China, the world's top sorghum buyer, imported 560,000 tonnes of the grain in January, more than three times the previous month's volume, as buyers snapped up the feed ingredient amid healthy demand from expanding livestock farms.
The arrivals, the largest since July according to customs data released on Friday, came just ahead of an anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigation launched by Beijing this month into sorghum imports from the United States. Market watchers expect that action to sharply curb purchases of the grain when the latest crop reaches the market this summer.
China also bought 390,000 tonnes of corn, a jump of 147 percent year on year, but down from December's arrivals of 450,000 tonnes. Year-on-year numbers may be skewed by China's Lunar New Year holiday which fell in January in 2017, but in February this year. Demand for overseas corn has increased in recent months following a rally in domestic prices that made imports more attractive. Some corn purchases have, however, been cancelled recently because of concerns over tighter controls on genetically modified strains of the grain.