China promotes livestock farming in northeast to digest corn stocks
China wants to turn its grain basket in the northeast into a national meat and dairy production base, said the agriculture ministry on Thursday, as part of a broader plan to create stronger demand for the region’s main crops.
Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning and Inner Mongolia account for around a quarter of China’s total grain output, but most of it has to be shipped to feed mills further south to supply the country’s hog and poultry farms.
Also, after years of subsidising corn planting, Beijing has been saddled with huge state stocks, estimated at more than 200 million tonnes – more than a year’s worth of consumption – and efforts to digest the reserves have had limited success.
“Accelerating the development of modern animal husbandry in the main producing areas of northeastern China is an urgent need to digest corn stocks and optimize the agricultural structure,” said the ministry in new guidelines on its website.
Bringing more pig, beef and dairy farms further north would also help reduce the impact of farm pollution in more populated regions along the coast, another major priority for the agriculture sector.
The ministry did not offer details on how it will get farmers to expand production in the northeast but said it wants the region to produce 15 percent of China’s meat and 40 percent of its milk by 2020.
Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang together accounted for about 17 percent of China’s dairy cattle, 15 percent of its beef cattle and 8 percent of its hog herd in 2015, according to official data.
By 2025, the livestock sector in the northeast should be fully modernised, and become China’s “national meat, egg and milk supply base” as well as a production centre for green products.
To supply the farms, the region should develop its feed processing sector and large-scale production of forage crops like silage corn and alfalfa, the agriculture ministry said.
The policy would also boost farm incomes in the region, where economic growth lags much of the rest of the country, it said.
Source: The Western Producer. Date: 2017-08-11
E-commerce helps Guizhou peaches sell nationwide
Unsalable peaches in Zhenyuan county, Guizhou province, have finally find their market through the help of local e-commerce platforms.
Jinkai village in Zhenyuan county was a poverty-stricken area several years ago. Wu Kaiming, a local villager, led others in the village to plant 500 mu (33.33 hectares) of peach trees in 2011, hoping to increase rural incomes and improve living conditions.
After years of effort, the barren land has become a locally famous peach garden. The peach planting base established by Wu has doubled its planting area to 1,000 mu and earned more than 2.5 million yuan ($371,775) in 2016. The yield will reach 650,000 kilograms this year.
However, the bumper harvest is a challenging time for local farmers, as stable selling channels in recent years have only ordered one-fifth of the total yield.
Fortunately, Gogbuy.com, a local B2C online platform, heard about the difficulties and offered to use its online selling channels to help sell the high-quality peaches nationwide. The company also promotes the peaches online to establish more influence of the brand.
Profits are expected to reach five million yuan this year. According to Tai Mingzhi, a local villager, every worker at the planting base will get a share of more than 20,000 yuan.
Source: Ministry of Agriculture China. Date: 2017-08-11
Bangladesh's Fishery Revolution
With a 25-fold growth in farmed fish market over the last three decades, Bangladesh has been experiencing a quiet revolution in aquaculture.
The country grows nearly 20 lakh tonnes of farmed fish a year, and an overwhelming 75 percent of the farmers sell fish to wholesalers.
In the mid-80s, 60 percent (75,000 tonnes) of the farmed fish output of 1.24 lakh tonnes was traded in markets. Now, more than 90 percent of aquaculture production of 20 lakh tonnes is sold commercially.
An international study on Bangladesh's growth in fish culture came up with the data, debunking the traditional view that the country's fish farming is mainly subsistence-oriented.
Carried out by researchers from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Michigan State University in the US, the study was published recently in Aquaculture, an international journal.
It says 42 percent of the marketed farmed fish is consumed in urban areas, and that share is growing fast.
The Washington-based global think tank, IFPRI, notes, "The fish value chain in Bangladesh is growing and transforming very rapidly, in all segments. The quiet revolution in the fish value chain is a domestic market revolution: 94% of aquaculture production is destined for domestic consumption."
With an annual production of nearly 20 lakh tonnes of cultured fish, Bangladesh is the world's fifth largest producer of inland aquaculture after China, Indonesia, India and Vietnam, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) stated in its report titled “State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2016”.
Ricardo Hernandez, IFPRI research coordinator and lead author of the study, said “Aquaculture has become an important driver of Bangladesh economy and the industry now employs as many persons as the garment sector, another growing success story in the country.”
Just over a decade ago, rural farmers usually sold their fish to local traders, but now they are selling two-thirds of their product to large wholesalers based in towns and cities, he said.
The study points out that volumes and actors in the fisheries tripled in Bangladesh in the last 10 years.
Statistics of Bangladesh's Department of Fisheries (DoF) also reflect the fast change in the dynamics of the country's fish production.
