Structural changes in Chinese meat chains

g) How to adjust the strategy to this fast growth needed together with promoting sustainability, due to an increase in environmental concerns and media coverage, will be a challenge;

h) The need to innovate is also a challenge. Innovations that increase profitability in the production systems via promoting vigorous scientific and technological projects; i) Information management, mostly in how to follow the market information and select the most relevant for decision-making;

j) The need to face global competition and opening of markets;

k) Price volatility of grains may increase the need to develop long term procurement strategies;

l) Gradual improvement of institutional environment in China;

m) The need to improve financial support for new investments;

n) Improvement of collective actions, with better chain organization and coordination;

o) Improvement of management capacity to understand and adapt to the new environment.

As seen, the major challenges raised by these executives are tough but comes in a market that is growing, so it is a question of adjustments. The major dilemmas will be to localize or globalize production, to focus or to diversify towards different food business, to promote growth via public or private companies and the capacity to understand and adapt.

As moderator I received a last question about globalization and the future positioning of Brazil in the grain and meat industries. The question if Chinese investments in Brazil to complement the production needed to face the demand would be welcome, and, finally, if it would require buying land abroad. My opinion, shared more than two years ago with China Daily readers is that this is what I called "the food bridge", meaning food being produced in Brazil and supplied to China, as the major trade in 2020.

There are plenty of investment opportunities for Chinese grain and meat companies in Brazil and I think the most interesting investments would be in origination (industries for processing with networks of contracted suppliers) and not in land, which requires higher volume of resources and faces restrictions.

There is a lot to come in the near future for Chinese pork and poultry companies and this article summarized the discussions of this workshop.

The author is professor of strategic planning and food chains at the School of Economics and Business, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil (www.favaneves.org) and international speaker. Author of 25 books published in 8 countries. The event was sponsored by Novus International.

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