The top pork consuming country will see its imports ease, a bit, next year as the boost to domestic output from high prices works through
Source: Agrimoney.com | China’s pork imports to ease from record, as domestic output grows
The agriculture industry is going to have to begin to accept the fact that in the future China is not going to be the massive importer of food that it has been in the past. Unfortunately it seems that a lot of agribusinesses in the US, South America, NZ and the EU haven’t figured that out yet. This is especially true of the dairy industry which still seems to be betting the farm on the hopes that China will return to the days when it was importing all of the milk and milk products it could get its hands on.
For years now China has been pushing hard to improve its agricultural systems. It has been investing heavily in almost every type of agriculture, from grain production, to meat, to dairy, China has been putting a great deal of money and work into improving and modernizing its farming techniques. The ultimate goal of the country is to be at least 90% self sufficient in food production within the next ten to twenty years.
Whether or not China will succeed in reaching that 90% goal I don’t know. But even if they don’t, it will still have a profound effect on world agriculture. We’ve been treating China as a guaranteed market, a buyer of massive amounts of product that will always be there to help absorb our products. But it won’t. And the effects will be profound, as they were when China abruptly cut back drastically on milk product imports. The result from that was the price of milk and milk products plummeting by almost half, and the dairy industry still hasn’t recovered from that.
There will almost certainly be a China market, but it’s almost certain to be far smaller than it has been in the past. If agribusiness can’t learn to adjust, other agricultural sectors are going to find themselves in the same situation dairy is in now.
grouchyfarmer 