China's corn imports are expected to reach 18 million tons in the 2023/24 cycle, stable from the previous season, the attaché of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in Beijing estimated on Thursday, 6.

Based on information from traders, the attaché stressed that the market's expectation is that Brazil will supply about 5 million tons of corn to China in 2023.

"With the arrival of the first Brazilian corn ship in early January 2023, China ordered a total of 1.8 million tons of Brazilian corn, with about 600,000 tons landed each month in the first quarter of 2023," it said in a report.

In the attaché's assessment, "South American corn has relatively lower prices compared to corn originating in the US."

The entity's expectation is that the area planted with corn in China will lose space to soybeans in the face of government policies and subsidies that emphasize more the production of the oilseed.

Source: RPA news