China, the world's largest soybean consumer, will start stockpiling soybeans from this year's harvest in order to boost farmers' income and increase State reserves, the country's grain administrator said Wednesday.
The government will pay 4,600 yuan ($731) per ton to soybean farmers in North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Northeast China's Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces, the State Administration of Grain (SAG) said in a statement on its website seen Wednesday.
The price is 15 percent higher than the 4,000 yuan per ton the SAG offered in 2011.
The stockpiling will end on April 30, 2013, and China Grain Reserves Corp, or Sinograin, is responsible for the stockpiling, the statement said.
"The wholesale price for soybeans is around 4,500 yuan per ton on the market, so the 4,600 yuan per ton offered by the State this year is reasonable," Zhao Gang, a soybean farmer in Heilongjiang's Nancha county, told the Global Times Wednesday.
"But my major concern is not about the price but the limited number of State grain depots that stockpile farmers' soybeans," Zhao said.
Zhao is located in a remote area in the province and has to take a train to get to a State grain depot in a nearby city to hand over his soybeans.
"The fee I need to pay for transporting soybeans to the State grain depots squeezes the profit margin, so I sell the majority of the soybeans I grow on the market," Zhao said.
Soybeans can be used to produce edible oil and grease and as an ingredient of animal feed. Soybean prices also affect inflation.
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