Corn production in China lagging behind consumption

China's corn consumption has been growing rapidly in the last five years, but its production has been falling behind demand.

As many areas of China continue to battle with drought conditions, its corn crop is getting off to a fairly poor start this year. Jerry Gulke, president of the Gulke Group, sees an even larger fall in production to 148 million tonnes while consumption grows to 157 million. China produced 155 million tonnes of corn last year and consumed 156 million tonnes.

''They had problems, but they had not admitted to having these problems formally,'' said Gulke. With announced plans to buy an additional 1.5 million tonnes of corn this year, it will have to come from somewhere.

''That's 40 million bushels from somebody. And so far it's been from us, and maybe they'll buy some from Argentina if they get their differences figured out on the soyoil,'' he said.

With the US corn crop looking to match, if not beat out last year's yields, Gulke has projected carryover for 2010-11 at just above two billion bushels of corn. ''We need to get our world market back, and that's why we should hope that this 'world spending of money' will help our agriculture in exports to someone else, especially Europe and, of course, Asia,'' said Gulke.

Gulke explains that if China's corn crop does end up in poor condition this year, it could be entering the market looking for 300-400 million bushels of corn next year.