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
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
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
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
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The Sacrificial Pig，来自南澳巴罗莎山谷的芳香，为养猪人量身打造的
来自南澳巴罗莎山谷的芳香
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A winning formula? China invests in Canadian dairy to help feed its baby boom
Donald Trump called Canada’s supply-managed dairy sector a “disgrace.”
Indeed, Canada’s strict system of production quotas, import restrictions and price and quality controls is a perennial target for free traders.
But guess who likes it? The biggest market Canada is wooing right now: China.
Supply management is a big reason why a Chinese corporation is investing an unprecedented $225 million in eastern Ontario. Feihe International, Inc. wants cows. Goats, too. Lots of them.
That’s because as China’s one-child policy phases out, it’s going to need a lot of baby formula.
“It’s one of the largest economic development projects in our city’s history,” said Kingston, Ont., mayor Bryan Paterson, calling Canada’s largest-ever foreign investment in agri-food “off the charts.”
“It might be out of the ordinary, but I think that’s what was most exciting.”
Feihe International Inc.’s future baby formula plant is now under construction on a 40-acre site in Kingston, Ont.’s Cataraqui Estates Business Park. (Feihe International Inc.)
The first concrete trucks are already pouring at the future site of a 28,000-square-metre infant formula plant. When the state-of-the-art facility opens in 2019, it will employ over 200 people in manufacturing and research jobs. Over a thousand more could come from its construction and eventual supply chains.
A small team of Chinese managers have moved to Kingston. Everyone else will be local.
Last winter, Feihe brought the mayor and a delegation from Kingston over to northeastern China for a tour of its factories and farms. Paterson was struck by how geographically similar it was to eastern Ontario.
With one big difference: scale.
A “typical rural village” they visited was three times the size of Kingston, he said.
“When you have millions and millions of babies, you need to be able to manufacture a lot of infant baby formula.”
Bringing formula production back
Canada hasn’t made its own baby formula for years. The Canadian Dairy Commission tried for a couple of years to find a domestic processor. Demand for butter was up, and baby formula uses the non-butterfat part of milk. But no Canadian processors were interested in expanding into formula.
The CDC broadened its search internationally, to European and Asian companies.
In Feihe, the CDC found its fit: a manufacturer with over 50 years of experience and keen to expand to North America.
Promotional materials describe Feihe as the top domestic manufacturer of cow’s milk formula in China in 2016, with brands in over 100,000 retail outlets across that country — mostly in medium-sized cities where urbanization is expanding and the number of middle-class consumers is rising fast.
Business proposals obtained by CBC News under the Access to Information Act anticipate strong growth for China’s formula market. Only one in four Chinese mothers breastfeed exclusively for their baby’s first six months. The gradual phase-out of China’s one-child policy is poised to spark a baby boom.
Delegations from Kingston, including this group seen last winter at Feihe International’s Beijing head office, have been visiting China to discuss not only the new baby formula plant but future manufacturing and research projects. (Office of Mayor Bryan Paterson)
Roughly 85 per cent of the powdered formula made in Kingston could be shipped back to China.
But that’s an awfully long boat ride. Why come all the way to Canada for milk?
Quality concerns
It’s all about reputation.
In 2008, Chinese dairy products such as baby formula were discovered tainted with melamine. Hundreds of thousands became sick, and at least six children died. Since then, many Chinese distrust domestic milk and prefer foreign brands.
The world’s top dairy producers have eyed China for years. But New Zealand’s dominant dairy cooperative was a minority shareholder in Sanlu, the company at the heart of the melamine scandal.
Sagging global prices for milk are now forcing farms around the world out of business. Not so in Canada.
“I know that might sound silly for some people, but this is a good side of supply management,” said Canadian Dairy Commission spokesperson Chantal Paul. “[The Chinese] know that they’re going to have their supply.”
Canada enjoys a lot of goodwill right now, and Justing Trudeau has a relatively high profile in China.
“New Zealand doesn’t have [Norman] Bethune,” quipped Carey Bidtnes from the Kingston Economic Development Corporation, a reference to the Canadian doctor who became famous in China in the late ’30s.
Not enough goats
Feihe plans two production lines in Kingston, starting in 2019: one mixing and drying formula from cow’s milk, a second with goat’s milk.
Canada’s marketing boards make supplying the cow’s milk straightforward — demand in Eastern Canada’s pool is expected to rise by about one per cent.
Supplying enough goat’s milk is another story. But there’s no supply management for goats. You could milk every one in Ontario and it still wouldn’t fill Feihe’s order.
Ontario’s goat industry produces about 52 million litres annually. But that milk is already spoken for.
If Feihe wants 75 million litres, the industry must double or triple its size. In the short term, goat milk may be trucked in from Quebec or the U.S. Over time, Feihe wants to build up a local industry.