Within the last 10-12 years, the contribution of farmed fish to net fish output has grown from 43 percent to 56 percent, meaning that cultured fish (farmed in inland closed water) now overtakes the volume of captured fish (grown in natural free-flowing open water).
DoF figures show that the country's annual fish production stands at 37 lakh tonnes, and nearly 56 percent of that comes from farmed fish, 28 percent from captured fish and the rest from marine fisheries.
Hernandez said, “What really surprised me about these findings was the extent of the growth in many sectors, not just in production but also in many off-farm segments, such as rural and urban traders, input dealers and feed mills.
“The rapid increase in mainly small and medium actors has produced a more competitive environment that has pushed the adoption of new technologies, which has increased productivity. This has greatly benefited poor and low-income consumers.”
This rapid growth has been driven by increased demand; improvements in technology, communications and infrastructure; and investments by millions of farm households and small and medium enterprises, he added.
The study says, "Very little change was brought about by NGO or government action, although the government did play an important role in the early stages with infrastructure investment (such as investment in fish seed production, electricity and roads), a pro-business outlook, and a laissez-faire approach to land use and crop choice."
The researchers observed that Bangladesh saw proliferation of feed mills, hatcheries, farmers and traders as well as increase in the use of hired labour and investment in agricultural equipment.
Hernandez said, “Both rural and urban poor households have been able to improve their diets by consuming more protein and micronutrients from a source other than rice.”
According to the DoF, fisheries contribute 3.69 percent of Bangladesh's GDP and over 23 percent of agricultural GDP. With an average fish intake of 53 gram per person a day, fish now account for 60 percent of protein supply for the entire population.
Besides, one crore 78 lakh people are fully or partially employed in the fisheries sector.
Aquaculture saw a robust growth of 8.2 percent, much higher compared to the average growth rate of all fisheries (5.4 percent) in the last one decade.
The IFPRI-led study noted that there has been rapid capital deepening in the form of investments by hundreds of thousands of actors in the fish value chain; apparent in a great jump in feed use, investment in equipment and pond construction, and investments in mills, hatcheries and vehicles.
These investments have been made by, and provided opportunities for, a multitude of smallholder farmers and small and medium enterprises throughout the chain, it observed.
It also made mention of the diversification and specialisation beyond carps in production of commercial species such as tilapia and pangasius catfish, which have raised yields.
Source: The Daily Star. Date: 2017-08-09
In the future, your grocery will likely come from the building next to you
The green spires rise up like monstrous trees. Inside the climate regulated indoor farm, drones and robots fuss over walls of green, while self-regulating systems maintain humidity and nutrients. When they are ready to be harvested, automated delivery systems bring these fresh produce to tables in a matter of an hour or two. This self-contained farm is one of many hundreds, spread throughout the city, supplying food to those living around it.
This could be the future as mounting constraints on modern agriculture pushes us into exploring alternate ways to produce food to feed the urban mega-cities of the future. One growing movement offers to bring change nearly 10,000 year-old fundamentals of farming.
Can farming really move indoors?
Indoor vertical farms are trending. The largest agtech investment till date is a $200 million Series B funding, led by SoftBank and other investors including Bezos Expeditions, in a previously little known startup called Plenty.
In a 52,000 sq. ft. facility in San Francisco, Plenty grows various leafy greens on vertical panes. Although it is yet to sell its produce in stores, the startup (and the investors) believes that it has the technology to disrupt the market of ‘growing food’. With its new found financial muscle, Plenty wants to set up vertical farms all over the US, Japan, China and the Middle East.
Until Plenty came along, there was another company that hogged the farming revolution limelight — Aerofarms. A couple of months back, it raised a little more than $34 million as part of its Series D funding. Bowery, another indoor farming startup from New York, raised $20 million in funding soon after.
What’s all this money going to? Right now, into an experiment that lies at the convergence of the agricultural, industrial and technological revolution. Inside sterile, climate controlled buildings that resemble a chipset factory more than a farm, these startups grow produce without using soil.
In recent years, hydroponics, a technique that involves growing plants using nutrient solution and water as medium has gained popularity. But startups such as Plenty and Aerofarms use what they claim is an even superior technique called Aeroponics. The roots of the plants are suspended on a misty medium rich in nutrients.In either case, these indoor farms do away with soil and sunlight.
Farm computing
Perhaps a better term would be to call these “farm computers”.
LED lights enable photosynthesis and growth. The temperature is controlled and varied as required. Nutrients are added or removed and humidity is tightly regulated thanks to sensors that constantly monitor their levels. All of this is monitored and regulated by a farm operating system. Need less sodium in the leafy greens? Just tweak a few controls.
