Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

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 ...

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 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" announ...

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 ag...

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 deposi...

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 f...

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 imp...