Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

China's corn market has flipped from tight to loose. Policymakers have been dumping old grain reserves into the market while simultaneously buying corn in the northeast to prop up prices for farmers in the biggest production region. Meanwhile, weather impacts that don't officially exist have been buffeting the corn market. Chinese corn prices had bottomed out below RMB 2000 per metric ton in late 2024 before strengthening during the first half of 2025. Chinese corn prices plummeted during the September-October 2025 harvest and soon began rising again after torrential rains ruined a significant portion of the harvest . That event was quickly memory-holed by Chinese censors, but tight supplies boosted corn prices to around RMB 2300 by March 2026. From December through February 2026 spot prices for corn were 9%-to-11% ahead of year-earlier levels. With livestock producers and industrial processors encountering headwinds and corn substitutes flowing into the market, prices began de...

Chinese leaders cloak themselves in first-world food snobbery, but underneath they are obsessed with removing humans from agriculture through mechanization, relying on the latest scientific fads to magically increase crop yields, commoditizing "food" into standardized tons, and producing food in chemistry labs and factories. China's 5-year plan for 2026-30 reveals the "modernization" obsession. At a  June 2 press conference  the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs explained its approach to implementing the 5-year plan by identifying a handful of industries they expect to underpin the growth of "new quality productive forces" in agriculture: AI in plant breeding new energy agricultural machinery agricultural low altitude economy (drones) agricultural biological manufacturing novel food products A June 10 meeting of the agriculture ministry's leading group on science and technology innovation  prioritized biomanufacturing and artificial intelli...

A Chinese contractor complained about a deadbeat agricultural bureau's unpaid bills by posting a video showing a banner demanding payment. This item has attracted a lot of attention as it crystallizes the widespread phenomenon of unpaid bills at the grassroots level in China. A still image from the video and an article explaining the dispute  has been posted online this week showing a drone hoisting a banner with the message: "Shanghe County Agriculture Bureau: It’s been three years—pay up!"  Drone displays a banner demanding payment from Shanghe County Agricultural Bureau. The company displaying the banner is Shandong Junshen Hydrocarbon Biotechnology, Ltd. which won a government contract in May 2023 to spray the wheat crop in six townships of Shanghe County, on the outskirts of Jinan--the capital of China's Shandong Province. Every spring China conducts a nationwide spraying of the winter wheat crop called "one spray, three defenses" that douses wheat fiel...

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...