"China took another step toward meeting agricultural commitments made in the phase one trade agreement with the U.S. with its biggest-ever purchase of American corn.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Thursday that exporters sold 1.937 million metric tons of corn, the third-largest deal for the grain to any destination. This purchase tops the previous record sale to China earlier this month, when 1.762 million tons were booked.
China has boosted its imports of animal-feed ingredients as relations soured with barley-shipping Australia. Stepped-up buying of U.S. corn began in March. About 1.3 million tons of American corn was sold in the season ending on Aug. 31 while about 5.72 million tons was sold to be shipped in the next season, including Thursday’s announced sale, USDA data showed." Yahoo.com
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This is interesting because of the degenerating state of political, diplomatic and military relations between the US and China. The Australian aspect of this story is something worth looking at. pl
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-accelerates-u-corn-buying-141132072.html
james
Does the Canadian government subsidize farming?
james
“Canadian agricultural subsidies are currently controlled by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Financial subsidies are offered through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership Programs.[7] The Canadian Agricultural Partnership began in April 2018 and is planned to take place over five years with a combined federal, provincial and territorial investment of three billion dollars.[8] Some programs offered surround issues including AgriAssurance, agricultural leveraging programs, promoting diversity in agriculture, crop and livestock insurance, marketing activities, risk mitigation, and more.[9] Before the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, agricultural subsidies were organized under the Growing Forward 2 partnership from 2013-2018.” wiki on Agricultural subsidies.
Australia follows demands of HMG, as always.
The Australian aspect is that China has been complaining of unfair subsidies for Australian barley production since at least as early as October 2018 and applied tariffs this March. In my opinion, there is no connection between recent tensions and this matter,
China is still buying huge quantities of Australian Coal and Iron ore as normal. Nothing to see here……..yet.
P.S The barley is now going to India.
For what it is worth, because of length of growing season needed to raise corn, and the climate in Canada, colder, their corn production is not as high as it ‘could’ be — were the great western plains not as far north.
Corn production
Rank Country Production (1000 Metric Tons)
1 United States 406,292
2 China 260,000
3 Brazil 107,000
4 EU-27 68,300
5 Argentina 50,000
6 Ukraine 39,000
7 Mexico 28,000
8 India 27,500
9 Canada 15,600
10 Russian Fed. 14,500
See
https://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?commodity=corn
+++++++++
Wheat production by country is at:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/237912/global-top-wheat-producing-countries/
PS
I hope both of these data sources are sound.
-30-
Off topic, but I think the Committee may be interested in the WEF’s vision of our future:
This is an ad for an app the WEF is promoting to “..ensure only non-infectious people [can] travel across borders while monitoring access to concerts, conferences and pilgrimages”. I guess this would soon be extended to controlling who can turn up for work too. But it’s OK, because it is built on “blockchain technology”.
Yes, our technocrat overlords want to mandate the collection of the their human drones’ DNA. This makes the Chinese social credit system of population control look positively clumsy by comparison.
https://twitter.com/wef/status/1288882047017254912
It is also important to note that the other four countries of the ‘Five Eyes’ coalition that are Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and UK are on board with Trump admin’s new tough stance toward China only if it concerns Human Rights, democarcy, and all that ‘political ‘stuff but not in trade, immigration, and investment which matters more than those cosmetic stuff IMO. On matters of security and defense all five countries are united against China (5G, IP, arms, tech).
On the NATO level (EU theater) this trend is also visible but Germany, the economic engine of EU, is resisting U.S. pressure with regards to China (5G, trade, tech) and Russia (energy and pipeline). I am interested to see how sour the U.S.-German relations will go. Grenell and Pompeo have so far managed to tank the bilateral relations to rock bottom.
France too is resisting American pressure
UK was resisting and even green lighted 5G development until recently Pompeo successfully ‘convinced’ Johnson’s admin to re-align with U.S.’s China policy or else. I wonder if there was a prince Andrew and Ghislane Maxwell’s angle in it because it happened right around the same time that both of these figures made it into the global headlines…
Polish Janitor
The “Five eyes” has to do with intelligence cooperation only.