Japan, with limited arable land and fast dwindling workforce, is very interested. Spread, one of the country’s largest vertical farming companies, produces more than 20,000 lettuce heads everyday using hydroponics. It has set its sights on more than doubling its yield to 50,000 using automation and robotics. Fujitsu, an electronics giant, is converting unused semiconductor facilities into indoor hydroponic farms.
When Spread opened its Kameoka plant in 2007, it had worked for six years before that to be able to scale its production. Source: Spread.
China, whose blistering growth left its farmlands toxic, is exploring indoor farming techniques as a way to feed its dense urban centers. A Chinese architectural firm is building a multi-story hydroponic vertical farm in Shanghai to grow leafy greens. In Singapore, a Panasonic-run vertical farm cultivates 40 different crops and 80 tons of veggies every year.
There have been small, niche attempts in India too. A small 1600 sq.ft. vertical farm in Goa cultivates about three tonnes of lettuce every month. Future Farms in Chennai is evangelising hydroponic farming with a handful of pilot farms although these are not indoor farms.
One projection estimates that the vertical farming market will be $4 billion by 2020. But how and why did they suddenly get so popular?
Fantasy to necessity
Over the last 10,000 years, since our foraging forefathers started settling down to farm, the fundamentals of agriculture hasn’t changed much. However, the explosion of demand and the resulting scaling up of this agriculture in our recent history has come at a price. Agriculture uses up nearly a third of our land mass (not including Antartica) and consumes 70% of all global freshwater.
Global population is hurtling towards the nine billion mark by 2050 putting a huge ask on our food production. Open arable lands are hard to come by for countries with low space (Japan, Singapore) or harsh climate (Middle East). In countries like India, climate change and poor planning have resulted in complete dependence on the vagaries of monsoon.
So when you hear Plenty claim that their technology can help produce 350 times the output of a conventional farm in the same area, you sit up and listen. Most indoor vertical farms also claim to consume about one-hundredth of the water required for conventional farming.
“Indoor farmers do not have to pray for rain, or sunshine, or moderate temperatures, or anything else related to the production of food crops, for that matter,” said Dickson Despommier who coined the term “vertical farm” when he wrote The Vertical Farm: Feeding the world in the 21st century back in 2010. It’s a promise that offers hope in the current scenario.
Back when Dickson Despommier published the book in 2010, the concept of indoor vertical farm was being pursued seriously in few places. Today, the landscape has changed quite a bit.
The vagaries of weather on farming is only set to get worse with the worsening effects of climate change. Countries seeking food security cannot rely only on uncertain climatic conditions to feed their growing populace.
Moreover, food production today is a black box today with increasing concerns on quality. A fifth of all arable land in China has more than the prescribed level of toxins for agriculture — the result of the industrial growth surge. As a result, the market for organic produce is surging ($60 billion market by 2020) despite the fact that the label is abused widely nor is it a guarantee that pesticides were not used. Produce grown in indoor farms promise a new level of quality. Bowery calls them “post-organic”, meaning they are grown with zero pesticides.
An indoor vertical farm in the thick of an urban center can also deliver fresh produce faster and with low delivery carbon footprint than traditional farms that need their produce to travel (sometimes) hundreds of kilometers adding to both economic and environmental costs. So, what’s holding them back?
Numbers trail the hype
In 2013, an economic feasibility study conducted to look at what it would take to supply fresh produce to 15,000 people demanding 2,000 kcal of nutrition per day, estimated that the vertical farm would need to be the size of a city-block, 37 floors high, use LED illumination and would be able to supply produce at around $3.40 to $4 per kilogram. In essence, vertical farms today can profitably cater to only high value produce for elites.
For the well funded vertical farm startups, the economics are yet to catch up with the valuations. The set-up costs are high and so are the running energy costs (climate control, LED lighting etc.).
In developing countries where power is more valuable and less reliable, the costs add up and pretty much make indoor farms out of reach for large scale adoption.
Navin Durai, chief marketing officer of Future Farms, told me a few months ago that the capital expense of setting up these farms in India is high since majority of components have to be imported (about Rs 1 crore per acre). And running them with artificial lighting pushes the set up costs even further up. Vertical farms farms relying on direct sunlight and using hydroponics will have operational costs that are a fraction of regular farms and could potentially recover initial costs in three-four years.
Chennai based Future Farms uses hydroponics to cultivate leafy greens, tomato, bell peppers, broccoli, lettuce etc
But the dynamics are changing rapidly. The components to set up farms including sensors, regulators and the machine learning intelligence are all fast getting commoditized. For instance, the prices of LED lights have dropped by more than 90% in less than a decade. Energy prices could begin to drop if the cost of renewable energy continues to plummet. There could a case for these indoor vertical farms to become profitable in the short term and scale.