‘Lots would love to expand’
It all spells opportunity for anyone frustrated by how expensive it is to get into the cattle business — milk goats instead.
That’s Andy Jackson’s strategy.
The young farmer from Winchester, Ont., said Ontario’s goat industry today is where the cattle business was three or four decades ago. It needs to improve breeding and nutrition to boost production.
Surveying a converted barn full of Saanen and Nubian goats — milking breeds popular in Europe — Jackson described how he’s reducing kid mortality and improving the quality of his milk.
Some Chinese investment has flopped, he knows. But his research suggests Feihe isn’t a fly-by-night company.
“Hey, at the end of the day, whoever buys the product,” he said.
He and his partner used to joke about wanting to expand from 300 to more than 2,000 goats within five years.
“With this plant coming into effect, that’ll make that joke actually be able to happen,” he said.
Source: CBC News. Date: 2017-08-03
Australian Grains Industry Conference: Be wary of China reforms
Australian grain exporters will need to be wary of new disease and import standards in China as its Government starts to implement a range of revolutionary food safety and agriculture policy reforms.
That’s according to Beijing-based Chinese policy specialist Erlend Ek who spoke at yesterday’s Australian Grains Industry Conference in Melbourne.
Mr Ek, who is a researcher for China Policy, said Chinese media reported last month a shipment of Australian grain was stopped at a Chinese port due to new ergot standards which came into effect at the end of June.
Ergot is caused by a fungus, which besides reducing yields, can also be toxic to animals and humans.
Exports generally have a maximum tolerance level for any shipments which might harbour the ergot fungus.
Mr Ek said the Chinese government’s policy on food production was moving from being self sufficient to a more market-based approach where food quality and environmental concerns have become a priority.
“They are heading toward quality; they want to be seen as a quality producer,” Mr Ek said.
Mr Ek said as a result of the “massive changes” happening with food and agriculture policy in China, hundreds of new standards have been updated.
“They have just revised 6000 national standards for food,” he said.
“The ergot issue comes as a result of this.
“It was released 23 June and on 5 July there were reports that Australian ships were stopped (as a result of this standard).”
However sources have told The Weekly Times they were not aware of a shipment being stopped, and no Australian authorities had been told about an ergot issue with a grain shipment.
But they acknowledged ergot might be an issue in the future.
Other Chinese government changes includes the winding back of subsidies and price supports for local farmers, because price levels were well above global prices, Mr Ek said.
“Support and subsidy system is reaching its ceiling in its (World Trade Organisation) commitment moving away from market distortion and price support,” he said.
This was designed to make farmers more professional, and drive efficiency through the industry.
“China is at a critical stage of a transition from planned economy … toward a modern agriculture industry.
“(The government is saying) let’s make farming professional and more of an industry, and we need to allow other sectors to invest in agriculture.”
This will involve changing the current collective ownership structure of agricultural land, to allow companies and individuals to trade in the collective ownership of land.
This was expected to be confirmed at the Chinese government annual congress later this year.
However he said there was still opportunities for Australian agriculture these included providing grain exports, but quality standards would need to be met.
“Chinese production will hit 600 million tonnes by 2020, but and demand is expected to hit 700 million so they will need imports to make up (the difference,)” Mr Ek said.
“They imported about 105 million tonnes last year, and this year (imports) will hit 120 million tonnes, most of this is soybeans.”
Source: Weekly Times. Date: 2017-08-03
Latent risks as Aussie meat beefs up VN market share
As the demand for imported beef soars, Australian exporters are strengthening their market share in Vietnam, but the situation is fraught with risk, experts say.
A Dau tu (Investment Review) newspaper report says Vietnam has become one of the largest importers of Australian cattle. In 2016, it ranked fourth among 32 countries importing Australian cattle.
The report quoted Tong Xuan Chinh, deputy head of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s Animal Husbandry Department, as saying Vietnam began importing Australian cattle in 2010.
In 2012, the country had just four enterprises importing Australian cows but by 2015, the number had risen to several dozen with a total of 360,000 heads of cattle imported.
Vietnamese businesses are now rushing to import Australian cows and fattening them for sale to slaughterhouses. As a result, inventories of live cattle have swelled significantly.
The inventory of Australian live cattle in 2015 was estimated at 100,000 heads due to oversupply, Chinh told Dau tu, adding that in 2016, imports of cattle from Australia to Vietnam slowed dramatically as feedlot operators moved to lower their inventories.
Before 2010, Australian cattle exporters were not aware of the attractive Vietnamese market. Their main partner at the time was Indonesia, importing nearly 1 million cows from Australia per year, said Luong Minh Tung, Chairman of Yen Phu Beef and Dairy Cattle Breeding JSC in Ninh Binh province.
