Beijing [China], February 10: China has been working to cut the use of soybean meal in animal feed - the primary end-use of imported soybeans - as part of its strategy to reduce external dependence, but the latest industry data suggests these efforts have made limited headway.
Last year, the proportion of soybean meal in domestically produced feed stood at 13.4 per cent, unchanged from the previous year, according to data released by the China Feed Industry Association (CFIA) last week.
This indicates that the goal set by agricultural authorities three years ago - reducing soybean meal usage in feed from 14.5 per cent in 2022 to below 13 per cent by 2025 - remains unmet, adding pressure to a longer-term target of lowering the ratio to 10 per cent by 2030.Beijing views soybeans as the biggest vulnerability in its agricultural sector, with imports consistently accounting for over 80 per cent of total demand. These imports, primarily from Brazil and the United States, are mostly used to produce soybean meal for feed, supporting the country's massive and growing demand for meat.
Despite efforts to find other protein sources to replace soybean meal since 2023, newly developed substitutions - mainly biosynthetic amino acids - have yet to be utilised at large scale, thereby making limited impact on China's growing demand for soybeans, Wang Wenshen, an analyst from bulk commodity consulting service provider Sublime China Information, said.
"It's meaningful for cutting import reliance and safeguarding national food security, but in practice, the new technologies are still too costly," he said.
Contributing around 60 per cent to global soybean trade, the world's largest buyer has been increasing its imports over the past few years, reaching a record high of 111.83 million tonnes last year, according to Chinese customs data.
In the meantime, the government has already been diversifying feed formulations, encouraging the use of other feed resources for substitution, such as microbial protein feed, table leftover food processed into feed products and high-quality forage.
A plan from the agriculture ministry in April last year, required that by 2030, the proportion of soybean meal in feed consumed by the national livestock industry be reduced to around 10 per cent. Earlier, in 2023, the ministry's three-year action plan for soybean meal reduction and substitution in animal feed proposed an annual decline of more than 0.5 percentage points in the soybean meal proportion, aiming to bring it below 13 per cent by 2025."A handful of big companies are exploring, but none of the companies I surveyed in recent years are actually using substitutions," Wang said, citing the high requirement for equipment, capital and talent that are beyond the reach of medium and small businesses.
He said China's demand for soybeans would continue increasing at an estimated rate of 2 to 5 per cent each year as domestic demand for protein increases with rising living standards, while there was also an overcapacity in domestic crushing.
Muyuan Foods in Henan province, a leading player in pig farming, believes that its ongoing development and application of low-soybean-meal diets - replacing soybean meal with biosynthesised amino acids - could save 20 million tonnes of soybeans if rolled out across the entire industry, official newspaper Chinese Animal Husbandry and Veterinary News reported in June.
That is close to the amount of soybeans the White House said China had promised to buy annually till 2028 from the US as part of a trade deal reached late last year.
Having invested 143 million yuan (US$20.6 million) in 2024 to advance the application of such diets, Muyuan has reduced the portion of soybean meal in its feed down to 7.3 per cent, the report said.
Other industry players are open to alternatives, as long as they are cost-effective, said a manager at a medium-sized feed enterprise, who declined to be named as he is not authorised to talk to the media.
Source: Qatar Tribune