In 2021, the mainland's grain imports exceeded 160 million tons, of which soybean imports were 96.518 million tons, accounting for 58.6% of the total imports. As one of the main feed grains, soybeans have a high degree of dependence on foreign countries, with a long-term dependence of more than 80%. Since the end of 2021, the top level has repeatedly made heavy deployments, emphasizing from a political height to ensure the supply of primary products, especially food security. Therefore, the expansion of beans and oilseeds in 2022 will be the key content and general direction of the grain market.
Regarding the situation of the domestic soybean industry, there has always been a representative view that domestic soybeans have been crushed, and the consumption safety of Chinese soybeans has been "stuck" by imported soybeans.
China is the origin of soybeans, which have been planted all over the country and have been accompanied by Chinese for thousands of years. Are domestic soybeans really "almost fallen" under the siege of imported soybeans as some people think?
Opinions should be based on facts, and one of the best facts is data. We will turn our attention to a slightly longer period of time to see the changes in soybean production since the founding of New China, and at the same time, we will also look at the representative years, and analyze the fate of domestic soybeans through the combination of points and lines.
One
1949-2020:
Domestic soybean production continues to grow amid ups and downs
The chart below shows China's total soybean production, sown area and yield from 1949 to 2020.
The data shows:
Sown area – Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, soybean sown area has generally shown a decreasing trend; it has rebounded since 2016, but it is still low compared with most historical years; the years with more than 10 million hectares sown are 1951-1957 and 1964, while the years with sown area below 7 million hectares are 1975-1977 and 2015.
Soybean yields – Total soybean yields remain on the rise while the overall area sown has declined; production from 2012 to 2016 has declined significantly, but remains high compared to most historical years; and the years with outputs of more than 10 million tonnes have been 1956-1957, 1985-1990, and 1992-present.
Soybean yields – Data on soybean yields by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) began in 1978. From 1059 kg/ha to 1980 kg/ha in 2020, the yield level was 1.87 times higher than at that time.
Looking at the above three indicators together, from 1978 to 2020, the sown area of soybeans expanded from 7.14 million hectares to 9.87 million hectares, an increase of 0.38 times; the output increased from 7.565 million tons to 19.6 million tons, an increase of 1.59 times. The slight increase in sown area and the exponential increase in yield are reflected in the near doubling of yield levels. This means that China's soybean production for more than 40 years has mainly relied on yield improvement.
Changchun City, Jilin Province, reformed the production and marketing system of soy products, and solved the problem of the difficulty of eating tofu that citizens have been arguing about for many years. Xinhua News Agency photo, 1986
For a long time, domestic soybeans have been mainly used to meet people's demand for soy products. Moreover, the production and Chinese of domestic soybeans are roughly balanced in demand for soy products. Therefore, domestic soybeans were and are still the main source of Chinese plant protein, and there is no case of being crushed.
Domestic soybeans are not without problems. Combing the entire industrial chain, there are improvements in scientific research and breeding, planting models, storage and processing, financial futures, policy support, etc., but it is untenable to say that "soybeans planted for more than 5,000 years have been crushed by Americans in a few years".
Two
Why soybeans and corn love each other
Corn and soybeans are the feed "double kings" in the breeding industry - the former provides energy for livestock and poultry, the latter mainly provides protein, which should be a combination of pearls, but why have they become love and kill each other? Very simply, the northeast region is basically planting a season of crops, and the planting seasons of summer soybeans and summer corn in north China also completely coincide, and there are so many cultivated lands, and it is naturally impossible to plant soybeans after planting corn.
What cannot be ignored is that corn is an important industrial raw material, the grain with the most varieties processed, the longest chain and the highest value-added, and more than 2,000 kinds of deep-processed products. This is something that soybeans can't compare to in any way. Therefore, the market demand and market supply and demand complexity faced by corn are far more than soybeans.
Therefore, it can be seen that unlike the fate of soybeans, the "more or less" in corn production is not determined by production, but by demand.
In fact, since the new century, China's corn production has soared from 114.0877 million tons in 2001 to 155.1225 million tons in 2007, and exceeded 200 million tons in 2011 and reached 211.316 million tons.
Three
1980s:
The birth of a new industrial category
The story of corn is essentially a story of the transformation of an agricultural country into an industrial country, while soybeans are more closely related to people's lives, and in China it is a story of moving towards a well-off society.
Many people know that the most and cheapest edible oil on the market is soybean oil. So, are soybeans (mainly) imported to solve the problem of edible oils Chinese? Not.
Some people start from the situation of importing soybeans to press edible oil, and after a simple calculation, they believe that China's "edible oil self-sufficiency rate has dropped to 32%", which is extremely risky and has even been "stuck in the neck". In fact, the substitution of oil crops is very strong, and woody oil crops such as peanuts, rapeseed, oil sunflower, corn and oil tea are all sources of edible oil. On the consumer side, given that the consumption of edible oil in the Chinese has exceeded the world average, coupled with factors such as healthy diet, the consumption elasticity of edible oil is very large.
