in mind that last year's output was impacted by severe drought . Summer grain output, which includes wheat as well as barley, oats, buckwheat, cowpeas, and some beans and potatoes, totaled 150.75 mmt.  USDA's WASDE  report estimates China's wheat area at 140 mmt in 2025 (m...

Chinese news media signaled that a revival of agricultural trade with the United States is coming. Soybean purchases by state-owned companies have begun, immediately driving up soybean prices in Chicago. Chinese officials wary of downward pressure on domestic prices will have to carefully consider how broader purchases of U.S. commodities could impact their own fragile markets in China. On July 2, 2026 Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesman He Yadong told a press conference that China and the U.S. have agreed in principle to include agricultural products in negotiations for reciprocal tariff reductions. He said enterprises will conduct trade independently based on market principles, actual demand, and market conditions. China is willing to work with the U.S. to create favorable condition for bilateral agricultural trade, the spokesman said.  While this response conveyed no specifics, it contrasts with a November 13, 2025 press conference where the same spokesman refused to co...

China's beef imports during April and May 2026 were about equal to year-earlier volumes, but behind the pace set during January-February. A rebound in shipments by the main supplier--Brazil--suggests that China's beef imports will rebound as well in coming months.  HS 0201, 0202. China Customs Data. Imports in the categories specified for China's special safeguard duty program totaled 1.28 million metric tons for January-May 2026, up about 200,000 metric tons from the same period in 2025. Imports primarily consisted of over 1 million metric tons of frozen boneless beef (HS 020230), the category that also accounted for essentially all of the year-over-year increase. Imports of offal, beef fat, canned and prepared beef--not subject to safeguard quotas or duties--totaled 71,000 metric tons, and they were nearly double the quantity from a year earlier.  China's commerce ministry announced that beef imports from Australia had reached 90% of their quota by June 1. The minist...

China spends an enormous amount of money on agricultural infrastructure, but a string of exposés in State media, government crackdowns, and "scared straight" meetings for rural officials reveal that spending is extremely bloated, consists mostly of showpiece projects, and nobody really knows for sure what's happening in the hinterland.  A China Central TV broadcast on April 14, 2026  got attention for exposing an extravagant complex built as a farmer training center in a Chinese county. CCTV journalists visited an 11-building "Jun'an County Modern Agriculture Public Practical Training Base" on a 9.2-hectare (137 mu) site sandwiched between a highway and an excavated hillside. The compound included swanky hotels, two apartment buildings for experts, office buildings, restaurants, a sports center with badminton courts and a fitness center, chess rooms, gardens, and decorative ponds, but no facilities or equipment related to agriculture. The small sign on the g...