Burgeoning Chinese market could mean more Canadian potato profits

Four countries-Brazil, Russia, India and China-are ready to take over leadership of the world's economy and that day is not far into the future, Laval University economist Dr. Maurice Doyon told delegates at the Potatoes New Brunswick annual meeting.
Those four countries, whose economies are poised and ready for the worldwide recession to end so they can sell even more of their goods, make up the acronym BRIC. In his Nov. 27 talk to the potato industry stakeholders in Perth-Andover, Prof. Doyon explained that China was already an economic superpower and the others are about to expand their economies.
"Those four countries are getting really important in world trade. They make up forty per cent of the world's population and they own a third of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in the world. We think of those countries as being developing countries, but in reality, all together they have a big chunk of wealth. They will be bigger than the G6 countries by 2039."
(The G6 countries are the U.S., Germany, United Kingdom, France, Japan, and Italy.)
The economist said the growth of the BRIC countries has so far been based on exports and farm investments but today, because half a billion of their citizens are in the middle class, that is changing. "There are people getting much richer over there. Brazil is a huge country in terms of agricultural potential-nine million acres in reserve, not being used, and that's not including the forest. Last year they increased their milk production by nine per cent, their egg production by eight per cent, chicken twelve per cent." He went on to describe large production increases in other BRIC countries as well, but concentrated on China.
"The consumption and distribution patterns are changing quite a bit. Their behaviour is going to affect our Canadian sector. They have an impact on the price of world products such as grain, fish, and oil."
Prof. Doyon noted that because they can afford refrigerators and cars, most middle class Chinese now drive to supermarkets that have seen a recent growth of 35 per cent. The same increases have been seen for automobiles-181,000 are sold every week. "Last January, for the first time, they sold more cars in China than in the U.S."
PNB delegates took special notice as Prof. Doyon's said, "Since 1993 China has been the largest producer of potatoes in the world, about 24% of world production. In second place is Russia. There is a lot of possibility for their consumption-especially of French fries-to go up and that could be good news for us. Canada is pretty big in terms of French fries. We are second in exporting and producing and right now our biggest customers are the U.S. and Japan. A lot of fast food chains are getting into China, so this is a very interesting future market for us in Canada."