In 2021, China not only became an
importer of U.S. corn, but it has in only one year become the most important
export market for U.S. corn. This change in status is driven by a number of
factors; the three most important of which are the Phase One trade agreement
between the U.S. and China, the rebuilding of the Chinese swine herds as a
result of African Swine Fever, and the longstanding efforts of the Council and
the USDA over the past thirty years to build a livestock industry in China that
relies on corn and soybeans to produce commercial livestock feeds.
Using Market Access Program (MAP)
funds, the U.S. Grains Council’s Beijing office has engaged in multiple
livestock development activities in China over the past 40 years with the
vision to eventually create a large and stable importer of U.S. corn. China has
been a significant corn importer since 2010, but its reliance on the U.S. was
limited by technical and political barriers.
Last year, that all changed. Not only have China’s total corn imports skyrocketed to unprecedented levels, but the U.S. is now the predominant supplier of corn to China. From September 2020 to March 2021, U.S. corn exports to China reached nearly 8.86 MMT, valued at over $1.82 billion, compared to just 60.5 TMT, valued at only $12.5 million during the same period the previous year. The 23 MMT China has contracted to import this year will be roughly 150 percent higher than the previous record level of U.S. corn imported by one country.
The main driver to this surge in
demand is the rapidly recovering swine industry and the greater use of corn in
swine feed rations. The U.S. Grains Council has been promoting a corn/soybean
meal swine ration for decades and, through a wide variety of technical
programs, has built strong relationships and a good reputation with China’s
large feed and livestock producers. When using recycled food waste and other
inferior products became less desirable due to the outbreak of African swine
fever (ASF) in 2018, Chinese feed and livestock producers quickly switched to
more corn in their rations to replace these products, generating significant
additional
demand as swine inventories recover from the outbreak, generating significant
import demand.
China’s large corn purchases in the
2020/2021 crop year helped set a record for the U.S. corn export program and
will validate 40 years of investment that the U.S. Grains Council has made into
developing various aspects of the Chinese feed industry.
|Source: Online/KSU
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