my country's oilseeds and oils are highly dependent on foreign countries. What is the impact of palm oil and soybean oil prices hitting new highs?
How should my country's oil industry face challenges?
my country's edible oil is highly dependent on foreign countries. Under the current turbulent international situation, the prices of soybean oil and palm oil are gradually rising, which has an impact on the import of oilseeds and oils.
According to the data terminal of Brick, the spot price of domestic palm oil reached 13,620 yuan / ton on the 11th, and the spot price of first-class soybean oil reached 11,580 yuan / ton, both standing at high levels.
Since the beginning of 2020, the prices of palm oil and soybean oil have increased by 3.1 times and 2.3 times respectively.
Zhao Wanping, deputy to the National People's Congress and vice president of the Anhui Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told Yicai that China's oil industry is currently facing two major challenges. First, the international competitiveness is not strong and the import volume is large; There are differences abroad.
In view of this, he suggested that the application of technology should be continued to improve varieties, strengthen technology regulation and improve mechanization, and coordinate and improve supporting policies and measures.
Behind the high foreign dependence of oilseeds and oils
In China, the sources of edible oils and fats include both animals and plants, of which vegetable oils account for the vast majority and are easy to count.
Among these vegetable oils, soybean oil, palm oil, rapeseed oil and peanut oil are the main ones, accounting for nearly 90%.
In 2021, China's vegetable oil demand will be around 36.5 million tons.
Among them, 17.5 million tons of soybean oil, 6.7 million tons of palm oil, 4.9 million tons of rapeseed oil, 2.8 million tons of cottonseed oil, 2.4 million tons of peanut oil, and 2.2 million tons of other vegetable oils.
However, the output of oils and fats squeezed by domestic oil crops is only 22 million tons, which means that China's self-sufficiency rate of vegetable oils and fats is only 60%.
In terms of varieties, soybean oil is squeezed from soybeans, and China relies heavily on imported soybeans.
Taking 2021 as an example, domestic soybeans will be 16.4 million tons, imported soybeans will be 96.518 million tons, and the import dependence will be 85.5%.
Palm oil is a tropical woody vegetable oil that is pressed from the palm fruit of the oil palm tree.
Southeast Asia and Africa are the main producing areas of palm oil, accounting for about 88% of the world's total palm oil production, and 100% of the palm oil consumed by Chinese people depends on imports.
Rapeseed oil is pressed from rapeseed, and peanut oil is pressed from peanuts. Due to the insufficient supply and demand of these two oil crops, the import dependence is about 50%.
The reason why China is so dependent on foreign oil crops, Wang Chen, a researcher at Brick Consulting, told Yicai.com that China's population accounts for about 18% of the world's population, but the area of arable land only accounts for about 7%, and the endowment of agricultural resources is insufficient. Good, the per capita agricultural resources are relatively scarce.
However, domestically, the per capita level of grain, meat and eggs, sugar cotton, fruit and vegetables is slightly higher than the global average, and even some varieties are in the forefront of the world.
In such a context, it is difficult for the supply of domestic agricultural products to be comprehensive.
Wang Chen believes that the state focuses on ensuring the self-sufficiency rate of the two major rations of wheat and rice, and can achieve 100% supply.
In addition, it is necessary to ensure the supply of fruits, vegetables, etc., so it is difficult to grow enough oil crops on the limited land.
China imports about 100 million tons of soybeans every year. In terms of domestic soybean yield, it needs to add 770 million mu of arable land to meet the domestic demand for soybean oil. If the import of rapeseed oil and sunflower oil is considered, the required arable land exceeds 1 billion mu.
Internationally, palm oil, soybean oil and rapeseed oil are called "the world's three major vegetable oils".
Among them, palm oil is currently the largest vegetable oil variety in the world in terms of production, consumption and international trade.
Since China's tropical area is not large and there is no area suitable for planting oil palm trees, all palm oil is dependent on imports.
Soybeans, rapeseeds, and sunflower seeds are all suitable for large-scale mechanized cultivation. The American continent and Eastern Europe have vast plains, and the cost of planting these oil crops is significantly lower than that in China.
Zhao Wanping said that due to factors such as population growth, improvement of living conditions, and increased demand, since China joined the WTO in 2001, the import of oilseeds has increased rapidly, especially soybean, palm oil and rapeseed imports have increased the most.
In recent years, the import volume of niche oils such as sesame and flax has also continued to rise.
China used to be a traditional big exporter of peanuts, but with the changes in market demand, domestic prices and quality were not competitive enough, and the export volume of peanuts continued to decline, but the import volume increased rapidly.
