China Has a Soybean Acreage Gap of 124 Million Acres
Recent examination has revealed a significant gap between China’s domestic consumption and crop production.
Assessing data for 13 crops since 1990, China’s total harvested acreage has remained rather stable at 290 million acres - differing from global acreage, which showed expansion after 2000.
For the current 2018/19 season, China is expected to harvest 288.8 million acres, or 12.5 percent of the world’s total. Between the 1999/2000 season and the 2008/09 season, China’s domestic consumption was generally even with production. However, since the 2008/09 season, consumption has rapidly outpaced harvested acres.
In 2009/2010 domestic consumption in China was the equivalent of 300 million harvested acres for the first time. Today consumption is equivalent to 413 million harvested acres. Data shows that this gap is almost entirely from soybeans. As the acreage for most crops that were examined remained about equal to their level of consumption, soybeans have an average gap of 120 million acres.
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