From Newsmax:
China has made one of its biggest-ever purchases of corn on overseas markets, buying 900,000 metric tons of American corn and showing that growing Chinese demand will play an ever-larger role in global grain prices.
The country was a net exporter of corn until 2009... But is now struggling to keep up with growing demand for the grain – which is mainly used in China as animal feed – as incomes increase and people eat more meat.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Thursday that China had made the purchase, which comes despite an expected record grain harvest in China this year. China's corn consumption probably totaled 176 million tons in the crop year that started Oct. 1, 2010, according to the department .
The purchase was necessary to help fill China's dwindling corn reserves, said Hanver Li, chairman of the market research firm Shanghai JC Intelligence Co. Ltd., on Friday.
"China's harvest is up, but that will just about satisfy domestic demand... And meanwhile, reserves are running low, so China needs to import corn to build up their stocks," he said.
"In the long run, it should have a pretty big impact on...
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