Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

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...