China’s Buying Binge!

There was a lot of concern among farmers about President Trump's trade war with China. Then there was more than a little skepticism that China would fulfill the terms of Phase One when we finally had part of a deal after almost 2 years. It still feels like traders doubt that China will be a big buyer of ag commodities from the U.S. There was a USDA daily sales announcement Friday China bought about 20 million bushel of corn, 20 million bushel of soybeans and another sale of beans to an "unknown" destination which was likely China.

Over the weekend I read an article about how much China did purchase from the U.S. in the U.S. customs data. Here are the figures and you decide if they are significant? In July China bought 910,000 Metric ton of corn, up 137 %. wheat 930,000 Metric Ton up 325 %, sorghum 520,000 Metric Ton up 147 %, barley 410,000 up 35 %. Since January 1, 2020 China has bought 4.57 Million Metric Ton of corn. That is roughly 175 million bushel of corn. That is up 31 % in the first 7 months of this year.

Corn and soybean traders do not seem to pay attention to how much corn and soybean mean (soybeans) we export in the added value form of beef and pork but it is huge too! Just in July 2020 China imported 430,000 Metric Ton of Pork which was 50 % above last year. So far this year China has imported 2.56 Million Metric Ton of Pork. At this point last year China had imported 1 Million Metric Ton of Pork. So far this year, through July China has imported 1.2 Million Metric Ton of beef too!