December 2, 2010

Argentina to export corn to China

Argentina, the second-largest corn exporter, is expected to export corn to China in the first half of 2011, Minister of Agriculture, Julian Dominguez, said.

China, the second-biggest corn user, has made no commitment to buy yet, Dominguez said. Argentina may have a surplus of 20 million tonnes of corn in the following year, he said.

Argentina was in talks with China on a sanitary protocol that would enable it to export the grain to the Asian nation, the Argentine Ministry of Agriculture said. It expects to speed up discussions with China in the following year to become an alternative supplier, the ministry said. China's Minister of Agriculture, Han Changfu, held talks with Dominguez last month in Argentina.

China, the second-biggest corn consumer, has purchased about 1.5 million tonnes of corn from the US this year, the most since 1995, as the government sought to cool local prices that surged about 27% in the year before November, when the government began a crackdown on inflation.

Prices of corn on CBOT surged 53% in the same period partly due to expectation of China needing to boost imports to meet demand.