He said that due to the continuous decline in the self-sufficiency rate of oil plants and the increasing dependence on foreign countries, the domestic oil industry is squeezed by the cost floor and the price ceiling, and the profit margin is getting smaller and smaller.
At the same time, China's oil industry still has a low level of mechanized production, lack of varieties suitable for mechanized production, long processing technology process, large loss, single processed products, serious homogeneity, low added value of products, unit yield, There is still a certain gap between the oil content and the excellent varieties in other countries in the world, and the level of large-scale and standardized production is low.
Three measures to ease the impact of imports
At present, affected by the sharp rise in crude oil prices and the expected reduction in soybean production in South America, the prices of US soybean oil and Malaysian palm oil futures have hit record highs.
In this regard, Wang Chen explained that since the outbreak of the global new crown epidemic, international inflation has been serious, superimposed on the unfavorable global agricultural climate factors from 2021 to the present, and oil prices have soared.
After the Spring Festival this year, the international situation was turbulent, the export of sunflower oil with lower prices in the Black Sea region was blocked, and the international crude oil price rose, which once again drove the global oil prices to soar.
At this time, the ratio of palm oil to soybean oil also changed, resulting in a drop in demand for palm oil, which was partly replaced by soybean oil and cottonseed oil.
The price of palm oil has always been lower than that of soybean oil, and it is mainly used as oil for food frying, shortening and catering, or as a low-cost oil to be added to blended oils in small and medium packages.
However, the current price of palm oil has been significantly higher than soybean oil and is no longer a low-priced oil, which has led to a halving of demand for palm oil except for food processing for fats, shortening and chemical demand.
Due to the high dependence of oil crops on foreign countries, this means that China does not have the pricing power of edible oils and fats, and the import of oil crops and oils is easily affected by international price fluctuations.
The 2021 Central Rural Work Conference emphasized "vigorously expanding soybean and oilseed production."
The subsequent meeting of the directors of the National Agriculture and Rural Department proposed that it is necessary to overcome difficulties in expanding soybean oil crops.
Make the expansion of soybean oil production a major political task that must be completed in 2022.
Wang Chen believes that the current domestic dependence on imports of oils and fats is relatively high, and it is difficult to significantly increase the self-sufficiency rate.
However, efforts should still be made in three aspects: expanding oil crops, reducing oil waste, and expanding import sources.
Specifically, the first is to expand the planting of peanuts and sunflower seeds.
Peanut has the characteristics of high oil content and high protein content, coupled with high peanut yield, it is suitable for planting in North China, southern Northeast and South China, and peanut seedlings can be used as oily herbivorous feed after harvest.
Sunflower seeds have extremely high oil yield, high yield per unit, and can be mechanized in large areas in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and the western part of Northeast China.
Peanuts and sunflower seeds can be used as important varieties to improve the self-sufficiency rate of oil.
At the same time, taking advantage of the difference in crop growth and considering appropriate interplanting of legume crops such as peanuts and soybeans can not only increase oil yield, but also reduce the use of nitrogen fertilizer and planting costs by rhizobia of legume crops.
Second, the waste of domestic oil consumption is relatively obvious, and waste should be reduced. After centralized treatment of catering oil and fat, it is applied to the feed and chemical industries, thereby reducing the demand for oil and fat.
The third is to expand the import sources of oilseeds and oils while increasing the self-sufficiency rate.
At present, the import of oilseeds and oils is excessively concentrated.
Imported soybeans are concentrated in the Americas, and palm oil is concentrated in Southeast Asia.
Climate or other factors reduce production or hinder imports in the source of imports, which can easily trigger sharp increases in domestic prices.
In addition, when the international edible vegetable oil price is low, the oil reserve can be appropriately increased to alleviate the impact of price fluctuations.
Zhao Wanping suggested that more than 32,000 oilseed germplasm resources should be collected and preserved in China to form the background gene bank of oilseed germplasm resources. At the same time, further efforts should be made to improve varieties, systematically organize, identify traits, and analyze genes. Breed high-quality, high-yield, high-oil, disease-resistant varieties; at the same time, popularize mechanical methods such as sowing and harvesting, effectively integrate agricultural machinery and agricultural technology, and carry out joint operations in rotary tillage, stubble removal, trenching, and fertilization to break through intelligent operations. key technology.
Improve the overall process technology of oil processing in large oil and fat enterprises, and develop, promote and apply processing equipment that has reached the international advanced level;
In addition, it is necessary to strengthen the scientific layout, achieve overall planning, focus on supporting the advantageous regions and varieties of oilseeds, effectively utilize modern breeding technology, improve yield, quality, and resistance, ensure the integration of high-yield and efficient mechanized production technology, significantly reduce production costs, and improve Market Competitiveness.