One of the great unanswered questions in crop markets is whether China will become a major corn importer.
It has been predicted for more than a decade, but it never materialized as China’s domestic production made great strides.
As the great ethanol demand rally levels out, growers wonder what will be the next demand source to eat up the globe’s rising corn productive capacity.
Growing global population and incomes will increase demand for all crops, but the spotlight has been on China because the assumption was it was near the point where corn farmers could no longer keep up with demand from its booming livestock sector.
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An article in Choices magazine by Bryan Lohmar, director for China at the U.S. Grains Council, says wrong assumptions about the size of the country’s livestock herds are the main reason why previous projections were wrong.
However, corn production will become a limiting factor for China’s growing livestock herds in the long term, he says. The country must import more corn or more meat to match growing meat demand and will likely do both, he says.
Officially, China says it produced 54.9 million tonnes of pork in 2013, or about 40.7 kilograms per capita.
However, monthly slaughter statistics imply an annual slaughter of 466 million head, producing 36 million tonnes of pork, rather than the officially stated 715.6 million head producing 54.9 million tonnes.
So China was able to keep up with livestock feed demand because the hog herd was smaller than official statistics indicated.
However, meat demand will continue to increase. Can China’s corn farmers keep up with the growing feed demands from expanding herds?
Acreage expansion will be limited by urban growth, and yield increases will require attention to soil health and fertility, which is hard to achieve in China’s system of small, fragmented land holdings, Lohmar argues.
China will likely have to start importing corn.
However, Lohmar also suggests that China will look at livestock farms’ demands on the country’s scarce land and water resources and the issue of manure management and will decided to import more meat from countries that have the resources to more easily expand livestock production.
darce.mcmillan@producer.com
