China - A Stock Take I'd Love To Do

The deeply dark and mysterious China National Grain and Oils Information Centre, or CNGOIC, have left their Chinese crop production numbers unchanged in their monthly crop report.

Despite the fact that every other official body on the planet say that this season's corn crop was badly hit by drought, the CNGOIC don't see it that way.

As long ago as September Shanghai-based JC Intelligence flagged up that all was not quite right with the Chinese corn crop. Back then JCI said that the crop would drop by around 20 MMT to 146 MMT.

Even the blind leading the blind USDA subsequently trimmed their production estimate to an erring on the side of caution 155 MMT.

The CNGOIC steadfastly insist that this season's corn crop is 163 MMT, a whopping 17 MMT more than JCI forecast. They also maintain that wheat production in 2009 was a smidge under 115 MMT, although many other analysts think that this number is also far too high.

This is the problem with China, we're simply never going to know, transparency is not something they do. The only problem is that's where 40% of the entire world's corn and 32% of global wheat ending stocks are supposed to be!

With Chinese corn consumption running at 159 MMT/per annum and wheat at 102 MMT/pa there isn't exactly a lot of room to just drop the odd 17 MMT here & there.