Maize for meat sends Thailand's imports soaring

摘要

Thailand's transformation into a net importer of maize or corn is now complete. New figures suggest it has imported a record-half-million metric tons in the 12 months ending September 1996, principally to feed its fast-growing poultry and pork industries. Meanwhile, its exports of the grain during the same period were only one-tenth as large. This, remember, is for the country which ranked as the third largest maize exporter in the world during the 1980s. During that decade its annual exports of maize averaged over 2.3 million tons. Since then, however, Thai crop production has hardly changed while the demand for feed grains has rocketed.