Farmers of the 38th Regiment of the Second Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps drove a mechanical truck to carry out the operation of returning oil sunflower straw to the field. Xinhua News Agency photo, 2014
To put it simply, the current consumption of edible oil Chinese is not just demanded, but can be balanced between supply and demand by adjusting the planting structure, guiding reasonable consumption, and moderately increasing imports. China's edible oil supply situation is not in danger.
The fate of soybeans is closely related to the rise of the farming industry.
After the reform and opening up, in the traditional agricultural areas, there was a place where people might not have imagined that it would become the world's largest industry - aquaculture. This has had an extremely far-reaching impact on domestic soybeans and even on the world soybean trade pattern.
In the past, livestock and poultry breeding was not absent, but it was basically limited to the social enterprises with collective economic components and the agricultural reclamation system. With the continuous advancement of rural reform, aquaculture has become a basic industrial form for farmers to increase their income and become rich and develop the courtyard economy. There was a time when, in the countryside in many places, the evaluation of how a family lived was to see how many pigs, chickens and ducks the family had raised.
In 1980, Su Yulan, a 41-year-old suburban farmer in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, became famous throughout the country for raising 110 pigs. There are 40,000 farmers in the Xincheng sub-district where Su Yulan is located, and the main task is to produce vegetables and other side foods for Shenyang, of which 3,000 households have become pig breeders with the help of the government.
Su Yulan, a pig expert, with the active support of the district finance department and the commune credit union, built a family pig farm with 12 pig houses. Xinhua News Agency photo, 1980
By 1982, there were more than 560,000 professional livestock and poultry breeding households and more than 1.77 million key households in the country, with a total of more than 10 million livestock, more than 580,000 poultry and more than 12 million rabbits. In many areas, professional households and key households in livestock and poultry breeding have become an important force in the development of rural commodity production. With the rise of rural reform and the advancement of the process of agricultural marketization, aquaculture has become an important force in the rural economy.
The strong demand for feed in the aquaculture industry has spawned a separate industrial category of the feed industry. In January 1983, Deng Xiaoping pointed out in a conversation with the former responsible comrades of the State Planning Commission, the Economic Commission, and the agricultural departments that the whole country should engage in feed processing and hundreds of modern feed processing plants. Feed is to be done for industry, which is a big industry.
This year, among the more than 176 million farmers in the country, on average, 1 in every 10 households was a professional or key household engaged in aquaculture or other industries.
Researchers at the Chengdu Feed Research Institute conduct comparative tests on chicken feed to screen out the best feed recipes. Xinhua News Agency photo, 1983
In December 1984, the "1984-2000 National Feed Industry Development Outline (Trial Draft)" was promulgated, and the construction of the feed industry was included in the sequence of national economic and social development. From an annual output of only a few hundred thousand tons at the beginning of reform and opening up to 253 million tons in 2020, China has maintained its position as the world's number one feed producer for many years.
It is the feed industry, which has the largest production scale in the world, which supports the aquaculture industry that is also the world's first.
Four
1996-2020:
Soybean imports become the largest "gray rhinoceros" in China's agriculture
In 2013, economist Michelle Walker first proposed the concept of the "grey rhinoceros" at Davos. The concept was originally used to describe some of the obvious, high-probability risks in the financial sector that are repeatedly overlooked and could eventually lead to major crises. Later, the "gray rhinoceros" incident was widely used in various fields.
Imported soybeans are the biggest "gray rhinoceros" that Has suffered in Chinese agriculture since the 1990s. However, before discussing this section, it is necessary to reiterate the author's point of view: in the context of increasing yields, soybean production has increased in fluctuations, basically meeting the traditional needs of Chinese for plant proteins, which is the basic starting point for understanding the historical role of domestic soybeans and the value of today.
On the other hand, China's perennial industrial feed production is more than 200 million tons, which requires about 60 million tons of soybean meal, which means that more than 80 million tons of soybeans are needed to support. The average annual output of domestic soybeans in the past 10 years (2011-2020) is less than 15 million tons. However, in the same period, China imported an average of 78.38 million tons of soybeans per year, and the import volume in 2020 exceeded 100 million tons, reaching a record high.
In this case, domestic soybeans continue to provide a source of soy product consumption in Chinese with limited resources, while greater demand has almost ceded to imported soybeans. This was actually a clear consideration when formulating the soybean revitalization plan at that time.
Domestic soybeans are unable to support the raw material demand of the feed industry, which is limited by resource endowments, a contradiction between economic and social development and limited resource conditions, and a new problem encountered in the process of China's development. The view that domestic soybeans are "crushed" and "fallen" is not objective and does not correspond to the actual situation.
So when did China start moving from a net soybean exporter to a net importer? In 1996. Previously, in 1995, China exported 380,000 tons of soybeans and imported nearly 300,000 tons of soybeans to Countries such as Japan and South Korea. This is the last year that China has maintained net soybean exports.
