As Chinese Tastes Change, Farmers Everywhere Rip Up and Replant

livemint.com:

EA YONG, Vietnam—In the verdant highlands of central Vietnam, warehouses the size of airplane hangars dominate small farming towns, bristling with mounds of tropical fruit. The bounty is destined for a colossal market: China. Farmers are felling coffee trees traditionally grown in this cool hilly region to plant spiky durians, pungent fruits that have become wildly popular in China.

They are reaping the windfall to buy new irrigation systems, pay off loans and build shiny marble facades to their homes. “We locals aren’t just doing well, we can even be considered rich," said Pham Van Trung, 54, as he ate a late lunch of pork and rice wine. Trung made $81,000 this year selling durian, and said the region was swarming with Chinese buyers.

China’s appetite for foreign produce has grown in recent decades along with the wealth of its consumers. The amount of food the world’s second most populous nation imports has risen to over $200 billion a year—more than any other country—from about $15 billion two decades ago, according to the World Trade Organization. Avocado farmers in Kenya, shrimp cultivators in India, soy producers in Russia and banana growers in Cambodia are all cashing in.

While economic growth in China has slowed recently and its population is shrinking, demand for nutrient-rich foods such as beef and tropical fruit has remained high. Last year, the Chinese noshed through more than 800,000 metric tons of imported durian and nearly six million metric tons of imported meat—both world-leading totals. It bought 90 million metric tons of soybeans from overseas last year, accounting for roughly 60% of global trade, for use in making tofu and to feed the country’s hundreds of millions of pigs.