On the food front: American farmers see their sales to China pick up and hope for more

Xi told his guests representing old friends who welcomed him to Iowa nearly 40 years ago, when he was a low-level Communist Party official on an exchange visit, that his meeting with American President Joe Biden had been positive and that Beijing remained determined to strengthen trade with the United States.

For Kimberley, it was personal: When Xi visited Iowa again as vice president in 2012, his family welcomed the Chinese leader to their farm. Xi even drove one of their tractors. Recalling that time, Kimberley described Xi as normal and human.

After years of tension, the United States and China are picking up the pieces of their relationship in areas such as military dialogue and control of drug trafficking. At the same time, a neglected aspect of these otherwise tense relations is also the resumption of agricultural trade between the world's two largest economies.

Ahead of the San Francisco summit, Iowa soybean farmers signed deals worth billions of dollars with a Chinese delegation including officials and agribusiness companies, the first such mass signing since 2017.

Chinese buyers bought more than 3 million tons of soybeans, the largest Chinese daily order in months, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Around the same time, dozens of representatives of the American agricultural industry also visited Beijing and Shanghai. Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China, told the delegation that in the important and complex U.S.-China relationship, agriculture serves as ballast.

In December, China made the largest commitment to purchase U.S. wheat since 2020, more than 700,000 metric tons. Since June, commitments have exceeded 2 million metric tons.

Before U.S.-China relations plunged to their current lows, primarily due to geopolitical competition and a trade war sparked by then-President Donald Trump in 2018, the Agricultural cooperation was seen for decades as a sign of the two countries' interest in working together in trade. , science, technology and person-to-person diplomacy.

Even with bitter geopolitical differences between the two countries over the past year, U.S. agricultural exports to China reached $36 billion in 2023, the Agriculture Department estimates, although it is down from $40.9 billion in 2022.

U.S. agricultural leaders are optimistic that these recent gestures of goodwill have reestablished the sector as a stabilizing force amid strained diplomatic relations. Mutual suspicion and distrust still dominate the discourse on trade relations with China, but these leaders say relationships built through agriculture can help restore trust.

Other analysts cautiously agree, noting that agriculture remains an area of ​​high mutual dependence that can help identify pathways for the two nations to rebuild their ties, provided they do not use food as political tools.

However, given the strong wave of anti-China rhetoric in the United States this presidential election year, analysts do not expect a dramatic improvement in relations.

However, after the Xi-Biden negotiations, openings reappeared.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack met with his Chinese counterpart Tang Renjian last month, the first meeting of leaders from the two departments since 2015. The forum was established as part of the Joint Committee on Agricultural Cooperation in 2003 to coordinate bilateral exchanges and cooperation in the agricultural field.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said that in addition to resolving outstanding market access issues, the two sides also discussed approaches to addressing climate and food security challenges.

China has been one of the United States' most important agricultural trading partners since 2001, when it joined the World Trade Organization. China's share of U.S. agricultural exports increased from 2% in 2000 to more than 17% in 2020, according to a 2021 report from the US Heartland China Association and the Carter Center.

The 2020 increases are a result of the first phase of the trade deal under the Trump administration, which imposed tariffs on Chinese imports worth $300 billion in 2018 to close the bilateral trade deficit. As part of the agreement, China agreed to expand its purchases of certain American products for a period of two years starting January 1, 2020.

Beijing failed to meet the promised $200 billion target, and President Biden's new administration has maintained Trump-era tariffs. But the data shows that agriculture remains an area where Beijing is struggling to meet the terms of the deal.

We are very dependent on this Chinese market. And we would love to see it again, normalized

Beijing more than doubled its soybean purchases in 2020-21 compared to the previous year. About 55% of U.S. soybean exports went to China in 2020.

China also imported a record 707,600 metric tons of U.S. pork and 43,700 metric tons of U.S. beef in 2020, far higher than 2017 levels.

Even as the trade war drags on, China remains one of the largest markets for U.S. feed grains like soybeans and poultry products like chicken feet.

For more than four years, China imposed a flu-related ban on all U.S. poultry, and when it lifted it in 2019, demand skyrocketed. From 2019 to 2022, U.S. poultry exports to China increased by more than 10,000%. Indeed, in 2022, chicken feet accounted for more than 85% of all U.S. poultry exported to China.

However, last year China reimposed bans on the importation of poultry from 40 US states in 2023, again due to flu outbreaks. During Xi's trip to the United States in November, Beijing removed seven U.S. states from its ban list, although 33 remained.

According to Wendong Zhang, a food and agriculture economist at Cornell University, agriculture remains one of the areas where both sides have some sort of agreement, creating potential for more cooperation.

He added that in addition to focusing on China's needs for commodities like soybeans, the United States can also balance and diversify its portfolio by exploring the Chinese market for consumer products such as dairy. , fruits and vegetables, even wine and spirits.

It will also help the United States become more resilient in the event of tariffs and retaliatory tariffs, Zhang said.

Climate-smart agriculture is another possible area of ​​collaboration, both at the government and commercial levels, he said: traditional agriculture is a major contributor to greenhouse gases.

There are many potential opportunities for mutual learning, Zhang said.

Noting that Mexico overtook China last year as the United States' largest trading partner, Zhang said political difficulties in U.S.-China relations were real and unlikely to improve. in a significative way.

China, top source of U.S. imports for 17 years, ends with rise of Mexico

Last month, U.S. Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, introduced a bill to ban Chinese garlic because, he said, it was grown in human sewage, then blanched and harvested in abhorrent conditions , often with slave labor. Chinese state media responded to the accusation as anti-intellectual content, citing scientific research on the benefits of organic fertilizers.

China is the largest supplier of garlic to the United States, according to U.S. data, but imports have been declining since 2018. Total combined imports of fresh and dried garlic that year were 115 million pounds lower to those of 2016, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

Accusing China of selling its garlic at lower prices, the United States has imposed heavy tariffs on Chinese imports since the mid-1990s. These taxes were increased under the Trump administration. Yet between 2019 and 2023, China accounted for more than 80% of U.S. imports of dried garlic and more than 40% of fresh garlic.

Although no action has been taken on Scott's bill, his claims have baffled those who sell their products to China.

It's important to keep politics out of commerce because we both have needs for things we can't produce, said Greg Tyler, executive director of the USA Poultry and Egg Export Council, which seeks to standardize commercial relations.

Can China and ASEAN reap the benefits of greater agricultural collaboration?

We are very dependent on this Chinese market. And we would love to see it again, standardized, so we can bring the product to market, he continued, adding that he hoped China would remove the remaining 33 states from the flu ban.

America's farmers may agree with Tyler, but some in the Midwest are less hesitant to mix business and politics. Zhang and his colleagues surveyed farmers in Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois in 2019, and a majority of them supported Trump even though they didn't like the trade war.

They have a mentality of short-term pain and long-term gain, Zhang said, predicting similar support for Trump this year as he seeks re-election. Zhang noted that leaders of agricultural groups are much more likely to have a positive view of China than small, independent farmers.

According to Zhang, American farmers' main concern about China is its erratic purchasing behavior: They sometimes come to the market and buy a lot, but the next year demand decreases.

Kimberly of the soybean association said sales had slowed after an uptick around President Xi's visit. Buying is happening, but we haven't seen that turn into a major increase like we've seen in the past, he said, adding that he hoped orders would continue and perhaps increase. be throughout the year.