Council’s Long-term Investment Pays Off as China Becomes #1 Export Destination for U.S. Corn

In 2021, China not only became an importer of U.S. corn, but it has in only one year become the most important export market for U.S. corn. This change in status is driven by a number of factors; the three most important of which are the Phase One trade agreement between the U.S. and China, the rebuilding of the Chinese swine herds as a result of African Swine Fever, and the longstanding efforts of the Council and the USDA over the past thirty years to build a livestock industry in China that relies on corn and soybeans to produce commercial livestock feeds.

Using Market Access Program (MAP) funds, the U.S. Grains Council’s Beijing office has engaged in multiple livestock development activities in China over the past 40 years with the vision to eventually create a large and stable importer of U.S. corn. China has been a significant corn importer since 2010, but its reliance on the U.S. was limited by technical and political barriers.

Last year, that all changed. Not only have China’s total corn imports skyrocketed to unprecedented levels, but the U.S. is now the predominant supplier of corn to China. From September 2020 to March 2021, U.S. corn exports to China reached nearly 8.86 MMT, valued at over $1.82 billion, compared to just 60.5 TMT, valued at only $12.5 million during the same period the previous year. The 23 MMT China has contracted to import this year will be roughly 150 percent higher than the previous record level of U.S. corn imported by one country.

The main driver to this surge in demand is the rapidly recovering swine industry and the greater use of corn in swine feed rations. The U.S. Grains Council has been promoting a corn/soybean meal swine ration for decades and, through a wide variety of technical programs, has built strong relationships and a good reputation with China’s large feed and livestock producers. When using recycled food waste and other inferior products became less desirable due to the outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) in 2018, Chinese feed and livestock producers quickly switched to more corn in their rations to replace these products, generating significant additional
demand as swine inventories recover from the outbreak, generating significant import demand.

China’s large corn purchases in the 2020/2021 crop year helped set a record for the U.S. corn export program and will validate 40 years of investment that the U.S. Grains Council has made into developing various aspects of the Chinese feed industry.