But economics isn’t the only hurdle. Google X, which works on moonshot ideas to solve large problems, killed their work on automated vertical farming project some time back. The reason: vertical farms cannot grow staples like rice and wheat that feed a vast majority of the world. Today, vertical farming can primarily produce leafy greens and some vegetables.
Countries that need to mass produce cheap food for its populations like India, China and large parts of Africa cannot still rely on indoor vertical farms to fulfill their needs. Even if the costs align, running these farms require complex expertise with a steep learning curve. These farms demand engineers, biologists, machine learning experts and data scientists.
Does this mean these farms will remain niche indulgences at best? Maybe not. The investments pouring into this could help scale up the technology and increasing commoditization could make these feasible very soon.
The future of your groceries
In a few decades, more than 70% of humanity will be living in a city. The rise of large mega-cities with millions of people and that are connected to each other through high-speed transit may be inevitable. More and more people will demand variety, quality and freshness in food. Meanwhile, climate change and pollution will continue to dwindle land available for agriculture. We’re rapidly running out of water too.
Inevitably, farms will have to get local, move closer to urban centers and be efficient in their use of resources. Detroit, once a symbol of industrial revolution that produced automobiles, is now seeing an agrarian revolution as entrepreneurs buy up old warehouses and abandoned factories and convert them into indoor farms that can generate fresh produce. In London, one startup is growing produce in the forgotten old tunnels beneath the city.
Indoor farms could become self-contained ecosystems that can just download “climate recipes” that enables simulating any climate. One could grow mangoes in Mexico and jalapenos in India. Open Agriculture Initiative by MIT Media Lab strives to do just that by bringing technology that makes indoor farming easy.
As automation increases, these indoor farms could potentially grow in size and scale. Spread is launching is fully automatic vegetable factory where all activities post seeding are done without human intervention. This will enable self-contained farm ecosystems to emerge and eventually get commoditised. Large living enclaves and communities may sport their own farms.
A smart food value chain will emerge, letting consumers order produce on demand fresh from these farms. The rise of on-demand grocery delivery service today is perhaps just the beginning. In the future, smart sensors could help track food from its origin until it reaches the consumer. Individuals may even be able to custom-grow food to their tastes. You could alter the sodium content in your leafy greens. Imagine getting food from farm to table in a matter of a minutes.
Perhaps this is the kind of grocery value chain that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has on his mind. His personal investment fund Bezos Expeditions is one of the investors in Plenty. Earlier this year, Amazon purchased Whole Foods. It isn’t hard to imagine little automated indoor farms all across the country growing produce and then have a supply chain of drones and self-driving delivery vehicles moving groceries to the end consumers.
For when we eventually do colonize other lands, it’s likely that we’ll ship self contained farm-pods across space even before we set up large scale colonies. But much before we do that, we’ll likely get used to them on earth.
Source: Factor Daily. Date: 2017-08-09
Battle against China's fake foods drives new tech frontier
A bowl of ice cream on a hot day in Shanghai gave American Mitchell Weinberg the worst bout of food poisoning he can recall. It also inspired the then-trade consultant to set up Inscatech - a global network of food spies.
In demand by multinational retailers and food producers, Inscatech and its agents scour supply chains around the world hunting for evidence of food industry fraud and malpractice.
In the eight years since he founded the New York-based firm, Mr Weinberg, 52, says China continues to be a key growth area for fraudsters as well as those developing technologies trying to counter them.
"Statistically we're uncovering fraud about 70 per cent of the time, but in China it's very close to 100 per cent," he said. "It's pervasive, it's across food groups, and it's anything you can possibly imagine."
While adulteration has been a bugbear of consumers since prehistoric wine was first diluted with saltwater, scandals in China over the past decade - from melamine-laced baby formula, to rat meat dressed as lamb - have seen the planet's largest food-producing and consuming nation become a hotbed of corrupted, counterfeit, and contaminated food.
Mr Weinberg's company is developing molecular markers and genetic fingerprints to help authenticate natural products and sort genuine foodstuffs from the fakes.
Another approach companies are pursuing uses digital technology to track and record the provenance of food from farm to plate.
"Consumers want to know where products are from," said Mr Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group, citing surveys the Shanghai-based consultancy conducted with consumers and supermarket operators.
Services that help companies mitigate the reputational risk that food-fraud poses is a "big growth area", said according to Mr Rein.
"It's a great business opportunity. It's going to be important not just as a China play, but as a global play, because Chinese food companies are becoming part of the whole global supply chain," he said.
Some of the biggest food companies are backing technology that grew out of the anarchic world of crypto-currencies. It is called blockchain, essentially a shared, cryptographically secure ledger of transactions.
Wal-Mart Stores, the world's largest retailer, was one of the first to get on board, just completing a trial using blockchain technology to track pork in China, where it has more than 400 stores.
