Grains Council Corn Mission | China

By Kelly Brunkhorst, Director of Research for the Nebraska Corn Board

Read Part 1: Grains Council Corn Mission | Japan, here.

Due to a snowstorm, we were delayed out of Japan and spent an afternoon in Korea. This also caused us to cancel out on a day of meetings in China. In China, we met with the ATO office, a trading company and a swine operation.

Personally, China is this expanding country that raising a lot of questions. Since everything is so protected, production and stocks wise, you just wait. In meetings with the General Consulate and the ATO office, they described the potential ag imports into China as “immense”. This is due to a greatly and expanding middle class that is seeing meat consumption increase, along with spending. The city of Guangzhou is alone adding 20,000 cars per month to an all ready crowded transportation infrastructure.

But China is the type of country that just does what it needs to be ready. They are expanding ports for imports, buying farm land and investing in port export infrastructure and transportation infrastructure in foreign countries. The Consulate General said ‘beware’ as China is looking at the US next.

China is also expanding the livestock operations which also seemed to be profitable. They are importing swine and dairy genetics from various countries including the US. In regards to corn, the US is filling the market but China is working out quarantine issues with other countries to expand the possibilities. This is also the first market where we heard that they are importing US alfalfa and being used not only in the dairy sector, but also pelleted and used in aquaculture.

China is also looking at free trade agreements with Japan and Korea, but they seemed to be just in the infancy stage.

China is a relationship country and one were you need to establish a great relationships with the buyers and end users.

Find more pictures on the online Flickr photo album, here.