Chinese farmers have sharply increased corn planting this year to cash in on demand-fueled record prices, a trend that is likely to cool the country's recent rampant appetite for imports heading into 2022, reports Reuters.
The expansion, which comes mainly at the expense of soybeans and other crops including sorghum and edible beans, would boost China's corn output in 2021/22 by at least 6%, according to market participants.
That will likely ease a repeat of last year when strong feed demand from the hog sector propelled China's corn use beyond local production and sparked a 26-million tonne import spree that turned the world's largest grain producer into the top corn buyer.
