Chinese Crop Figures As Honest As Tiger Woods In A Brothel

Nogger's favourite website Agrimoney.com carries a very interesting article today, suggesting what I've always suspected, that official Chinese crop production figures are about as honest as Tiger Woods in a brothel.

With corn and wheat crops well over a hundred million tonnes each every year, 10% overestimated is a hell of a lot of kit. Multiply that up over a number of years and we are talking telephone numbers.

It's not the first time I've mentioned this subject on here. China will supposedly have over 60 MMT of wheat in 2009/10 ending stocks, according to the USDA. That's more than the US, Russia, the EU-27 and Canada combined, and almost a third of all the wheat stocks on the planet. It's also supposed to have more than a third of global corn ending stocks.

A mate of mine married a Chinese girl once. It was when I worked in Liverpool, his name was Albert and he'd never even had a girlfriend until he was well into his 30's. Whenever the lads in the office would be having a little moan about their WAGs Albert would always pipe up with "well I wouldn't know, I'm a single man myself" or something similar. So he got the nickname Singlebert. Then one day he announced that he'd met this girl in Chinatown and got her pregnant and he was going to have to get married. Whereupon his nickname changed to Singlebert Humpachink.

It's true, honest. Truer than the Chinese crop figures anyway.