The time taken to track the meat's supply chain was cut from 26 hours to just seconds using blockchain, and the scope of the project is being widened to other products, said Mr Frank Yiannas, Wal-Mart's vice-president for food safety, in an interview on Thursday (Aug 3).
Shanghai-based Zhong An Information and Technology Services said in June it will use the technology to track chickens from the coop to the processing facility and on to the market or store.
Alibaba Group Holding, too, sees the potential for the eight-year-old technology to provide greater product integrity across its platforms, which accounted for more then 75 per cent of China's online retail sales in 2015.
The planned blockchain project will involve the Chinese e-commerce behemoth working with food suppliers in Australia and New Zealand, as well as Australia Post and auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers.
"Food fraud is a serious global issue," said Ms Maggie Zhou, managing director for Alibaba in Australia and New Zealand. "This project is the first step in creating a globally respected framework that protects the reputation of food merchants and gives consumers further confidence to purchase food online."
Fraud costs the global food industry as much as US$40 billion (S$54 billion) annually, according to Mr John Spink, director of Michigan State University's Food Fraud Initiative.
In China, where the 2008 melamine milk crisis resulted in the death of at least six babies, it is a hot-button issue compounded by the country's growing appetite for higher quality food and swelling middle class.
A Pew Research Centre study last year found 40 per cent of Chinese view food safety as a "very big problem", up from 12 per cent in 2008.
"This is not a Chinese issue - it's a global issue," said Mr Zhu Yongguan, director-general of the Institute of Urban Environment, part of the state-funded Chinese Academy of Sciences. "What we have to do is reinforce our regulations to improve the transparency of the administration, for example, information-sharing."
Mr Zhu says blockchain could play an important role in improving traceability. Its database of records can be built like a chain and cannot be broken or re-ordered without disrupting the entire connection.
China strengthened its food safety law in 2015 in response to the spate of scandals. Counterfeiters and food tamperers face tougher penalties, including jail time in some cases, and more than US$800 million has been spent hiring more food safety personnel and bolstering monitoring facilities, according to an April report from the Paulson Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
Last month, Beijing emphasised to the authorities the need to be upfront in disclosing food safety issues.
"Food-fraud will always exist," said chief scientist Wu Yongning at the government-run China National Centre For Food Safety Risk Assessment.
While the authorities in China have joined the global fight against the scourge, Mr Wu does not see the problem disappearing. "We can only develop technology to detect it," he said. "However, fake-food producers will always update their technology to dodge inspections."
The wiliness of fraudsters is what makes Inscatech's Mr Weinberg less hopeful about blockchain.
His company mainly uses informants on the ground to sniff out where in the production process food-fraud is taking place, and most of his work in China is with western companies that manufacture or source for products there.
"The problem is the data is only as reliable as the person providing the data," said Mr Weinberg, who recalls seeing everything in China from synthetic eggs to fake shrimp that still sizzle in a wok.
"In most supply chains there is one or more 'unreliable' data provider. This means blockchain is likely useless for protecting against food-fraud unless every piece of data is scrutinised to be accurate," he said.
A months-long Bloomberg investigation into the global shrimp trade last year showed how unreliable documentation had fanned an illegal transhipping scheme involving Chinese aquaculture exporters.
But blockchain is "light years" away from the system used by the global food industry today, which relies heavily on paper records, said Mr Yiannas, Wal-Mart's food safety chief.
By recording the identity of those who input data into the chain, the technology removes the anonymity that has helped food-fraud to thrive, he said.
The role of humans in recording the supply chain will also diminish, said Mr Yiannas. "More and more of these documents will eventually be captured in an automated way."
China's Food and Drug Administration did not immediately respond to an e-mail requesting comment on the country's food safety efforts.
Some companies are already bringing traceability to consumers. Fonterra Cooperative Group, the world's biggest dairy exporter, started putting QR codes on cans of infant formula in April, enabling buyers to verify the product's authenticity.
The challenges for China - "the factory of the world" - are especially vast because of its size, population, multilayered administrative divisions, and "the willingness of criminals to exploit every corner that they can in order to make money", said Mr Michael Ellis, who ran Interpol's trafficking in illicit goods unit until October.
At Interpol, Mr Ellis, a former detective with Scotland Yard in London, was involved in "Opson", an operation that led to the seizure of more than 10,000 tons and 1 million litres of hazardous fake-food and drinks across more than 50 countries.
Without a presence to fight it, food-fraud globally will explode,Mr Ellis said. "It will just continue to grow, and who knows where it will lead."
Source: The Strait Times. Date: 2017-08-09
China approves 10 international agricultural parks
China has approved plans to establish international agricultural demonstration zones in 10 countries, the agriculture ministry said on Monday, as Beijing looks to extend its influence in the global farm sector.
