Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

China has abruptly flipped from net importer to net exporter of chicken since 2023, and the trend continues in 2026. This development has been noted in the poultry annual issued by USDA's China office , by a Chinese article highlighting the USDA report , and by another Chinese article posted in July. The simultaneous surge in Chinese chicken exports and plummeting imports is dramatic when compared to historical performance. USDA data show no trend in China's exports of chicken meat until 2023 when they suddenly began booming and nearly doubled by 2025. USDA projects another rise in exports in 2026. Back in 2020 China had become a net importer of chicken when imports spiked due to reopening of the market to U.S. product after an HPAI outbreak, the Phase One trade agreement with the U.S., and substitution of poultry for pork during the 2019-20 pork shortage caused by a Chinese African swine fever epidemic. China's chicken imports remained historically high until 2023. But sin...

China's ban on 5 U.S. agricultural exporters contrasts with its lenient approach to domestic product safety and to suppliers in favored countries. This highlights China's cynical use of plant and animal quarantine and food safety inspections as a tool to control the flow of imports and to "diversify" import sources.  On April 4 China's customs administration suspended 4 U.S. suppliers of sorghum and meat and bone meal and 2 suppliers of poultry products  (one company appears to be on both lists): Chinese customs said they detected levels of zearalenone--a mycotoxin produced by certain types of mold--in the sorghum supplier's shipments.  Chinese customs said they detected salmonella in shipments by 3 companies of meat and bone meal to be used in animal feed.  Chinese customs said they detected furazolidinone, a drug banned in China, in three batches of chicken products supplied by 2 U.S. poultry producers. A Customs administrator cited Chinese laws and regulat...

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 ...

Local environmental authorities have blocked construction of an industrialized chicken complex planned for a rural county in China's Shaanxi Province. Since when do environmental bureaus in rural counties block big-money projects backed by the county chief? Is this China's "new normal"? Or has the company put the project on hold until the poultry industry recovers? According to a December 2, 2014 report from China's Daily Business News , the country's largest feed manufacturer, New Hope-Liuhe Group, planned to invest 860 million yuan (about $40 million) to build a feed-chicken industrial complex in Fufeng County in Shaanxi Province, about midway between Xi'an and Baoji city. According to the county government's description , the project was to include a feed mill producing 300,000 metric tons of feed annually, a hatchery to supply chicks to farmers, a model commercial chicken-farming base, a slaughter plant that could process 36 million chickens each...

The chairman of YUM! Brands China operations said that Kentucky Fried Chicken hopes to source at least 60 percent of its chicken from vertically integrated supply chains by the end of 2014. Following its "chicken gate" incident in 2012 (when the company was pilloried in the press for drug abuse by some chicken suppliers) the company promised to eliminate 1000 chicken houses from its supply chain. As China faces food safety and disease problems, companies are moving away from the traditional small-farmer "production base" model to a mechanized, industrialized mode imported from developed countries. This trend may signal China's transition to a "middle income trap" as capital-intensive production with imported technologies are employed in a country that is still pretty much a developing country. The YUM! executive explains that they are moving toward a more tightly-controlled integrated production model because the traditional "company + farmer...

China's poultry industry is experiencing severe economic impacts from the effects of the H7N9 influenza outbreak. The spread of the H7N9 virus is still not clearly understood, but it seems to be associated with the sale and butchering of poultry. In response to the H7N9 threat, Shanghai and surrounding provinces are closing live poultry markets and shutting down unlicensed sale of live poultry in the municipality. On April 6, Hangzhou authorities shut down a facility where H7N9 was detected and disposed of all the chickens. On April 8, Nanjing municipal authorities also stopped trade of live poultry and all markets will be cleaned up and disinfected. Some provincial authorities are restricting the interprovincial trade of poultry. T he Southern Daily estimates that 80 percent of poultry markets in Guangzhou are "dormant." It estimates that daily losses in the provincial industry are 500 million yuan ($80 million). Chinese news media say the closure of markets and c...