China is not producing enough feed grains to support its growing livestock industry. This raises concerns over food security but analysts say that it is really a livestock feed security issue.
China’s Ag Ministry published guidelines to reduce corn and soymeal in feedstocks because of tight grain supplies.
Several livestock farms have reportedly made the switch, eliminating corn from the diet and reducing soymeal to less than 10 percent, but if it was really economical analysts say that other farms would have already done it.
Still, China is pegged to import 24 million metric tons of corn this year, last year that number was less than 8.
A U.S. economist says that he is watching to see how long the Asian nation’s buying spree will continue.
“One of the things that you also have to keep in mind is China’s trend or appetite for ag goods, especially soybeans, has been on the upward trend over the last 20 years. So, there’s a lot of reason to believe that China will continue to purchase into the future and those purchases will be growing over time,” Agricultural Economic Insights’ David Widmar explains. “Thinking about 2021, it’s where do we play out in 2021 with respect to the total market? How much is available in South America, how much does the U.S. have available, and how do we approach that going forward?”
Widmar says that we have more use for soybeans today than we have had in the last few years, and we are able to sell them at a higher price which is a big improvement in the ag economy.
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