The highest price paid was 3,790 yuan ($555.3) per tonne, down nearly 100 yuan compared with last week, when the market was concerned about a drought in the major soy-growing area of northeast China.

“It came as no surprise to the market,” said Xia Tian, a dealer at Zhejiang Yongan Futures. “Buyers won’t have interest in domestic soy reserves unless the U.S. soybean price goes up by $12 per tonne. Crushers hold enough stocks of imported soybeans. They can wait for the new soybean harvest.”

Beijing set the bidding price for domestic soy reserves at 3,750 yuan per tonne, about 4 percent higher than the U.S. crop for next January’s shipment.

“China has to sell the state reserves at the current price, otherwise it will suffer a loss as the government purchased soybeans from farmers at 3,700 yuan per tonne last year,” said Dong Shuangwei, an analyst at Capital Futures.

China has started to sell state soy reserves as part of efforts to reduce stockpiles and free storage ahead of the new domestic harvest, due next month, but only 85,300 tonnes were sold out of the large state reserves in the nine auctions.

China purchased about 7.3 million tonnes of soybeans for state reserves last year.

“The market is closely watching the overseas markets and controversial forecasts of a fall in output, ranging from 4 percent to 20 percent. However, as Beijing has enough reserves at hand and it has a policy of supporting farmers, the domestic soybean market will have a limited decline,” said Dong.

The following table shows the results of soybean auctions starting from July (volumes are in tonnes, prices in yuan per tonne):

Date Volume sold Highest price Volume

September 16 15,500 3,790 500,000

September 9 29,300 3,880 500,000

September 2 10,600 3,820 500,000

August 26 9,600 3,750 500,000

August 19 400 3,750 500,000

August 12 15,000 3,800 500,000

August 5 4,900 3,790 500,000

July 29 no bidders 500,000

July 23 no bidders 500,000

Total 85,300

Source: www.grainmarket.com.cn.

Longsheng Terrace

I think everyone who look at Longsheng Terrace Fields will be surprised by the great beautiful and spectacular scenery. Its agriculture value has nearly replaced by its visual value.

Known as the most amazing terrace in China, the Longsheng Rice Terrace is 2 hours ride from Guilin in Guangxi. Making the terraces began in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), and the projects lasted till the early Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) when construction was completed. Where there is soil, there is a terrace’, it now covers an area of 66 square kilometers.

Kind Hint
Remember that come to this spot before July as there is water in the fields and you can have your photo taken with water reflection, otherwise, other tiem only give you an empty terrace fields and you will find no water reflection in the fields and your photo looks as as good as those taken with water reflection.

And there are 2 famous Terrace Feilds, the near one is Ping’an Terrace Fields. and the largest one is farther one, called Longji (Dragon Back) Terrace Fieds.

Besides the Guilin, Yangshuo, I very recommend you visit the Longsheng Together during your tour.

Michel Jarraud, director-general of the World Meteorological Organisation, said that water and temperature projections have become more valuable than the historical weather data that long governed strategy in agriculture, hydro-electric power, solar technology and other fields.

“The past is no longer a good indicator of the future,” the WMO chief told a press briefing, describing climate modelling and prediction as key to fisheries, forestry, transport and tourism, as well as efforts to fight diseases such as malaria.

People looking to build energy infrastructure are especially hungry for specific environmental information that can affect the long-term profitability of their projects, he argued.

“If in 100 years there is not going to be water going into the dam, it’s not a brilliant investment,” Jarraud said.

In the farming sector, the Frenchman suggested that guidance passed down through generations about how to prepare and manage crops was becoming less relevant because of changing patterns of heat, humidity and water access around the world.

“This traditional knowledge is no longer adapted. It’s exactly because your grandfather did this that you shouldn’t do it, because the context has changed,” he said.

“This is something completely new — to make decisions not on facts or statistics about the past, but on the probabilities for the future,” he said.

About 1,500 policy-makers, researchers andcorporate leaders will meet next week in Geneva to seek to improve the way climate information is collected and shared, among governments and also with the private sector.

That August 31 to September 4 meeting, which will take the pulse of countries who will seek in December to clinch a new global climate pact, is due to includetop UN officials including Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and 80 ministers and 20 heads of state or government, mainly from the developing world.

At the end of 2006, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, 70.8 percent of the people employed in rural areas were engaged in some type of agriculture, such as farming, forestry and livestock breeding. That was nearly 5 percentage points down from the end of 1996, the NBS said.

The number of migrant rural workers stood at 130 million, nearly 60 million more than a decade earlier, the NBS said, citing China’s second national agriculture census.

There were 530 million people in the labor force in rural regions and about 480 million, 90 percent, were working as of the end of 2006, according to the census results.

The findings, from the second national agriculture census in 2006, reflected conditions among 226 million rural households nationwide.

China’s rural survey is the largest of its kind in the world. It collects data on agricultural production, the labor force and employment, living conditions and the environment of rural communities.