Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

China's agriculture ministry statisticians are under scrutiny from an inspection team looking for fraudulent and exaggerated numbers, according to the Ministry's web site . The National Bureau of Statistics team led by Deputy Director General Sheng Laiyun is investigating the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs statistical work from August 21 through September 2, 2020. The check-up is part of a wider crackdown to prevent and penalize fake and falsified statistics ordered by a circular issued in 2019. Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Han Changfu said this is a one-time check-up of the Ministry's statistical work to carry out General Secretary Xi Jinping's directive to raise the political standing of statistical investigations, regard statistics as part of comprehensive work, and ensure that statistics truthfully reflect the actual situation so economic interventions can be made based on the data. Mr. Han pledged to continually raise the quality of statist...

Nervous Chinese officials reversed course in 2020 by encouraging production of the "early" rice crop that is shunned by consumers due to its poor taste and is grown mainly to pad production statistics. After jettisoning its massive overstocks of cotton and corn, China's next target was to dump massive stocks of rice. Officials had been easing up on policies supporting production of the early rice crop for several years to alleviate the surplus, but food security hysteria somewhere in Beijing's inner sanctum and panic over the novel coronavirus pandemic prompted a reversal of policy in 2020. "Early" rice is planted in early spring and harvested in summer, followed by a "late" rice crop harvested in late fall--two crops a year on the same field. Most farmers prefer to grow a single rice crop that allows them to maximize their time working in cities, returning only for planting and harvest. Double-cropping rice is labor intensive and unprofitable for ...

A Consumer Daily reporter investigating meat markets in China's hinterland found that the strict food safety regulatory apparatus was just an empty shell in towns and villages.  The reporter visited meat markets in several small towns in Xichuan County in Henan Province's southwest corner. Towns and villages in this area line the rivers flowing through mountain valleys into the Dujiangyan Reservoir, starting point of one of China's routes south-north water transfer to the parched northern regions. The reporter found that large villages usually had a couple of families engaged in pork trade, and most pigs were butchered by farmers and vendors. Examining freshly-slaughtered swine carcasses for sale in village markets, the Consumer Daily reporter found that expedience and tradition overrules regulatory requirements in the countryside. The reporter did not see the blue ink stamps required to prove the animals passed disease and sanitary inspections at an officially-sanctione...

The rise and fall of Chinese poultry prices over the past year reveals that chicken is still a second-class meat in the Middle Kingdom. Chinese poultry meat prices surged about 35 percent from April to November 2019, according to wholesale price data issued weekly by China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. But all the price gains were erased by steady decline in 2020.  The spurt in poultry prices was driven by a meat shortage following the disappearance of at least 40 percent of China's pigs last year due to the African swine fever epidemic. The rise in chicken prices coincided with an even bigger surge in pork prices. The poultry meat price peaked in November 2019, the same month as the peak in pork prices.  Weekly wholesale prices from China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. What's surprising is that poultry prices declined as fast as they had risen. After reaching a November peak near 27 yuan/kg, wholesale poultry prices erased nearly all their ...

A recent article from Heilongjiang Province argued that China's tightening corn S&D balance can be traced to growth in industrial processing of corn in Heilongjiang Province--China's top grain-surplus region. With more corn used to produce alcohol, starch, and sweeteners in Heilongjiang, less corn is available to transport to corn-deficit regions in eastern and southern China. The analysis pointed to a large national deficit between domestic corn production and use that peaked at -40 mmt in 2017/18 and was projected at -25 mmt in 2020/21. The huge temporary reserve of corn filled this deficit in the last few years, but that stockpile may be fully depleted by September. The balance sheet presented in the article projected 6 mmt of corn imports in 2019/20 and 7 mmt in 2020/21. Looking backward by adding the balance sheets from a decade-old National Grain and Oils Information Center (NGOIC) report shows that China has flipped from a peak corn surplus of 19.5 mmt during the re...

China's agriculture ministry pronounced  the country's restocking of swine farms is proceeding "faster than expected", based on Q3 2020 numbers released by the statistical bureau last week. With local officials under orders to show results in this "major task", there is strong incentive to inflate the numbers. Swine prices have climbed back to near-record levels despite the frantic rebuild...and peak pork consumption season is just a couple months away. The National Bureau of Statistics reported that China's swine inventory had risen for the last three quarters to reach 340 million head at the end of June. The inventory had been 310 million at the beginning of the year--the lowest swine herd number reported by the bureau since 1984. Pork output in Q2 2020 was 9.6 million metric tons (mmt), down from 10.4 mmt in Q1. However, pork production in Q2 was just 6 percent less than a year earlier, a much narrower shortfall than the 29 percent shortfall in Q...

Chinese officials found no Covid-19 virus during several days of nationwide testing of food markets in mid-June. Despite the absence of virus contamination, Chinese customs authorities stepped up monitoring of imported fish and meat, and Chinese importers began requesting overseas suppliers to certify that shipments bound for China were virus-free. Chinese disease control officials ordered nationwide testing in food markets last month after a new outbreak of Covid-19 was linked to Beijing's Xinfadi wholesale market, one of the largest food markets in the country. On June 13, the chairman of Xinfadi market announced that the virus had been found the previous day on a board used to slice imported salmon that had come from the Jing-Zhen seafood market. The chairman said that no Covid-19 virus had been detected in seafood or meat products tested in the market, and nine people who worked with the salmon also tested negative. Nevertheless, the market was closed and disinfected. On the...