MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

China, net food importer in cash terms so far this year

China became a net food importer in money terms in the first half of this year, as soaring food prices ate into its traditional surplus in agricultural goods. The swing into deficit largely reflects the surge in prices of commodity staples such as grain and soybeans.

However it also sheds an interesting light on China's stance in last month's abortive global trade talks when Beijing, increasingly concerned about food security, sided with India and against the United States in pushing for a safeguard to protect developing-country farmers from a surge in imports. According to data from Global Trade Information Services Inc, Geneva, (GTIS), China had a deficit of 5.78 billion US dollars on its trade in agricultural products in the first half of this year, against a surplus of 2.45 billion a year earlier, as the value of imports rose 72% while exports rose 12%. GTIS supplies and analyses international merchandise data. The figures show trade in categories 1-24 of the harmonized system (HS) used internationally to classify products, covering animal products, vegetable products and foodstuffs, and including products for animal feeds as well as food for people. In that period imports from the United States, China's biggest farm supplier, almost doubled. They rose 95% from Brazil and 132% from Argentina, the next biggest suppliers. But exports to Japan, China's biggest food customer, fell 12% while rising 13% to the United States. World Trade Organisation data, measuring trade in food on a slightly different basis, show China was a net food exporter every year from 2000 to 2007, except for 2004 when it ran a small deficit of 200 million US dollars. Its surplus in food peaked at 6.4 billion in 2002, and was only 900 million US dollars in 2007, as food prices started to climb.