The projects include an agriculture technology park in Laos, an agricultural products processing zone in Zambia and a fisheries park in Fiji, the ministry said in a statement on its website.
The demonstration zones are based on existing projects set up by Chinese firms, which will be given government backing to serve as platforms for other Chinese companies.
China also approved 10 pilot agricultural parks at home, which will be open to overseas investment. They are located in coastal, river and border regions to help encourage overseas co-operation and local connections.
The agricultural parks are part of China's Belt and Road initiative, an ambitious plan to expand infrastructure and trade links between Asia, Africa, Europe and beyond.
China said in November it would launch the projects to boost co-operation with foreign firms, help its companies make better and less risky overseas agricultural investments, and bring in international experience and technology.
The plan was also highlighted in the government's first policy statement this year, which said it would encourage exports and support companies to set up overseas production bases.
Source: Asia One. Date: 2017-08-08
China’s wine consumption growing in tandem with ageing millennials
As the older generation lives longer, and as people’s health awareness increases, more wine is expected to be consumed in China, according to a new report from Goldman Sachs and Gao Hua Securities.
Current wine consumption is skewed towards younger drinkers, but that market should expand as the millennial population grows older, as has already been seen in developed nations, according to the research led by analysts Liao Xufa and Lincoln Kong.
They predict total consumption volume of grape-based wine, rather than rice wine, in China will increase at a compound annual growth rate of about 6 per cent over the next decade as a result, with the former considered the healthier tipple by among millennials.
The report expects China’s alcohol industry to be worth some 1,300 billion yuan (US$192 billion) by 2025, a 5 per cent compound annual growth from 2016, mainly driven by rising average prices.
And thanks to the move towards more expensive premium products and improved margins, the report suggests wine industry profits to outgrow white spirits, at an 8 per cent compound annual growth to 200 billion yuan by the same year.
The report underlined how Chinese alcohol preference is very much related to age group.
According to an Institute of Alcohol Studies study conducted in the UK, Amercian company Gallup’s study conducted in the US and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare study conducted in Australia, older people tend to drink more wine in these three countries.
That’s pretty much in line with western economies, which gave highlighted too recently that older people tend to drink more wine in those countries.
Elderly drinkers in China are still traditionalists, opting for Chinese white spirits, or baijiu liquor which is made from grain, while young people are turning their attention to Western wine and spirit brands, particularly wine.
Just over half (53 per cent) of frequent consumers of Chinese white spirits are now 45-years-old or above, compared with 30 per cent for beer, and 27 per cent for wine.
“We expect wine industry profits to grow relatively slower compared with beer and spirits on
tougher competition and pricing pressure,” according to the report.
But it expects consumption volumes to grow faster for wine than the other two, up 72 per cent from 2016 to 2025.
The report expects, too, imported wine brands to take more market share, as domestic Chinese labels have failed as yet to take share from more recognised and established international vineyards, which have stronger brand image and are considered higher quality.
“Future wine industry revenue growth in China will be mainly driven by imported wine, a 145 per cent rise from 2016 to 2025, as they work harder on branding to ensure they convince buyers of their higher quality. That will be helped too by lower import tariffs,” the report added. “Imported wine revenue share will increase from 40 per cent in 2016 to 63 per cent by 2025.”
The report expects the Chinese population aged over 55 in 2025 will be a quarter larger than in 2015.
Source: South China Morning Post. Date: 2017-08-08
India, IRRI partner to boost South Asia's rice sector
The government of India and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) recently furthered their partnership for food and nutrition security and capacity development in the South Asian region.
A Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) was signed on Aug. 2 in Krishi Bhawan, New Delhi, by IRRI Director General Matthew Morell and Secretary S.K. Pattanayak of the Indian Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare. The MOA signing precedes the July 12 approval of the Union Cabinet, which is chaired by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, for the establishment of the IRRI South Asia Regional Center (ISARC) at Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh.
“While IRRI has historically helped India to meet its overall food security needs through the green revolution with high-yielding rice varieties such as IR8, the challenge now is to deliver increased livelihoods for farmers through increasing the value of rice, and increasing the well-being of farmers and consumers through enhanced nutrition outcomes,” said Morrell. “This agreement opens up more exciting collaborative activities in developing higher-yielding and more nutritious rice varieties that also meet the eating preferences of consumers. It is important that new and improved rice varieties also possess superior grain quality that add value through meeting domestic and export market expectations to further improve the lives of farmers who rely on rice for their livelihood and sustenance.”
In an official statement by the Indian Press Information Bureau, ISARC will be the first international center in eastern India. The center will drive initiatives that focus holistically on the rice value chain in the country.
