Bryan Lohmar
LONG BEACH, Calif. — “There are very few known ‘knowns’ about China,” Bryan Lohmar, the U.S. Grains Council director in China told the membership of the organization on Monday.

U.S. government projections of China’s needs and future actions have sometimes been wrong, he said. In the 1990s, USDA predicted China would become a big corn importer, but then it became a big producer and exporter. Now it is importing again.

China produces a lot of corn in its northeast region, but its post-harvest facilities are poor and there are concerns about quality, especially when there is a cold wet winter and mold develops.

Industrial crops such as hides, skins and cotton are “fairly liberalized,” Lohmar said, because they are used in production for exports. The Chinese also import a lot of oilseeds due to their World Trade Organization accession agreement.

Chinese leaders who are strongly nationalistic and consider importing corn to be a violation of the country’s food self-sufficiency goals are also against genetic modification, he said.

Meat demand is growing, but China still has a large rural area with low income consumers, he noted.

The projection is that demand for corn will continue to go up, and so will the deficit between demand and supply.

“It is really hard to see how China is going to maintain self-sufficiency,” Lohmar said.

• U.S. Grains Council