In 1996, China's soybean imports soared to 1.114 million tons, while limited exports fell to 190,000 tons. By 1997, soybean imports had more than doubled to 2.801 million tonnes over the previous year, as exports remained unchanged.
What happened in 1996?
In China, because the economic benefits of soybeans are much lower than that of corn, the sown area of soybeans in the country decreased by 656 thousand hectares compared with the previous year, while the sown area of corn increased by 1723 thousand hectares year-on-year.
In March 1997, the first batch of 1.5 million tons of special grain storage in Jilin Province was shipped to the south. This is a measure taken to alleviate the pressure on grain stocks in northeast China and Inner Mongolia. Xinhua
Internationally, the United States began to grow a herbicide-resistant genetically modified soybean in large quantities. Brazil, another major soybean exporter, exported 4 million tons of soybeans that year, and soybeans became Brazil's largest agricultural exporter the following year.
In 1996, China was implementing the "Soybean Action Plan" with the aim of providing urban and rural residents, especially primary and secondary school students, with high-quality processed soybean products to solve the shortage of high-quality protein intake and enhance people's physical fitness. To some extent, this also provides a footnote to the market demand for the rapidly developing aquaculture industry. At this time, China has basically solved the problem of food and clothing, and nutritional needs have become a common concern.
From this point on, the pathways to meeting Chinese protein needs become complex and diverse. Among them, the import of feed, the domestic breeding industry through the "over-belly transformation" of animals, and the large number of imported animal products in recent years are the embodiment of China's integration into the world trade pattern.
The chart above shows that from 2000 to 2020, China's imports of animal products such as meat, dairy products and aquatic products have a higher upward curve in the second decade of this century. Such a situation may not have been expected when China was just fully integrated into the world economic system.
In 1999, on the eve of China's accession to the World Trade Organization, bilateral trade negotiations between China and the United States were nearing completion. This year, the United States exported 5.2 million tons of soybeans worth $1 billion to China. Luo Mingjie, then deputy secretary of agriculture, lamented in an exclusive interview with Xinhua News Agency: "Exporting so many soybeans to a country is the first time in the history of the United States. ”
Soon, China became a member of the WTO and the curtain opened on its integration into economic globalization. Subsequently, the United States, Brazil and Argentina firmly occupied the top three source countries of China's soybean imports. China's soybean imports have jumped to a new level:
In 2000, it exceeded 10 million tons, reaching 10.416 million tons
In 2003, it exceeded 20 million tons, reaching 20.740 million tons
In 2007, it exceeded 30 million tons, reaching 30.820 million tons
In 2009, it exceeded 40 million tons, reaching 42.55 million tons
In 2010, it exceeded 50 million tons, reaching 54.800 million tons
In 2013, it exceeded 60 million tons, reaching 63.38 million tons
In 2014, it exceeded 70 million tons, reaching 71.403 million tons
In 2015, it exceeded 80 million tons, reaching 81.692 million tons
In 2017, it exceeded 90 million tons, reaching 95.530 million tons
In 2020, it will exceed 100 million tons, reaching 100.33 million tons
On February 4, Brazil began its soybean harvest, and the Brazilian agricultural community expects a bumper harvest of Brazilian soybeans. Xinhua News Agency photo, 2021
If soybeans are used as grain according to China's statistical caliber, the 100 million tons of soybeans imported accounted for nearly 15% of the total national grain output of 669.492 million tons that year. Considering that the import and export volume of cereals and cereal flour, including the three staple grains of rice, wheat and corn, still has a deficit of nearly 15 million tons (14.67 million tons, 2019), some people exclaimed: China's grain self-sufficiency rate has fallen below 85%, reaching a record low!
But soybeans have been treated as oil crops since they became a major variety in international trade in agricultural products. In fact, from the perspective of the world's major growing countries, the boom in soybeans is accompanied by aquaculture. This illustrates at least two points:
First, to evaluate today's food security, it is necessary to distinguish the extension of the concept of (traditional) ration security and food security, which cannot be confused, and a large number of imported soybeans is essentially a problem of edible oil and feed autonomy, which cannot be viewed in a general way from the perspective of affecting food security, so as not to cause unnecessary concerns that people may be "hungry".
Second, today's food security should be viewed from a systematic perspective, and the security of feed food will eventually profoundly affect the security of people's food supply. Perhaps policy and academics should switch to a more precise term such as "food security" when discussing food security today.
Not only that. Because the global production pattern of soybeans is more concentrated than other major food crops, and its international trade is comparatively more "big in, big out", it is easier to be an important means of major country diplomacy, and some trade measures of soybeans should be viewed in the context of the entire diplomatic pattern.
Soybeans in China tells a story that stirs history and reality, glory and dreams. A small bean reflects the great changes caused by thousands of years of farming culture and industrial civilization, as well as the changes in China's economy and society every year and every day. This is not an elegy of the old times, but a melody of the times sung loudly.
Source: Daguo Sannong Studio