China's growing industrial uses for corn, including ethanol, could help boost corn consumption by one-quarter by the end of this decade, forcing the country to import 10 million tonnes a year by 2010, a senior official said on Saturday.
By 2010, China will have to meet a 26-percent rise in corn demand, as production of ethanol and corn starch grows and as feed use increases, said Zhu Changguo, chairman of the state-backed Chinese Cereals and Oils Association.
Beijing's planners, loath to give up the Maoist dream of grains self-sufficiency, would seek ways to keep cap imports at 5 percent of China's total grains needs, he said.
"We will need imports to meet the corn deficit. But big policies must consider price stability and grains security," Zhu told a Dalian Commodity Exchange conference in Hangzhou. "When China imported corn in 1995, the international price reached $204 a tonne." US corn in Asia now fetches about $160 a tonne.
Importers are already testing China's willingness to import corn with tiny cargoes in the south. A larger shipment of 50,000 tonnes has yet to be approved.
Corn consumption accounted for 125 million tonnes in 2005, of a total grains consumption of 500 million tonnes, Zhu said.
China's bumper, 484-million-tonne grain harvest last year included 139 million tonnes of corn, a 7-percent rise on year.
But the weather this year looks less favourable, especially in the North-eastern grains belt, Zhu said.
China has suspended corn exports since earlier this year, but corn futures prices have still risen strongly, on buyers' expectations that rising use for ethanol and sweeteners will tighten domestic supply.
Corn consumption will rise at an average 5 percent a year through the end of the decade, to exceed last year's levels by 26 percent, Zhu predicted.
Corn use for ethanol would increase 10 percent a year, for starch by 20 percent and for feed by 2 percent, Zhu said.
China would try to cap the need for imports by adding seed subsidies for corn, reining in new ethanol projects, conducting transgenetic research, improving transport and agricultural financing, and limiting exports, Zhu said.
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