In 2011, the Australian government issued a ban on cow exports to Indonesia after reports surfaced about inhumane slaughter in some of its abattoirs, Tung said, adding that Australia also lost their strategic partner after the decision.
This was the context that Australian businesses, urgently looking for new partners, found Vietnamese ones, Tung said.
The import of Australian cattle for fattening had been expected to open up a new direction for the fed-cattle industry. However, Tung said, there were always latent risks in imports.
He said there were too many businesses involved in importing Australian cattle, which could lead to supply exceeding demand.
Instead of importing culled beef of large weights, Vietnamese firms preferred to import calves in order to fatten and sell to slaughterhouses, which offers greater profits, Tung said.
However, as Vietnam didn’t have favorable conditions like Australia to breed cows, local importers have to invest a lot in infrastructure to support the influx of Australian cattle, meeting strict importing-related requirements.
According to Hoang Dung, Director of the Hai Phong Investment and Animal Poultry Products Import Export JSC., or Animex Haiphong, Australia requires all slaughterhouses in importing countries to have modern equipment and comply with ECAS (exporter supply chain assurance system) needs.
Businesses whose abattoirs are not in line with ECAS will be banned from purchasing Australian cows.
Such bans could cause huge losses to many Vietnamese slaughterhouses, Dung said, adding that although there were thousands of standard slaughterhouses, only 100 units or so had been approved by the Australian side.
Dung also said many small and medium-scale cattle breeders were facing severe competition from large rivals, like the Hoang Anh Gia Lai Agriculture International JSC (HNG), which has poured trillions of dong into importing Australian cattle to Vietnam for fattening and selling.
“Small businesses usually import several thousand heads of cattle each time and will purchase more only after they have already sold them out. Meanwhile, HNG buys 30,000 to 40,000 heads of cattle each time,” Dung said.
The Da utu report said that at the end of 2016, the Viet Eco Farm JSC. launched a beef store chain called “Healthy beef” in Can Tho city, providing fresh, high quality Australian beef products in large quantities.
In the short term, the company aims to supply beef for the Mekong Delta region, but plans to expand its market in other parts of the country, establishing new distribution channels.
Viet Eco Farm also imports Australian calves to fatten and sells mature cows to abattoirs at thousands of heads per time. The company has invested a lot in breeding facilities and modern slaughter lines, and set up 450ha of pasture land to raise cattle.
Chairman of the Vietnam Livestock Association Nguyen Dang Quang said the amount of imported Australian cattle was increasing rapidly, being sold at reasonable prices, enjoying preferential tariffs and becoming more popular with Vietnamese consumers.
Australian beef is “dominating” the Vietnamese market, Quang said, adding that the more fierce rivalry between Vietnamese firms, the more benefits Australia exporters could enjoy.
Quang said it is imperative the country imposes technical barriers on Australian beef so as to protect the domestic cattle industry.
Source: VNA. Date: 2017-08-03
China’s love of wine drives thirst for knowledge
The speed with which China has become Australia’s largest wine market (by value) is extraordinary.
In calendar 2000 China imported $1.34 million of our wine; by 2016 it reached $520m, three months later in March it had reached $568m, a year-on-year growth of 41 per cent.
France is its leading supplier, with 44 per cent of the market, Australia is second with 25 per cent, and Chile (with a long-standing free trade agreement) third with 16 per cent. Chile’s exports (largely bulk) are declining, and Australia’s growth rate is greater than that of France. Wheels of all sorts are driving the dynamics, some more obvious than others.
The two-way trade of products and services between China and Australia is many times greater than that between China and France. More Chinese arrive in Australia every day than any other country. Chinese returning home become brand ambassadors for wine and its use in everyday living.
Despite all this, the Chinese wine market is immature.
While there is a thirst for knowledge evidenced by the many wine courses now run in China — the multi-level British Wine and Spirit Education Trust course is most important — a large gap still exists between theory and application.
Even for some hoping to become professionals (sommeliers, writers, teachers, retailers), having a glass with meals at home for casual enjoyment can still be a step too far, but not on the basis of gender. On a trip to China in May, Wine Australia arranged for 15 Chinese wine professionals (of varying experience) to each ask me one question. All were in their 20s or 30s, and all but one were female. But the statistics don’t lie. The middle and middle-upper classes who live in one of the hundred cities with a population of more than one million, have the income to fund ever-increasing consumption.
At the other end of the scale is the demand for high quality South Australian shiraz, led by Penfolds Grange and its other luxury brands.
These wines are purely aspirational for upper-middle-class buyers, but well within the reach of the millions of wealthy consumers. Treasury Wine Estates’ share price is a direct reflection of this. Then there is the so far largely ignored white wine sector. The split is 88 per cent red wine, 12 per cent white, utterly at odds with the greater compatibility of white wines with cuisine and all but winter temperatures.
Source: The Australian Business Review.