China appears to be trying to meet their Phase 1 commitments. Long way to go but this shows a good-faith effort.
https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/us-china-phase-one-tracker-chinas-purchases-us-goods
China is experiencing a great deal of flooding which is affecting agricultural output. The public reports are probably under estimating the impact of this on general food supply in China. In addition they have a large fleet of fishing vessels with naval escort off the coast of Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands. Not to worry though, once they cleanse the seas of everything they call drag up and haul back home they won’t return, for a few years anyway.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1315368/china-news-threat-fleet-south-america-galapagos-fishing-environment-world-war-3
https://blog.usni.org/posts/2020/07/29/the-ccp-bullies-of-the-sea
@turcopolier
Yes sir I am well aware. I meant the countries of the Five Eyes not specifically the nature of the intel-gathering group’s policies with regards to China.
The amount of U.S corn the Chinese buy is between them & the farmers who sell to them. I’m more concerned about the vast amount of U.S. farm land they own while continuing to purchase more, usually it appears, from 2nd & 3rd generation beneficiaries of the land.
When will enough be enough? And what could possibly go wrong?
I lack the sophistication & knowledge to think this through. so any
commentary on this topic would be appreciated as I’m so instinctively opposed I feel I can’t think about it rationally.
Col. Lang, et al,
I don’t know how reliable this information is, but the consequences if it were to have substance would be devastating:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/07/frightening-china-admits-three-gorges-dam-moved-ignores-numerous-prior-reports-says-just-happened-last-weekend/
If so, secret fears of what might come to pass could account for some of this volume of corn purchasing (locking in those contracts now…), in addition to the flooding disrupting their normal feedstock production now.
China has warred against the fearsome destructive powers of water for millenia. I guess we shall see who proves the stronger in the present day.
Our own Mighty Mississippi has certainly had its way with us from time to time. A little musical tribute to its force from back in the days of my youth:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FFDYuO53BUk
An old song from Memphis Minnie, When the Levee Breaks, here done by Led Zeppelin.
I remember reading that China itself had a nascent conservation movement before the CP re-erased it back out of existence. One of this Chinese conservation movement’s main goals was prevention of the Three Gorges Dam from getting built. They even came up with possibly plausible plans where several smaller dams along that general stretch of the Yangtze River would have yielded 80 % of the power that the TG Dam would yield, with vastly less destruction of farmland and displacement of food-growers and without drowning major historical sites and temples and such.
According to what I remember reading, the CP built the TG Dam the way they did it as a prestige project to show that they could Build Big. It was a Pharaohonic Pyramid erected to the glory of the Red Dynasty.
James,
There are a couple of other books you might find interesting on the subject of what happened to farms and farmers in America and who “happened” it. One is called Unforgiven by Charles Walters.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2445566.Unforgiven
Another is called Night Came To The Farms Of The Great Plains, by
Raymond North.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2445566.Unforgiven
A plant breeder/ plant geneticist names Wes Jackson wrote a book called New Roots For Agriculture. It gives a deeper more long-history view of where agriculture has gone philosophically and operationally wrong over time and how we might make it go right now. Wendell Berry wrote the forward and if Wendell Berry thought enough of Jackson and his book to write the forward for it, you might perhaps find it worth reading.
https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803275621/
About GMO corn, as far as I know, some strictly-for-human-consumption culinary corn is still GMO-free. I don’t know if it all is. I know in the recent past some for-human-consumption corn processors began moving away from GMO corn. Here is an article showing an example of that. Maybe you can get beyond the paywall.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB949016042305567567
There is still some non-GMO corn seed being grown for sale to farmers who will pay for it. I don’t know what percentage of the professional corn seed market this is, or whether it is more targeted to the tiny farmer and hobby farmer sector. Here is an example of a company still selling non-GMO conventional corn seed. Shumway Seed. They sell several kinds of gardener-oriented corn and also several kinds of farmer oriented corn seed. Here is the only online entry for a farm seed corn which offers an image. The others all say ” no image available”. The paper catalog has all the images.
https://www.rhshumway.com/product/S09909/86
There are quite a few other seed companies still offering no-GMO corn seed, both “conventional” and “organic”. What per cent of the seed market they hold I just don’t know.