Is this stock an attractive TO now, or too late?, page-5

China is, very wisely, treating food production as a strategic resource that needs to be bought in house as much as possible. In doing so it is running into shortages of feed for animals. At every stage from field to plate there is a loss of efficiency. It is much more efficient to import baby formula that has been made from cattle fed overseas than to make your own by importing feed, which is in drastically short supply in China This has to be balanced against the targets they may have for tolerances on allowable degrees of independence from overseas sources of baby formula vs independence from overseas feed for domestic milk production and other meat production. So in fact a declining birth rate changes the equation, and could lead to to more relaxed target for domestic baby formula production compared to importing feed for meat. What ever target they have in China in view of increased meat production for the growing middle classes. Younger people especially are now accustomed to eating more meat and as prices for that goes up there is currently a drive to reduce food waste in China and grow their own feed and import the least possible - buying pre prepared baby formula helps China immensely in reaching their targets.
So, as I say, importing baby formula is a way to assist China to gain food independence from foreign corn and soy bean imports. They saw what happened when Trump cut them.