ISARC is designed to provide a regional facility that supports research collaboration, training, and service provision to institutions, scientists, and other stakeholders from India and other South Asian and African nations. The center will house a modern research facility that aims to develop higher-yielding and more nutritious rice varieties that also meet the eating preferences of consumers.
The center will be managed by IRRI and work commences immediately with the objective of commissioning the center within 6 months.
Source: World-Grain.com. Date: 2017-08-08
Plan for management of antibiotic use in Vietnamese farming
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on Wednesday launched the Vietnam National Action Plan for management of antibiotic use and control of antibiotic resistance in livestock production and aquaculture in the 2017-20 period.
With financial support from the United States Agency for International Development, this plan was developed in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) to guide the actions of the agriculture sector and complement the Ministry of Health’s national action plan on combating drug resistance in the 2013-20 period
The implementation of the plan is expected to help mitigate the public health risk arising from antibiotic usage in livestock production and aquaculture in Việt Nam.
The action plan establishes five specific objectives, including review, revise and enforce policy implementation and governance related to antibiotic use (AMU) and antibiotic resistance (AMR) in livestock production and aquaculture.
It also, as expected, helps to increase awareness on AMU and the risk of AMR occurrence among food and agriculture professionals, producers and consumers or implement good practices in animal treatment, animal feed production, livestock husbandry and aquaculture.
Deputy Minister of Agriculture Vũ Văn Tám said the popular use of antibiotics in livestock production and aquaculture had led to the presence of antibiotic resistant bacteria in cattle, poultry and aquaculture.
Tám said it was important to have cooperation and technical and financial assistance from agencies, international organisations, research institutes and the private sector to reduce antibiotic use and mitigate antibiotic resistant threats.
“Together we are stronger against antibiotic use,” Tám said.
Jong Ha Bae, FAO’s representative, said “Antibiotic resistance threatens the health and livelihoods of the people in Việt Nam, the sustainability of food and agriculture production systems and the environment. Farmers, veterinarians and animal drug sellers should share responsibility by using antibiotic agents more responsibly and find alternative ways to maintain animal health and productivity such as improving bio-security and farming practices.”
Antibiotics can kill or inhibit the growth of micro-organisms such as bacteria, fungi or protozoa. They have been extensively used in recent decades and led to extraordinary improvements in human and veterinary medicine. Being an essential tool to control infectious diseases, they have also contributed to the improvement of food security, food safety and animal welfare.
However, the efficacy of antibiotics has been hampered by the development of resistance in bacteria originating from humans, animals, food and the environment. Infections due to antibiotic-resistant bacteria have led to treatment failures, poor clinical outcomes and deaths.
Source: VNS. Date: 2017-08-07
Texas rice farmers hope China deal brings more than a grain of relief
Ray Stoesser rumbled around his fields in an SUV, noting the minute gradations of the land, which is subtly terraced to allow water to flow downhill, irrigating the fields in slow succession.
“We’re going uphill, believe it or not,” Stoesser said.
After more than a half-century of farming, he knows what each field needs and when, harvest after harvest.
“Just like taking care of your backyard,” he said.
If Stoesser’s land hasn’t changed, the economic conditions have.
Rice prices have declined for several years, averaging about 10 cents a pound last year, because of competition from huge rice producers such as Vietnam and Thailand as well as increases in agricultural productivity that have boosted supplies.
Over the past few decades, hundreds of rice farmers in Southeast Texas have given up the crop entirely.
But in mid-July, the Texas rice industry — which is worth about $100 million per year to farmers — was granted a reprieve: a deal to allow U.S. rice sales to China.
The industry estimates that China soon could buy 250,000 tons of U.S. rice per year, out of the 9 million tons it produces, which could boost prices significantly.
Although trade between the two countries had been liberalized when China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001, trade in rice remained off the table.
An agreement to allow exports has been in the making for nearly a decade, with talks launched by George W. Bush, continued under Barack Obama and ultimately concluded under Donald Trump.
The deal sets complex safety standards to prevent pests from entering China with rice imported from America, which, if met, opens a market of more than 1 billion rice eaters to U.S. farmers.
The agreement comes at a critical time as the Trump administration prepares to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, potentially threatening agricultural exports to the rice industry’s biggest customer, Mexico.
For the Stoesser farm, selling to China could mean a slightly bigger financial cushion in a business that can see a year’s income decimated by floods or drought or both.
“If we could get to 16 cents instead of 10 cents a pound, it would take a lot of risk out,” Stoesser said. “Trade is the answer to our problems.”
Family business
The past few decades have left the Stoessers feeling isolated.
The flat, humid counties east of Houston used to be full of rice fields — in 1968, 70 square miles of Liberty County were planted with the crop. Growing up in the area, Ray’s son, Neal, always saw the rice business as his future, and he didn’t finish college.
