The Uruguayan Observer reported on August 1 that China's agricultural imports slowed down in the first half of this year, with global exports to China declining.
 
In the first half of this year, China imported 800,000 tons of pork, less than half the amount compared to the amount of same period last year. The main reason is that China has resumed pork production from 2019 to 2021 as the impact of African swine fever on the country's pig industry has been eliminated, leading to a significant drop in imports.
 
China's soybean imports fell 5.5 % year on year, especially imports in June dropped 18 %. Last year, China was expected to import 100m tonnes of soybeans in 2022, but only 42m tonnes were imported in the first half. A total of 8.25 million tons of soybeans were imported in June, 23% less than the amount same period last year. The main reason is that China already has large grain reserves, more than anywhere else in the world, according to the International Food Council (IGC). At the end of June, China accounted for 323.4 million tons of the 607.4 million tons of global inventories.
 
Barley imports fell by 33%, corn by 11% and wheat by 5% over the same period, with declines for wheat and corn starting in the second quarter of this year and rising 5% and 6% respectively in the first quarter.
 
However, China's beef imports have maintained a growing trend. In the first half of this year, China imported 1.15 million tons of beef, up 1.7 % year on year, and the value of imports increased 37%to $7.579 billion from $5.436 billion. Beef imports from Uruguay rose 26%, took the share of Brazil and Argentina. Uruguay is China's third largest source of imported beef, both in volume and value, after Brazil and Argentina and ahead of the United States, Australia and New Zealand. In terms of product unit price, the price of Uruguayan beef still has room for improvement. With US beef $9,936/t, Australian beef $8,670/t, Brazilian beef $6,812/t and Argentine beef $5,603/t, are all higher than the average price of Uruguayan beef $5,228 /t .

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