Us Begins Sale Of Subsidised Wheat To China
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday February 13, 1987
WASHINGTON, Thursday: The United States has begun the sale of subsidised wheat to China, one of Australia's key export markets.
US grain traders have sold 150,000 metric tons of wheat to China, the US Agriculture Department announced yesterday.
The department estimates that China's imports of wheat will reach seven million metric tons this year, an increase of 500,000 metric tons from its estimate released earlier in the month.
Officials did not reveal the prices for the US wheat - 120,000 tons of soft red winter wheat and 30,000 tons of western white wheat - but the value of subsidised US grain has averaged $US34.41 ($A52) a metric ton.
The department also tripled its estimate of China's corn imports and predicted sales of 2.3 million tons of corn and other feed grains to China this year.
In Brussels, The Australian Minister for Primary Industries, Mr Kerin, has urged the European Community to reduce subsidies to agriculture in concert with the United States to stop surplus world production.
At the end of a two-day visit to the headquarters of the EC here, Mr Kerin said Australia believed that such recent EC measures as limiting public aid to the beef sector and disposing of stocks of butter could not have a full effect on the world market unless they were backed by concerted action by leading Western world producers. These producers were mainly the EC and the United States.
The Minister for Trade, Mr Dawkins, will try to persuade major wheat exporting countries next week to agree to Australia's proposal for a freeze on agricultural subsidies. It will be the first time the freeze idea, put by Mr Hawke to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month, has been applied to a particular agricultural commodity.
© 1987 Sydney Morning Herald