China

After accumulating the largest cotton surplus in the world — more than double its annual crop — China is steadily disposing of its state-held stockpile. The government is scheduled to begin daily auctions of cotton from its reserves on Monday and the International Cotton Advisory Committee says that a successful season would reduce China's share of the world stockpile to 45 percent by the end of 2017/18 — the first time in six years that China holds less than half of the world surplus.

An upsurge in demand by China, the top customer for U.S. food and agricultural goods, will boost U.S. farm exports to $136 billion this year, the first upturn in sales since 2014, said the Agriculture Department. The quarterly forecast is $2 billion higher than USDA's estimate in November, "largely due to expected increases in livestock, poultry, and dairy exports."

In its closely watched "number one document" on rural policy, the Chinese government omitted any mention of "basic self-sufficiency" in food crops, moving away from expensive subsidies that created the world's largest stockpiles of wheat, corn and rice, said Reuters. The deputy head of the Communist Party's rural policy group told reporters the focus is shifting to balancing supply and demand, "improving quality and competitiveness, and enhancing agricultural sustainable development ability."

The supermarket tomato, bred to resist bruising, could gain improved flavor thanks to Chinese and U.S. scientists who found a genetic roadmap to the genes that determine the taste of tomatoes, says the Wall Street Journal. Tomatoes are not native to China but the Asian nation has been the world’s largest grower of them since 1995.

Origin Agritech Ltd., based in Beijing, has planted biotech corn seeds in a U.S. greenhouse, "an early step toward launching China's first GMO corn products in the United States," said Reuters. The next step, field tests of seed that resist insect and herbicide damage, are scheduled for the summer, according to the company.

After meeting President-elect Donald Trump, Gov. Terry Branstad of Iowa, a leading farm state, was noncommittal about taking a role in the incoming Republican administration. Branstad has been mentioned as potential U.S. ambassador to China and Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in Des Moines on Thursday as part of his "thank you" to voters tour.

Some 5 million hectares of polluted or degraded farmland in China will be retired from production, with a resulting 2.5-percent drop in grain production by 2020, a state planning official told reporters in Beijing. Reuters reported that the official, Wu Xiao, said food security would not be affected by the downturn in production.

Two countries that account for one-third of U.S. farm exports, China and Mexico, are the main reasons for a slightly higher forecast for ag exports this fiscal year, says USDA. Exports are now estimated at $134 billion, up $1 billion from the August estimate, with sales to China and Mexico up $300 million apiece.

At an annual bi-national meeting, senior U.S. trade officials pushed their counterparts from China for "a predictable, transparent and scientific" system for deciding whether to approve the import of genetically engineered crops. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that despite U.S. disappointment that more progress was not made at the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade discussions, the United States expects a Chinese agency to approve eight biotech strains at a meeting in December.

The president of the California Farm Bureau says he's optimistic President-elect Donald Trump will see the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a good deal despite campaigning against it, reports Capital Public Radio in Sacramento. Meanwhile, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is to meet Trump on Thursday, says there will be an Asian pivot to a Chinese-led trade pact that would exclude the United States if TPP founders.

The world stockpile of cotton reached a record 22.2 million tonnes, with nearly 60 percent of it held by China. The government sold 2 million tonnes of surplus cotton from May to September of this year and the International Cotton Advisory Committee estimates China will sell an additional 1.7 million tonnes, partly because it is restricting the domestic supply by holding imports to the minimums required under trade agreements.

Under a Trump administration, China could become the world champion for climate change reform, says Reuters: “China worked closely with the administration of outgoing President Barack Obama to build momentum ahead of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. The partnership of the two biggest greenhouse gas emitters helped get nearly 200 countries to support the pact at the historic meet in France's capital.”

The five-year period from 2011 to 2015 was the hottest on record, according to a report released by the World Meteorological Organization at international climate talks in Marrakech, Morocco. “Even that record is likely to be beaten in 2016,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas, reports the Seattle Times.

China will remain the leading importer of soybeans and cotton, but Mexico will be the world's largest corn importer for the rest of this decade, said the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute. The United States would be the top corn exporter despite increased competition from Brazil, said the University of Missouri think tank in updating its international marketing baseline.