The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday in a briefing that corn acreage is shrinking by 333,000 hectares. In contrast, last week it was also officially estimated that the corn harvest in China in 2018 should be larger than in the previous year.
The mentioned area reduction represents less than 1% of Chinese maize cultivation in 2017, which was reported as 35.4 million hectares.
An area decline is a wish of the government in Beijing, which wants to reduce the huge state corn and rice stocks. In 2016, the government announced that corn production in 13 provinces, which do not have optimum climate conditions for the plants, will be reduced by 3.3 million hectares by 2020.
Contrary to the government's announcement, many market participants expect the corn crop to be higher this year as farmers grow more. Last week it was said that the harvest for 2018 is estimated at 218 million tons.
Text: HANSA Derivatives Trading GmbH /
