By Nailene Chou Wiest
SHANGHAI, Feb 29 (Reuters) - China's pledge to buy 50,000 tonnes of U.S. wheat was not expected to affect purchases from other exporters, industry sources said on Tuesday.
"The significance is that wheat from the northwestern United States is now accepted in China," said a state grain firm analyst.
Given the small amount of the purchase, the U.S. wheat was unlikely to edge out other foreign wheat exporters in China, he said.
A high-profile Chinese wheat delegation signed a deal on Monday to buy 30,000 tonnes of soft white wheat, grown mainly in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, and 10,000 tonnes each of hard red spring wheat and hard red winter wheat.
China had blocked wheat shipments from the Pacific Northwest since 1972 because of the sour-smelling TCK fungus, which U.S. scientists say is harmless.
The lifting of the ban would allow U.S. exporters to save freight costs by shipping wheat from the U.S. West Coast instead of the Gulf Coast.
TOKEN PURCHASE
Traders said the 50,000-tonne purchase was a token for good will and more buying would depend on China's entry into the World Trade Organisation, expected sometime this year.
"It shows China is serious about implementing the farm trade pact signed last year," a trader said.
"Larger imports would become possible only when the tariff is reduced under the WTO agreement."
China signed a bilateral agreement with the United States last April to resolve long-standing disputes on scientific inspection over U.S. wheat, citrus and meat imports.
Traders have expected China's wheat imports to rise this year after hitting a record low of 448,000 tonnes in 1999, down 70 percent from the year before.
But they doubted the imports could reach three million tonnes for the July 2000/June 2001 marketing year as forecast in a U.S. Agricultural Department attache's report released on Monday.
"With the wheat stocks so high, it's hard to believe China would buy so much wheat even under WTO," a trader said.
He estimated China would buy 1.2 to 1.3 million tonnes of foreign wheat for calendar year 2000.
CROP CHANGES COULD AFFECT IMPORTS
The wheat analyst said China has normally relied on Australia for soft white wheat, while the bulk of wheat imports came from Canada's spring wheat.
Since last year, Chinese farmers have been encouraged to plant better-quality wheat to replace imports, he said.
The switching to high-protein and low-protein varieties away from medium protein in the current winter wheat crop would affect decisions on imports, the analyst said.
"The change in the make-up of the wheat crop makes it difficult to predict the amount of imports before the harvest in late spring."
China's winter wheat accounts for 85 percent of the annual wheat crop.:
