Montana ranchers look to cash in on China ties
Chinese ambassador, US Senator co-chair talk to expand agricultural cooperation
Craig Morgan, a stock grower in Belgrade, Montana, has been busy every day riding on horseback running his 125year-old family ranch of 80,000 acres.
He has never been to China but said he and others talked recently about making such a trip. “I would love to see it someday,” he said.
The idea arose after Morgan realized that the cattle raised on his ranch may end up on dinner tables in China after the country lifted the ban on US beef import since 2003 when a mad cow disease case was found in the United States.
The lifting of the ban was announced when Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump met at Mar-a-Lago in Florida in early April. In exchange, the US agreed to allow the sale of cooked Chinese poultry.
“It’s a great opportunity,” said Morgan, adding that his feeder cattle raised in Montana’s high elevation and open country are very healthy and of good quality and sought after by ranches in the Midwest.
On Friday morning, the backyard of his Morgan Ranch House witnessed an agricultural forum co-chaired by Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai and US Senator Steven Daines from Montana. Participants also included people representing Montana ranches and farms as well as a dozen mostly commercial and agricultural officials from the Chinese embassy and US-based Chinese companies.
“China is the second largest beef import market in the world. This is a tremendous opportunity for Montana,” said Daines, who travelled to China in April after the announcement of lifting the beef ban.
On that trip, he brought a small box of Montana steaks and a US flag with a cow sign as gifts to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.
Daines said agriculture is Montana’s single largest economic driver. “So by driving access to these markets, by shipping more beef into China, more grain into China, more sugar beets into China, it will increase jobs here in Montana, increase wages. And that’s a big win,” said Daines, who had previously worked many years for Procter & Gamble in Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland.
“We need it so badly now in Montana because the revenue shortfall that is hitting hell out of us. One way we can solve that problem is to ship more products to great markets like China.”
China is the largest market for US agricultural export, with total value of $21.4 billion in 2016 according to US statistics. Soybeans account for two thirds of US exports. US also runs a large surplus in bilateral agricultural trade.
Cui, the Chinese ambassador, just came back to the US after three weeks in China. “People in China are also excited about the opportunity to have their first taste of US beef, especially from Montana,” he said.
He recalled his last and first visit to Montana in 2013 at the invitation of Max Baucus, a long-time US senator from Montana who later became US ambassador to China. During that visit, Cui found the high-quality wheat, barley and many other farm produce in Montana.
“There is a growing demand for such quality food in China. You see we have a huge population base – 1.4 billion people. And maybe a quarter or onefifth of them are becoming middle class people. They have rising income. They have growing demand for real quality beef, grass-fed beef and all natural, good quality barley,” he told the US participants.
According to Wei Zhenglin, the agricultural attache from the Chinese embassy, per capita beef consumption in China is only five kilograms a year, compared to the world’s average of 10 kg. “So you can imagine that if we can reach the global average of beef consumption of 10 kilo per person, that’s about 6.5 million tons of beef we need at least,” he said.
According to official customs data, China imported $2.5 billion worth of beef in 2016, with total shipments at 579,836 tons.