“I went to the University of Rice Farming, I guess,” he said.
The Stoessers have owned land since Neal’s great-grandfather came to the area from Germany in the late 1800s, and Neal has been driving a combine since he was old enough to climb up into the cab, as his 8- and 4-year-old sons do now.
Over that time, the Stoesser farm has grown to cover several thousand acres as the family bought out surrounding farms.
The rest of Texas’ rice industry, however, has shrunk to 187,000 acres from more than 600,000 in the 1950s. In Liberty County, the 70 square miles of rice fields now is 8.
“I hate to say it, but when I was in high school, there were 70 farmers,” Neal said.
Now there are just three in Liberty County — Neal, his father and his brother, Grant.
Several reasons are behind the decline, including the encroachment of suburban housing developments, which raised land prices to the point where it made more sense to sell than keep farming. Today, Texas accounts for about 6 percent of U.S. rice production, far behind the leader, Arkansas, which accounts for about half.
But Texas rice farmers have a few things working in their favor. New seed varieties allowed them to nearly double the yield per acre, with the assistance of experts from Texas A&M’s field offices.
Also, federal crop subsidy programs have kept them afloat through thin years, paying out $1.8 billion to Texas rice farmers between 1995 and 2014, according to a database maintained by the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization that opposes farm subsidies.
Meanwhile, the rice industry has tried to expand its market by boosting Americans’ rice consumption. Stoesser runs the Texas Rice Council, which collects payments from the state’s rice farmers for joint marketing efforts, such as one that produced a bumper sticker on his Yukon SUV. “Eat Rice,” it reads. “Potatoes make your butt big.”
In one regard, they’ve made progress. Americans now eat 26 pounds of rice per year on average, which is nearly triple their consumption in the 1970s. But that increase is driven largely by immigrant communities that favor jasmine and basmati varieties, mostly imported from Thailand, India and Pakistan, over American medium and long grain rice.
‘Ice to Eskimos’
Back in 2005, Greg Yielding took a trip to China.
Nothing terribly official for the executive director of the Arkansas Rice Growers Association — just a few visits with people like the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s representative in China and the office of COFCO, China’s state-owned food importer.
At that point, the prospect of selling rice to China seemed like a hopeless quest — “The ultimate example of selling ice to the Eskimos,” as one California official put it.
But Yielding heard differently. Chinese supermarket executives, he said, thought they could market American rice as a high-end, safer alternative to their own crops, which had suffered waves of contamination.
On successive visits, funded by grants from the USDA, Yielding engaged a market research company to have young women hand out samples of U.S. rice at luxury supermarkets in big cities.
“I couldn’t tell you that there was something better about it, but they tried it, they liked the taste of it, they liked the cooking quality,” said Yielding, who soon started working for the U.S. Rice Producers Association. “I just kept making contacts and finding out that the Chinese wanted to buy U.S. rice.”
And at the time, China was about to undergo a much larger shift.
For decades, in the name of national security, China had maintained a goal of producing 95 percent of its grain domestically. About 2012, rocked by food safety scandals, China backed off that target, allowing it to slip to 85 percent. The U.S. went from exporting about $100 million in grain and feed in 2007 to a peak of $4.9 billion in 2015.
“That 10 percent is big for agricultural exporters,” said Luis Ribera, an agricultural trade expert at Texas A&M.
Rice, however, still was barred entirely, since the two countries hadn’t agreed on a common food safety protocol. So, a few years ago, the USDA started facilitating trips by Chinese scientists to visit U.S. farms and rice mills. Ray Stoesser helped shepherd them around in Arkansas.
“The Chinese were optimistic about what they saw,” he said, extolling the quality and sanitation of U.S. facilities.
The Rice Producers Association, of which Stoesser is a member, wasn’t the only group working for market access — the U.S.A. Rice Federation, a coalition of farmers and millers, was sponsoring exchanges as well.
Rice mills remove the tough husk from rice grains to make it edible. The millers were particularly keen on the Chinese market, since all the rice going there would be milled in the U.S., in contrast to the largely unmilled “rough” rice that goes to Mexico and South America.
Two years ago, USA Rice’s executive director, Betsy Ward, said she thought U.S. negotiators had a deal with China. But they never could get it signed by the Chinese, which Ward thinks may have had to do with the Obama administration having other trade priorities — such as the massive Trans Pacific Partnership, which pointedly didn’t include China.
After Trump’s agriculture secretary, Sonny Perdue, took office, Ward said her group met with him four times about getting the rice agreement done. Only a few weeks after Perdue visited China to celebrate a deal allowing exports of beef, the rice deal finally was signed.
Source: San Antonio Express News. Date: 2017-08-07