Lower domestic crop quality and higher prices of local output helped fuel a 41% surge in China's grain imports in the first half of 2012 compared to the same period in 2011, the state-run China Daily newspaper reported Thursday, citing unidentified analysts.

Resilient demand and changing diets are fueling a sharp rise in China's grain imports even as other commodity imports shrink.

Overly-moist corn and mold damage were key features in last year's harvest in China's northern Huabei region, which comprises areas including Hebei, Shanxi, Beijing, Tianjin and Inner Mongolia.

"The 2011 harvest in the northeast (Heilongjiang, Liaoning and Jilin provinces) was alright, but the Huabei area corn was really not good enough to use for feed," Xu Wenjie, an analyst at Zheshang Futures, told Dow Jones Newswires.

China's corn imports in the first six months reached 2.4 million metric tons compared with 35,674 tons in the same period last year, according to official statistics. This is the highest level in nearly 20 years and surpasses the full-year volume for 2011.

Spurred by government-supported domestic prices and relatively lower global prices, wheat imports surged 297% in the same period to 2.2 million tons while rice imports rose 233% to 1.2 million tons.

Write to Chuin-Wei Yap at chuin-wei.yap@dowjones.com

Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 26, 2012 03:23 ET (07:23 GMT)