French hope Chinese will fall for baguette
By Lu Haoting (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-02-24 05:49

To many Chinese, Paris conjures up not only tourist attractions such as the Eiffel Tower and Arc of Triumph, but also the French art de vivre a blonde in high- heeled shoes walking elegantly along a street covered by yellow leaves, with a bag of baguettes in her arm.

Well, you might see a similar scene in the streets of Beijing and Shanghai in a few years. France is promoting the French bread-baking techniques in China, as a measure to crack open China's wheat market.

"We want to export to China not only our high-quality wheat but also the unique bread-baking techniques of France," said Jean-Jacques Vorimore, president of France Export Cereals (FEC). "Those are our 'double advantages' compared with other wheat exporters."

Vorimore made the remarks at the 10th Sino-French seminar on French wheat held on Wednesday in Xiamen, Fujian Province. FEC is a non-profit organization founded in 1997 by the Cerealiers de France in order to promote French grain worldwide.

A highlight of this year's seminar is the detailed introduction on French-baking techniques of baguette and sour dough bread using French wheat flour. The speakers include Gerard Brochoire, head of the National Baking and Pastry-making Institute, the most famous baking school of France, and baking experts from Lesaffre Group, a world-leading yeast producer.

France, the European Union's largest grain exporter, has been vying to become a long-term, regular wheat exporter to China. It signed its first wheat export contract with China in almost a decade in 2004. The 700,000 tons of wheat, worth US$100 million, was purchased by China National Cereals, Oils & Foodstuffs Imp & Exp Corp (COFCO) and had been shipped to China by the middle of last year.

Last April, China signed a letter of intent to import another 500,000 tons of French wheat when former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin visited Beijing.

"We hope to sign the formal contract as soon as possible," Vorimore said.

But Yang Hong, general manager of the wheat department of COFCO, said it is unlikely for COFCO to sign another contract with France immediately given the rising wheat output in China.

"China is delicately balancing its wheat supply and demand," Yang said. "The government, which has been trying hard to increase farmers' income, would not like to see the wheat price dropping sharply."

COFCO is a government-designated grain-buying agent and handles 90 per cent of wheat exports to China. Private trading companies and mills apply for quotas on the remaining 10 per cent.

Although the final figure of wheat output in 2005 has not been officially released, the National Bureau of Statistics and the Ministry of Agriculture estimate that China produced 97.5 million tons of wheat last year, a 6 per cent rise year-on-year.

The Chinese Government issued a series of policies to encourage farmers' enthusiasm for growing wheat since the end of 2003 in a bid to increase the nation's wheat output. Major policies include direct subsidies to farmers on purchasing seeds and machines and the abolition of agricultural tax. China's wheat output rose 5.2 per cent in 2004, which ended four consecutive years of decline in wheat output.

"But given China's low per capita farm land and water resources, we still need to import high-quality wheat in which China is not competitive. That is conducive to seeking a sustainable way of growth," Yang said.

The United States and Canada are China's major sources of high protein hard wheat, and China imports low-protein soft wheat from Australia.

"If French wheat wants to get a regular share of the Chinese market, it must be very-price competitive, and the Chinese mills must know how to use French wheat to develop products that the market welcomes," Yang said.

FEC donated 300 tons of French wheat to a mill in Guangdong Province in 2004 and another 400 tons to a mill in Xiamen last year. French and Chinese technicians conducted tests at the mills to adapt French wheat to special requirements for making Chinese food.

"The tests showed that French wheat flour, when blended with Chinese flour, can make very good Chinese noodles and Southern-style Chinese steamed bread," Lin Jiangtao, one of the technicians and lecturer at Henan University of Technology, said when releasing the test results at the seminar.

(China Daily 02/24/2006 page9)