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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Asia struggles to boost food output as inflation bites by Naveen Thukral

Asia struggles to boost food output as inflation bites by Naveen Thukral

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published Published on Dec 1, 2010   modified Modified on Dec 1, 2010

Asian governments, battling soaring food inflation, are pumping ever more resources into agriculture but will struggle to offset rapidly expanding demand in top consumers China and India.

China, stung by consumer prices running at a 25-month peak, has been selling state stockpiles. It has also ordered banks to urgently offer support to farmers, an example of the sort of firepower these governments can deploy.

With China and India also in many cases major producers of farm products, any change in government policy, such as raising support existing prices, can ripple through international markets.

Analysts said China will focus on producing more corn next year and India is likely to divert attention towards oilseeds, which could provide a breather for prices around multi-year or all-time highs, but crimp supplies of alternative crops.

But there are limits to what governments can achieve -- rapid urbanisation is reducing available arable land and yields have stagnated.

"The high prices will trigger a supply response for sure," said Emmanuel Jayet, director of agriculture commodity research at Societe Generale in London.

"This response will primarily come from the U.S., Latin America and Europe. Of course higher prices are incentives for farmers in China and India too, but the potential is not huge."

Even countries such as Australia, which have smaller domestic demand, are already pushing the boundaries of output, after having expanded into marginal growing areas using new technologies in recent years.

Benchmark Chicago corn futures have risen 30 percent this year to a 26-month peak and ICE cotton jumped 62 percent to historic highs this month, propelled by strong demand led by China and tightening world supplies.

Chinese futures for cotton and corn also hit record high levels this month before the central bank moved to tighten credit by raising banks' reserve ratio twice.

RISING DEMAND, SUPPLY DEFICIT

China, the world's biggest cotton and soybean importer, is expected to purchase between 2 and 5 million tonnes of corn in 2011, after making big international purchases this year for the first time in a decade. The country is forecast to have a cotton supply deficit of 3.5 million tonnes in 2010/11.

"We are expecting China and India to respond to high prices," said Luke Mathews, a commodity strategist at Commonwealth Bank in Sydney. "(But) certainly I expect China to maintain its dominance over the world market for soybeans and also expect them to dominate the world cotton market."

Neighbouring India -- which is sitting on stockpiles of around 49 million tonnes of wheat and rice, against a target of 16.2 million tonnes -- could have added to global supplies by easing curbs on grain exports, but the government is concerned about food inflation that has risen to 10.15 percent this year.

In China, food contributes about one-third to consumer price inflation, while 14 percent of the wholesale price inflation index in India is made up of food.

"Oilseed and cane prices are high and it is likely that the bull run will continue even in the next year," said Veeresh Hiremath, chief analyst with Hyderabad-based brokerage Karvy Comtrade. "The uptrend in prices may encourage domestic farmers to increase area under these two crops in 2011."

The Indian government has been making efforts to boost domestic oilseed output in the past few years with little success as imports of duty-free vegetable oils have left farmers with little incentive to plant crops.

LIMITS TO GROWTH

Pressure on farm land due to rapid urbanisation in China and India means higher output is possible only by boosting yields or switching from other crops.

"Farmland and water resources are constraints, while domestic demand for all kinds of crops is increasing," said one analyst with a government grain think-tank in Beijing.

"For grains, after seven years of bumper harvests, it is becoming more difficult to increase production further. The process to increase yields is too slow, you can't raise the yield dramatically in two-to-three years."

The area under corn cultivation in China has stagnated at around 30 to 32 million hectares in the past few years and India's oilseed planted area has been hovering around 17.2 to 17.3 million hectares.

In Australia, output of wheat, cotton and sugar is unlikely to climb significantly in the coming years after substantial increases in the last few years.

Analysts say Australia's area planted with wheat in 2011/12 could rise to around 13.6 million hectares from 13 million in 2010/11 as land not planted in Western Australia this year because of dry conditions could be brought back into production.

"Farmers will respond to prices to some degree," said Gavin Warburton, an analyst at Australian Crop Forecasters, one of Australia's leading crop forecasters.

"But there are limits on the area that can be planted because of agronomic constraints such as the nutrients in the soil and the need to rotate crops or fallow ground to prevent diseases."

(Reporting by Naveen Thukral; Additional reporting by Ratnajyoti Dutta in New Delhi, Bruce; Hextall in Sydney and Niu Shuping in Beijing; Editing by Michael Urquhart)


Reuters, 1 December, 2010, http://in.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-53256420101201?type=economicNews


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